castellano

Da “La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno” del 20 dicembre:

“Grandi elaborazioni digitali nella mostra
«Cinquant’anni di grafica e altri giochi» al Castello Svevo di Bari
Finalmente, alla bellezza di 73 anni, dopo una vita dedicata alla grafica di altissimo livello, Mimmo Castellano può essere l’artista che aveva sognato: le grandi elaborazioni digitali esposte nella grande sala al pianterreno del Castello Svevo di Bari non si fanno “ingoiare” dal contenitore storico e possiedono una forza speciale.
“Avrei voluto fare l’artista” dichiara in un incontro al Castello con i giovani dell’Accademia di Belle Arti di Bari, “ma”, continua, “avevo bisogno di guadagnare e la grafica me ne offrì la possibilità”. Il salto da Gioia del Colle a Milano, la “Milano da bere” della pubblicità degli anni Settanta, consentì a Castellano di raggiungere livelli elevati nella progettazione dei marchi e dell’immagine di molte aziende, dando al pugliese una rinomanza internazionale. Castellano ha raccontato quanto la sua progettazione grafica, ricca di colori, stupisse di primo acchito in un ambiente cromaticamente spento, quello dei cieli bianchi di nebbie e di neve del Nord. L’artista adoperava nella progettazione grafica i colori della memoria della sua terra e spesso programmaticamente rompeva le consuetudini. L’aveva già fatto per una rappresentazione del 1954 di Zoo di vetro di Tennessee Williams con Paola Borboni al Teatro Piccinni di Bari, allorché usò i tubi Dalmine e metri e metri di voile viola - il colore che i teatranti di ogni tempo evitano perché porta male – e lo spettacolo andò benissimo lo stesso, sfatando i pregiudizi. Oggi le grandi opere di Castellano rendono giustizia al suo sogno di artista: i colori prescelti sono quelli del paesaggio pugliese, dei cieli, delle terre e dei mari del bambino che fu. Tecnicamente le elaborazioni sono ineccepibili e mostrano uno spessore concettuale ed un grado di gradevolezza estetica veramente esemplari. Dopo aver visitato la rassegna ci si accorge viceversa di quanto molti altri - troppi - che oggi giocano a dipingere con il mouse, abbandonando tele e pennelli, siano artisti digitali improvvisati, distanti come sono - anni luce! - dalla bravura raggiunta da questo artista.
Giusy Petruzzelli”

Altre informazioni nel sito aiap e in sdz.



Mimmo Castellano, cinquant’anni di grafica e altri giochi
Castello Svevo di Bari
fino al 31 gennaio 2006
tutti i giorni, escluso mercoledì
orario 9 – 19

0805286111 e 0805344722 infotel

mostra promossa da
Fidanzia Sistemi srl
in collaborazione con
Sovrintendenza per i Beni Architettonici e per il Paesaggio della Puglia
con il patrocinio di
Agi
Aiap
La Corte

dcd

Chi si ricorda di David Carson?

“He changed the public face of Graphic Design” - Newsweek,
“The art director of the era” - Creative review London,
The AIGA ,in the dec 03 issue of STEP magazine, calls Carson “our biggest star”

Cliccando qui, potete ascoltare la sua voce, dieci anni fa…

the esquire

the Esquire cover gallery
We have issues. Eight hundred and fifty-seven, to be exact, and this section contains all 857 covers. If you've got the time, begin at the beginning (Autumn 1933) and click your way through to the present. Or you can navigate by year or cover subject.



Esquire magazine, sub voce, Wikipedia

post natale post

GT generosamente segnala e io giro:

UK traffic signs regulation completo d'img

o, meglio Working drawings for traffic signs

Pittogrammi da sito danese: divieto, attenzione, obbligo

US Pharmacopeia

Trasporto pubblico australiano

Specifiche grafiche bandiera unione europea

MIT, graph id

E, per finire, ecco la radice, quasi-onnicomprensiva del
Canada Federal Identity Program / Programme de coordination de l'image de marque

funny signs

Welcome to FunnySign.com, a collection of what else? FUNNY SIGNS.
This website, like much pothole repairs, is a work in progress. The best part is, you do the work, leaving us to other, more leisurely pursuits. Just send us your photos of funny, stupid, dumb, idiotic, misshapen, twisted, real, and fake roadsigns, storefronts, warning, and advertising signs c/o
webmaster@funnysign.com

typemuseum

Das Typemuseum zeigt Fundstücke aus vielen Ländern – Fotos von Schriften, Logos, Zeichen, Pictogrammenn, Buchstaben, Wappen und anderen typografischen Werken. Das Typemuseum versteht sich als ein offenes Forum der Diskussion und Auseinandersetzung über visuelle Alltagskommunikation und versucht durch Gegenüberstellungen und analytische Beschreibungen einen Blick auf mögliche Hintergründe und Motive für konkrete Gestaltungsformen zu werfen. Es kommen fast tägliche neue Exponate hinzu. Es lohnt sich daher, immer wieder einmal vorbeizuschauen.
*
46 neue Bilder im Dezember 2005.
8699 Bilder gesamt.

fraterdeus

Ricevo e pubblico:

“A recent dialog on one of my type design lists...
enjoy!
p

>At 8:40 AM -0800 12/8/05, Sumner Stone wrote:
>
>>I like Jonathan's antler analogy. It is topological rather than historical. The history seems to lead us to babble. Topologically speaking I would say the number of serifs on an m is arbitrary. Of course, this is the view of a former math teacher.
>>
>
>Per Sumner's observation that the number of serifs is arbitrary, I have enlarged one of the feet of the "m" that he sent, indeed, one would have to admit that there is no way to put a final integral value on this serif.
>
>http://www.fraterdeus.com/downloads/mserif/view (download the pdf (50K))
>
>At 8:26 PM +0100 12/8/05, prof. erik spiekermann wrote:
>
>>shouldn't that be "finite" instead?
>
>
>Not necessarily ;-)
>
>I propose that this type of serif be given a dimension of between 1 and 2, say perhaps about 1.26185 [1]
>
>p
>
>[1] http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/courses/m308-03b/projects-03b/skinner/ex-dimension-koch_snowflake.htm
At 10:53 PM +0000 12/8/05, Laurence Penney wrote:
>Thanks Peter!
>
>This reminds me of something I wrote on comp.fonts on the subject of fractal serifs a little over 10 years ago. I never thought it received sufficient admiration at the time. Luckily Google Groups still publishes it, so here it is again:
>
>http://groups.google.com/group/comp.fonts/browse_thread/thread/e02ad43afbcab440/2280ab249764179a?lnk=st&q=fractal+serifs&rnum=1#2280ab249764179a
Laurence --
Excellent!
Ain't Google mahvelous? (Well, until it remembers something best left forgotten, which sadly may be the larger part of it)
Your reference, of course, from Swift's lines:
So, Nat'ralists observe, a Flea
Hath smaller Fleas that on him prey,
And these have smaller Fleas to bite 'em,
And so proceed ad infinitum.
("On Poetry: A Rapsody" 353-6)
The citation here from http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/complexity/yoder/yoder.html
"Romanticism and Complexity"
"Unlocking Language: Self-Similarity in Blake's _Jerusalem_"
>From which this strikingly timely elucidation!!

"""
For Blake the unit of signification can be anything along a sliding analogical scale of the particulars of textual production: from the whole of a published, finished copy down to the smallest drops of ink and finest of etched marks, Blake's vision of signification is like a great chain of reading with every link forged as it is perceived by the reader. David Erdman was the first to note that around 1791 Blake began using an italic "g" with a "serif or topknot on the left side instead of the right," but that after 1805 Blake changed the serif on the letter "g" to the right. And not only did Blake write all of his new material with the rightward serif, but he even changed the serif on re-issues of earlier etched works ("Suppressed and Altered Passages" 52). We cannot be sure why Blake changed his letter "g," but we can see that for Blake the signifying unit was not simply the word, not even the letter, but even smaller and smaller marks. The minute end of the scale of signification is limited only by the limits of his perception, the minutest of graphic particulars that his graver could carve or his pen could write. The grand end of the scale is limited only by the poet's and reader's imagination. The serif signifies in and of itself, but it is also part of a letter, part of a word, phrase, line, plate, chapter, volume, oeuvre, tradition, history of traditions, all of which signify in their own right.
"""
Every Jot and Tittle, indeed ;-)
P
PS, sorry, Google forced me to put this in too...
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/797.html
Big whorls have little whorls
That feed on their velocity,
And little whorls have lesser whorls
And so on to viscosity.
-- Lewis F. Richardson
--
AzByCx DwEvFu GtHsIr JqKpLo MnNmOl PkQjRi ShTgUf VeWdXc YbZa&@
ARTQ: Help stop in-box bloat! Always Remember to Trim the Quote!
Semiotx Inc. http://typeandmeaning.com
Web Strategy Consulting Communication Design Typography
Peter Fraterdeus http://www.fraterdeus.com ”

cornacchione

Ricevo e pubblico:
“Buonasera,
sono un grafico italiano residente in Catalogna, e le scrivo in qualità di commissario di un concorso indetto dall'Istituto Europeo di Design di Barcellona, rivolto a grafici italiani tra i 20 e i 36 anni, sperando di poter contare sulla sua disponibilità nel darne divulgazione.
In breve:
Ogni anno lo IED di Barcellona bandisce un concorso rivolto a giovani grafici di nazionalità di volta in volta diversa (finora Messico, Argentina e Brasile sono stati i Paesi invitati), i quali devono presentare, attraverso i loro elaborati, degli aspetti legati alla situazione politica, sociale, culturale, del loro Paese di provenienza. Quest'anno, chiuso il ciclo del Sudamerica, tocca all'Italia.
Il concorso sfocia in una mostra di 30 manifesti (selezionati da una giuria internazionale) che si terrà allo IED Barcelona nella primavera 2006. L'autore del manifesto vincitore otterrà una borsa di studio di 6000€.
Il titolo dell'iniziativa è "Chi lo fa lo aspetti - Riflessioni grafiche sullo Stivale", frase che suona come un monito e che invita ad essere maggiormente consapevoli del fatto che tutti siamo "calzolai" responsabili della costruzione dello Stivale.
Nelle edizioni passate hanno fatto da giurati Mariscal, Norberto Chaves, Manuel Estrada, tra gli altri. Per questa edizione hanno aderito Antonio Fernandez Coca, Mauro Panzeri, Elisabetta Ognibene, Andrea Rauch, Jordi Labanda.
Le allego il bando di concorso e un bozzetto di quella che sarà la copertina del catalogo che verrà editato.
Per ulteriori informazioni:
italia@bcn.ied.es
www.moluanda.net/italia
Attenzione: proroga del concorso.
La data di consegna dei lavori è stata spostata al
15 febbraio 2006.
www.ied.es
La ringrazio anticipatamente se vorrà darmi una mano a diffondere l'iniziativa.
Approfitto per salutarla e augurarle buone feste.
Cordialmente,
Enzo Cornacchione”

brownjohn

Robert Brownjohn
Graphic Designer (1925-1970)
15 October 2005 to 26 February 2006
Design Museum Exhibition

Combining audacious imagery with ingenious typography, illustration and found objects, Robert Brownjohn (1925-1970) was among the most innovative graphic designers in 1950s New York and 1960s London, where he designed titles for James Bond films, graphics for the Robert Fraser Gallery and artwork for the Rolling Stones.

Throughout his life Robert Brownjohn loved music. Many of his closest friends were musicians and his most playful and inspiring work was related to music. When it came to designing an album cover for the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1958, he fused his love of music and of typography by transforming blocks of disused wooden type and wooden bricks from his daughter Eliza’s playbox into a striking graphic composition which is also a commentary on the process of typographic production.

He did so by replacing the orderly arrangement of type by a skilled typesetter with a higgledy-piggledy collage of wooden blocks. The type on the sculpture runs from right to left, and, to make it legible, the photographic image was reversed. Witty and intriguing, the wooden collage typifies the intellectual rigour and underlying humour that characterised Brownjohn’s work. It also demonstrates the appreciation of the everyday objects that tend to be taken for granted that he had inherited from his teacher László Moholy-Nagy at the Institute of Design in Chicago during the 1940s.

Famed for his flamboyant lifestyle as well as for the quality of his design ideas, Brownjohn was an influential figure in graphic design in both 1950s New York and 1960s London before his untimely death of a heart attack in 1970 a few days before his 45th birthday. In his audacious choice of images – from the bare breasts on a poster for Robert Fraser’s Obsession exhibition, to the gold-painted female torso in his Goldfinger titles – Brownjohn captured the experimental spirit of the 1960s by introducing the progressive ideas of Moholy-Nagy to popular culture in inspired juxtapositions of type and image.


Emily King
Robert Brownjohn:
Sex and Typography
240 pages
230 x 190 mm
ISBN 1 85669 464 X
£25.00 hardback
Laurence King Publishing, London 2005
Robert Brownjohn's cult status is justly deserved. Although his career lasted less than a quarter century, he created more signature pieces than many designers who work three times as long, consistently producing work of the highest quality. Born in New Jersey in 1925, he was taught by László Moholy-Nagy at the Chicago Institute of Design (formerly the New Bauhaus) in the 1940s. He worked in New York in the 1950s and spent the 1960s at the epicentre of swinging London on the King's Road. Best known for his title sequences for the Bond films From Russia With Love (1963) and Goldfinger (1964), he produced numerous other influential pieces, and his impact on American and British design was unmistakeable. Brownjohn's death in 1970 deprived graphic design of one of its most brilliant and original minds.

kinross & sdz

Finalmente (stampato in ottobre) in italiano Modern Typography (London 1992, 2004) di Robin Kinross: Giovanni Lussu, che l’ha tradotto, me ne ha inviato assai gentilmente una copia – (ri)letta tutto d’un fiato, piacevole, interessante, buoni apparati (ma perché nella bibliografia manchi lo standard di Meggs mi sfugge). Raccomandabilissima per i corsi universitari, vista la ancora scarsa (ma è innegabile che si stia arricchendo) letteratura in italiano sul tema.
Lo trovate, tra l’altro, nel sito aiap.

Robin Kinross
Tipografia moderna
Saggio di storia critica
Stampa Alternativa & Graffiti, Roma 2005
euro 20
pp. 304, 15 x 21 cm, bn, 58 ill. a col.

“È difficile pensare a una breve storia della tipografia migliore di questa. Per tipografi e studenti, e per coloro che sono stati introdotti alla tipografia dal personal computer e dal desk top publishing, questo è il miglior reseconto di come la tipografia moderna è arrivata a essere quello che è”.
Matthew Carter, “Eye”

– se lo dice Carter!

Ne approfitto per segnalare (non ce l’ho ancora ma mi sembra una buona idea) anche (lo trovate sempre nella libreria online aiap)

Andrea Rauch e Gianni Sinni
SocialDesignZine volume I
250 articoli, 464 pagine a colori, oltre 1100 immagini, propaganda, fumetti, fotografia, arte, accessibilità, tipografia...
LCD edizioni, Firenze 2005
euro 30
pp. 464, 17 x 24 cm, col, 1100 ill.

Il volume presenta una selezione degli articoli pubblicati durante i primi due anni (giugno 2003-giugno 2005) di attività di SocialDesignZine, il sito web di informazione quotidiana dell’Aiap.

biblioteca mansutti

La Biblioteca è aperta a studiosi e ricercatori della materia nella sua sede al 1° piano di via Alberico Albricci 8 a Milano. Chi invece desidera conoscere quali opere vi sono custodite può farlo da questo sito ricercando nelle rubriche.

La documentazione del fondo archivistico della Biblioteca comprende anche oltre 200 manifesti, tutti con l'assicurazione come denominatore comune. Essi rappresentano un altro aspetto, senza dubbio meno conformista, del fenomeno assicurativo e ne narrano la storia più recente. Sono stati stampati per la maggior parte con il procedimento litografico in un vasto arco di tempo - che va dal 1879 al 1965 - in cui sono preminenti quelli del periodo d'oro della cartellonistica, compreso tra la fine dell'800 e il 1930, e quelli italiani e francesi poiché particolarmente in queste due nazioni fu considerevole il successo di questa forma di pubblicità.
Segnalato da FB, merci encore.

maHKU ED

Premessa: solo oggi (dal 5 us) Telecom mi ha riconnesso (comunque, anche se flat, max speed 16800).

Sviluppo: continuo impavido (in fondo, è una specie di viaggio nel tempo, come tornare a una decina d’anni fa).

Conclusione: questo maHKU mi pare interessante, in particolare il Master in Editorial Design.

ALL DESIGN IS EDITORIAL
If, as Gui Bonsiepe holds, all design is at root interface design, then all design is editorial. For, what is more editorial than turning disparate data into meaningful information, which is what an interface should achieve? In connecting these two terms, editing and interfacing, we define the bias of the pathway Editorial Design as an interdisciplinary course concerned with structuring information for publication media.
In general terms, 'editorial design' is the craft of organizing complex aggregates of information into a meaningful and accessible totality, balancing function (the interface aspect) and aesthetics (the expressive aspect).
EDUCATE TO MAKE MEANINGFUL LINKS
The MAHKU programme in Editorial Design offers BA Design graduates a Master course, which provides tools to operate in a professional and critic way. The one year fulltime study is an intensive period where research, action and reflection, will establish an attitude of balancing content with context; and designing the processes that organize the 'traffic' between various layers of information and meaning; mixing media _and_ contexts, even from very diverse sources, thereby enhancing the notion of connectedness of information.
FROM GRAPHIC TO ‘META VIEW’
Within the interdisciplinary environment of HKU Masters of Design, Editorial Design holds the position of a 'meta discipline'. It is not solely concerned with (graphic) design for publication media, although that remains a focus, but also looks at editorial structure in any design process and product, from urban signage systems to database management systems, from the design of instrument panels to that of electronic displays, from advertising campaigns to newspaper lay-out, from information graphics to web design.
That is the editorial core of design: the activity of making meaningful links.

Ulteriori informazioni nel sito di Max Bruinsma e in una delle Past Features Icograda.

Alla prossima, Telecom permettendo.

Filosofia Font Poster

Poster Designed by Massimo Vignelli
Filosofia Typefaces Designed by Zuzana Licko
Filosofia is an historical revival based on the design of Bodoni.
22.5 x 32.75 inches, offset printed on uncoated stock.
SOLD OUT

piatto ricco…

1 . [font] Newspaper, LIBERTÀ
After 56 years using the apostrophe instead the grave accent for the heading of the newspaper of my hometown - Piacenza - the director of Libertà, after a letter I sent, restored the right grave-A.
pdf : [1 page, 448 kb]
jpg : [108 kb]
Newspaper : LibertàOnLine (Piacenza, Italy)
Frontpage, 29.10.05

2 . [gallery] GD1-Workshop 4. Writing With Images

3 . [gallery] Vox 13 classwork

4 . [pdf] Infographic, the handout is on-line at linkography-ID

5 . Emigre, An Ending
So it’s over. One of the great – as in all-time great – design publications has come to a close. Issue 69 of Emigre will be the last. Emigre, the type foundry will live on, but founder, editor and designer Rudy VanderLans has commissioned his last article, conducted and transcribed his last interview, and composed his final message to his readers.
Rick Poynor

6 . [game] If I Ruled Design
flash-game

7 . [infographic] Phylotaxis
Phylotaxis , courtesy of Jonathan Harris.

8 . quote #42 Cogito, Ergo Sum.
René Descartes (1596-1650)
Translated in the past as “I think, therefore I am”, but more recently and accurately “I am thinking, therefore I exist”, is possibly the single best-known philosophical statement.
Also translated for the FB building 2nd floor toilet design.

9 . [workshop] "Good times", Florence, Italy
Good times
Create a temporary 3 dimensional piece of typography, only lasting for a pre-defined moment.
This workshop will be part of the Beyond Media Festival 05.



Tutta la ricca e godibile serie di segnalazioni odierne mi è giunta (ormai da tempo…) da parte di Alessandro Segalini, che ringrazio sentitamente.

The Stroke

Gerrit Noordzij
The stroke : theory of writing
Translated by Peter Enneson
Hyphen Press, London 2005
88 pages | 210 x 125 mm | b&w pictures | sewn paperback | £15.00
ISBN 0-906259-30-8
The Stroke is the most concise and powerful statement of Gerrit Noordzij’s theory of writing. First published in Dutch in 1985, it appears here for the first time in English. The book puts forward a genuine theory of all writing, done with any kind of generating tool. Noordzij starts with fundamentals-the space within and between the letters-and proceeds in stages towards a full account of how the strokes of writing can be formed, and an analysis of the qualities of letters. Along the way, there are reflections on history and culture, and remarks on method. Noordzij’s theory serves to repair the split that grew up, with the invention of printing, between written and typographic letters. He shows us the underlying written quality of all letters, with whatever technology they have been formed. Just by virtue of its strong theory, The Stroke has practical consequences that transcend any simple how to do it approach.

Cartoline

Storia della cartolina postale e addenda, chez MisterKappa.
Suggeritomi a settembre da FB (merci!), solo ora riesco a segnalare.

Alphabet

Alphabet
An Exhibition of Hand-Drawn Lettering and Experimental Typography
Focusing on an ordinary subject that we see each day, often in the hundreds of thousands, Alphabet presents 26 letters as more than just shapes for conveying information. The 48 artists and designers in this show conceive and interpret the alphabet in surprising and inventive ways, ranging from graceful and polished to witty and unconventional. The 60 alphabets featured in Alphabet were created by artists in North America, Europe, and Asia, and represent work from well-known typographers and designers as well as rising artists and design students.
Segnalato dal gentile Tamagno, addirittura a luglio.