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Post Medium: Catalogue for the 2019 Chaumont Graphic Design International Biennale

5 July 2019 in Books Comment

Post Medium: Catalogue for the 2019 Chaumont Graphic Design International Biennale

A catalog of images and essays—for designers, students, enlightened enthusiasts, image sympathizers, poster collectors, and graphic design historians—documenting the 28th International Poster Competition and 2019 International Graphic Design Biennale in Chaumont, France.

Recognizing the best international poster designs—both printed and animated—and celebrating contemporary graphic design, this publication addresses itself to an array of media: digital, textile, and three-dimensional.

Includes texts by The Rodina, “Abolish the Stage of Precarity on Performance Design”; Vanina Pinter, “Basic”; Yann Owens, “Frédéric Teschner, Rue De Paris”; Camille Trimardeau, “Gynographie”; Thierry Chancogne, “Karl Nawrot, Phénoménes”; Jean-Michel Géridan, “Post Medium”; Virginie Vignon, “The Poster Factory”; and an interview between Notamuse (Lea Sievertsen and Claudia Scheer) and Jean-Michel Géridan, Director of le Signe, Centre National Du Graphisme.

Published by le Signe, Centre National Du Graphisme, 2019
Bilingual, text in English and French

Softcover, 240 pages, color images, 4.15 × 6.7 inches

ISBN 979-1-09-738920-8

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Feck Perfection: Dangerous Ideas on the Business of Life

13 June 2019 in Books Comment

Feck Perfection: Dangerous Ideas on the Business of Life
James Victore
With a foreword by Danielle LaPorte

Begin before you’re ready.

Renowned designer and professional hell-raiser James Victore wants to drag you off your couch and throw you headfirst into a life of bold creativity.

He’ll guide you through all the twists, trials, and triumphs of starting your creative career, from finding your voice to picking the right moment to start a project (hint: It’s now).

Bring your biggest, craziest, most revolutionary ideas, and he will give you the kick in the pants you need to make them real.

No matter what industry or medium you work in, this book will help you live, work, and create freely and fearlessly.

Here are some dangerous ideas:

The things that made you weird as a kid make you great today
Work is serious play
Your ego can’t dance
Warrior not worrier
Trust as inspiration

Take a risk. Try them out. Live dangerously.

“James Victore got famous creating tough posters that shook me to the core. He now does the same using the written word. To you.”
—Stefan Sagmeister, designer

Published by Chronicle Books, 2019
Softcover, 160 pages, full color, 6 × 8 inches
ISBN: 978-1-45-216636-0

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Sad People in Modernist Homes in Popular Films

20 May 2019 in Books Comment

Sad People in Modernist Homes in Popular Films
Vol. 2, 2019

The long-awaited follow-up to Benjamin Critton’s canonical broadside Evil People in Modernist Homes in Popular Films (2010), this second entry in the series explores Hollywood’s tendency towards housing unhappiness and melancholy inside some of its most beloved modernist abodes. Is modernism a prison for the depressed?

From Colin Firth’s existential crisis in John Lautner’s 1949 Schaffer Residence (in Tom Ford’s A Single Man), to investigations of a family in Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm slowly falling into chaos in New Canaan – home of the Harvard Five’s domestic modernist experiments – the perceived sterility of the modern movement has frequently been used by the movies as an aesthetic shorthand for tragic protagonists.

With essays by Erik Benjamins, Andrew Romano, Adam Štěch, and Mimi Zeiger
Edited and designed by Benjamin Critton
Published by Surplus Surplus Surplus
First edition, 2019
24 pages, full color, 11.5 × 15 in.

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Super Graphics: The Works of Yuki Kikutake

6 May 2019 in Books Comment

Super Graphics: The Works of Yuki Kikutake

How can a place or space be changed through its re-evaluation by graphic design?

According to Yuki Kikutake, “supergraphics” are a recent trend of site-specific design that connects people and places. They decorate everyday scenes, from construction sites and public spaces, to in and around buildings.

With an innovative but simultaneously subtle viewpoint fostered by her global experiences, Japanese graphic designer Kikutake focuses not only on attractive, comfortable spaces but also on places and objects that give a negative impression.

This book features around twenty of Kikutake’s works and cross-genre designs that can serve as a guideline for future projects, from landmarks and trains to product and book design.

Published by Seigensha, 2018
Bilingual, in Japanese and English

Hardcover with jacket, 192 pages, color and b&w images, 5.9 × 8.7 inches

ISBN: 978-4-86-152677-0

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The Elusive Archive

5 May 2019 in Books Comment

The Elusive Archive

A reinterpretation of the printed 50-year archive of Biennale Interieur, Belgium’s major international design exhibition.

The archive, comprised of over three hundred magazines and newspapers, offered Specht Studio and collaborator Levi Lanser the opportunity to (re)shape, (re)interpret, and (re)invent the archive by selecting and publishing scans from the publications.

Rational content was approached in an intuitive way, with just a few parameters: 1) Intuitive action (picking the magazine); 2) Structured action (setting a timeframe); 3) Structured action (three scans); 4) Intuitive action (a personal scan).

Because the results were unknown, Specht and Lanser called the work an “elusive archive.” Elusive—meaning difficult to find, catch, or achieve.

The final publication features forty posters, as well as a transcription of an email conversation about the project between Specht and Lanser. A full list of magazines used in the project is recorded on the cover noting title, publishing date, and type of content used for the publication.

Published by Stockmans, in collaboration with Specht Studio and Levi Lanser

Conceived for The New Masters, a project by DIFT for Biennale Interieur 2018 in Kortrijk, Belgium.

Printed in a limited, individually numbered edition of 300 copies

80 pages, unbound broadsides, full color, 12 × 16.5 inches

ISBN: 978-9-07-720755-0

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Draw Down at Printed Matter LA

11 April 2019 in Books Comment

Visit Draw Down at Printed Matter’s
2019 Los Angeles Art Book Fair
April 12–14, 2019

Opening Night:
Thursday, April 11, 6–9pm

The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
152 North Central Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Initiated in 2013, Printed Matter’s Los Angeles Art Book Fair (LAABF) is the companion fair to the New York Art Book Fair. Free and open to the public, the two fairs are among the leading international gatherings for the distribution of artists’ books, celebrating the full breadth of the art publishing community.

West Coast Launch:

Abeceda
Nejc Prah, with a text by Sean Yendrys

Brooke DiDonato
Series Thirty-Two
SOLD OUT ONLINE
Last copies available at LAABF

Test Pattern
Cem Eskinazi

Reformed 3
Newly Formed, Rhode Island School of Design

Dima Komarov
Series Thirty-Two

Nice to Meet You
Can Yang

Alice Wietzel
Limited Edition Risograph Zine

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