Thinking for
a Living™

Meet Frank Chimero

More than likely, you already know Frank Chimero via his ongoing projects such as The States or his Inspirational Design Posters but get ready to know him better. I had the good fortune to meet Frank in person when I was reviewing portfolios at the 1st Annual Dallas Society of Visual Communications Student Show & Conference a few years ago. His aesthetic and attitude were instantly captivating and you could tell that his portfolio was just a hint of what was to come. It was clear that Frank was a thinker and a craftsman – and our friendship was sealed at that moment.

As self-described on his site: Frank is a designer, illustrator and tinkerer from Missouri. Inspired by the mid-century aesthetic, Frank tries to recapture the sense of optimism, playfulness, heart and charm that’s characteristic of the period. He can usually be found surrounded by many tiny slips of paper with fragments of ideas scrawled on them. He believes in simplicity, honesty, humor, enthusiasm, keeping busy and air guitar solos. And he also believes in lots of little things over one big thing.

Frank is also beginning to teach design at Missouri State University to a group of lucky students. These reasons and more are why Frank is now a part of Thinking for a Living™. Give him a warm welcome and keep an eye out for his posts on the blog. They are guaranteed to be thought-provoking, entertaining or inspiring – and perhaps all of these at once.

Objectified

Objectified is a feature-length independent documentary about industrial design. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the people who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability. It’s about our relationship to mass-produced objects and, by extension, the people who design them.

Through vérité footage and in-depth conversations, the film documents the creative processes of some of the world’s most influential designers, and looks at how the things they make impact our lives. What can we learn about who we are, and who we want to be, from the objects with which we surround ourselves?

Read director Gary Hustwit’s post about the film.

Objectified is currently in production and will have its world premiere in early 2009.

Featuring:
Paola Antonelli (Museum of Modern Art, New York)
Chris Bangle (BMW Group, Munich)
Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec (Paris)
Andrew Blauvelt (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis)
Anthony Dunne (London)
Naoto Fukasawa (Tokyo)
IDEO (Palo Alto)
Jonathan Ive (Apple, California)
Hella Jongerius (Rotterdam)
Marc Newson (London/Paris)
Fiona Raby (London)
Dieter Rams (Kronberg, Germany)
Karim Rashid (New York)
Alice Rawsthorn (International Herald Tribune)
Rob Walker (New York Times Magazine)

NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell

Congratulations are in order! NY77: The Coolest Year In Hell has been nominated in the 29th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards for the Outstanding Arts & Culture Programming and Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Graphic Design and Art Direction categories.

In the summer of 2007 David Ahuja of Athletics worked with Wyeth Hansen and Todd Neale to design and animate this piece for VH1’s Rock Docs. This two-part, two-hour documentary tells the story of 1977, an astonishing year in New York City history. The documentary weaves together the stories of the emergence of hip hop, punk and disco, graffiti art, and sexual liberation. In the background are the major political events and social issues of the day – crime, urban decay, financial woes, the infamous blackout, drugs, Son of Sam, the bitter mayoral election and the overall poverty that gripped the city.

A Brief History of Avant Garde

As a fan of typography, the work of Herb Lubalin and Avant Garde magazine I wanted to share what I had learned about the colorful past of the magazine’s namesake font. Many of the people associated in the tale are personal heroes of mine, but if you are a bit of a design geek, I think you’ll find it’s quite an amazing story.

In 1964, Lubalin formed his own design consultation firm named Herb Lubalin, Inc. It was during these years that he collaborated with Ralph Ginzburg on Eros, Fact and Avant Garde where he served as creative director and designer for these publications. Five years later Herb Lubalin, Inc. became LSC, Inc., incorporating the talents of Ernie Smith, Tom Carnase, and Roger Ferriter. A year after that, several subsidiaries were added: Lubalin, Delpire & Cie, Paris, Lubalin, Maxwell Ltd., London, Good Book Inc. (“a highly unsuccessful publishing venture”), and Lubalin, Burns & Co., with its highly successful typographic offspring, International Typeface Corporation.

Lubalin designed the typeface Avant Garde for the last of these magazines. The font was not originally designed as a commercial typeface – it was simply the logo for a magazine. Lubalin’s letterforms with tight-fitting combinations reflected Ginzburg’s desire to capture “the advanced, the innovative, the creative.” The character fit was so perfectly tight that they created a futuristic, instantly recognizable identity for the publication. Later he and Tom Carnase, a partner in Lubalin’s design firm, worked together to transform the idea into a full-fledged typeface.

“I asked him to picture a very modern, clean European airport (or the TWA terminal), with signs in stark black and white,” Ginzburg’s wife and collaborator, Shoshana recalled, “Then I told him to imagine a jet taking off the runway into the future. I used my hand to describe an upward diagonal of the plane climbing skyward. He had me do that several times. I explained that the logos he had offered us for this project, so far, could have been on any magazine but that Avant Garde (adventuring into unknown territory) by its very name was something nobody had seen before. We needed something singular and entirely new.”

According to Ralph Ginzberg, “The next morning, driving to work from his home in Woodmere he pulled over to the side of the road and phoned me (the first time he ever did that). ‘Ralph, I’ve got it. You’ll see.’ And the rest is design history.”

Given the high volume of requests for the font, Lubalin formed Lubalin, Burns & Co. (which later became the International Typeface Corporation) and released ITC Avant Garde in 1970. Unfortunately, Lubalin quickly realized that Avant Garde was widely misunderstood and misused in poorly thought-out solutions, eventually becoming a stereotypical 1970s font due to overuse.

Tony DiSpigna, one of Lubalin’s partners and co-creator of ITC Lubalin Graph and ITC Serif Gothic, has been quoted as saying, “The first time Avant Garde was used was one of the few times it was used correctly. It’s become the most abused typeface in the world.” Ed Benguiat, one of type’s legends and a friend of Lubalin’s, commented, “The only place Avant Garde looks good is in the words Avant Garde. Everybody ruins it. They lean the letters the wrong way.” Steven Heller also noted that the “excessive number of ligatures […] were misused by designers who had no understanding of how to employ these typographic forms,” further commenting that “Avant Garde was Lubalin’s signature, and in his hands it had character; in others’ it was a flawed Futura-esque face.”

The strength of the Avant Garde font is certainly in its all-cap ligatures and it should be used as it was originally intended – a display face whose ligatures can be carefully crafted into magnificent letterform combinations. There were two original designs of ITC Avant Garde Gothic: one for setting headlines and one for text copy. The display design contained ligatures and alternate characters and the text design did not. Unfortunately, when Avant Garde Gothic was turned into a digital font, only the text design was chosen, and the ligatures and alternate characters were not included leaving designers with the least interesting aspect of the font.

OpenType technology has allowed ITC to release a complete version of Avant Garde Gothic, offering the full breadth of Lubalin and Carnase’s design. Released in 2005, Avant Garde Gothic Pro includes a suite of additional cap and lowercase alternates, new ligatures that were drawn just for this release, and a collection of biform characters (lowercase letters with cap proportions). It seems that there are still, however, lost ligatures out there and that the current execution is still lacking the finesse it deserves. Read more about The Lost Ligatures of Avant Garde and check out these scans of vintage Letraset dry transfer lettering sheets.

I will undoubtedly always have a soft spot in my heart for Avant Garde magazine as, over the years, I’ve slowly collected each and every issue. I still have a fascination with the font and can’t swear off experimenting with it entirely, but experience has shown that it truly does only work in carefully crafted combinations that balance the tight requirements of the letterspacing with legibility. It is something best left for a master like Herb Lubalin. Possibly a little insight on the history of the typeface will help others to be successful in designing with it. As G.I. Joe always said, “knowing is half the battle.”

References

1. Meggs, Philip. “Two Magazines of the Turbulent ‘60s: a ‘90s Perspective.” Print 48 (Mar-Apr 1994): 68-77.
2. Heller, Steven. “Herb Lubalin: Type Basher.” U&lc 25 (Summer 1998): 8-11.
3. Heller, Steven. ‘Crimes Against Typography.’ AIGA: AIGA Journal of Design. 4 August 2004.
4. Berry, John D. ‘Avant Garde, Then and Now.’ Creative Pro: dot-font. 4 May 2003.
5. White, Alex. ‘Alex White on Herb Lubalin’s Avant Garde.’
6. ‘1977 Hall of Fame.’ The Art Directors Club: 1977 Hall of Fame.

The Italic Poster

The silkscreened edition of The Italic Poster, designed by Eivind Søreng Molvær, is now available for purchase. Printed in an edition of 100 on Plike Black 140 GSM paper from GF Smith, the posters are silkscreened with white ink and are signed and numbered on the back by the designer himself. Postage, packaging and handling are all included in the price of 35 GBP. Please allow 10 days for delivery.

25ah

25ah is Dana Bergquist and Jacqueline Jacoel. To say that they are fond of typography is an understatement. From their office in Stockholm, Sweden, this talented duo creates simple and beautiful works that illustrate a sophisticated use of typography and color that results in truly timeless design solutions. Click and be inspired.

Dear Lulu

Dear Lulu is a test book researched and produced by graphic design students at Hochschule Darmstadt, Germany, during an intensive two-day workshop with London-based designer James Goggin of Practise. The book’s intention is to act as a calibration document for testing colour, pattern, format, texture and typography. Exercises in colour profile (Adobe RGB/sRGB/CMYK/Greyscale), halftoning, point size, line, geometry, skin tone, colour texture, cropping and print finishing provide useful data for other designers and self-publishers to judge the possibilities and quality of online print-on-demand – specifically Lulu, with this edition.

Vernacular Typography

Douglas Wilson has been documenting hand-painted signs and vernacular typography for the past six years using his Polaroid camera. He realized this week that he had never uploaded them to Flickr. Now he has.

Starting with the Universe

Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe will be on view June 26, 2008-September 21, 2008 at the Whitney.

One of the great American visionaries of the twentieth century, R. Buckminster Fuller endeavored to see what he, a single individual, might do to benefit the largest segment of humanity while consuming the minimum of the earth’s resources. Doing “more with less” was Fuller’s credo. He described himself as a “comprehensive anticipatory design scientist,” setting forth to solve the escalating challenges that faced humanity before they became insurmountable.

Delicious Content

James Ellis has written a nice piece on the Athletics weblog explaining how the Thinking for a Living site works under the hood. Months ago, we began to discuss the possibilities for the new site and it was J who suggested using Delicious as the back-end for the site. It was a stroke of genius. I’ll let him explain how he did it, but in short, his clever use of the Delicious API gives content a new context. Thanks again J!

While you’re there, check out the infographics that the guys created for their presentation, “Creativity and the Collective”, which focused on the studio-as-collective business model. The presentation was given at AIGA/NY Smart/Models. Smooth as always.

Music, design and improvisation

I highly recommend viewing this clip of Bill Evans on creativity and self-teaching that was taken from a 1966 documentary entitled The Universal Mind of Bill Evans. In the clip, the brilliantly original jazz pianist has an intense conversation with his composer brother, Harry, on the nature of creativity in jazz. It’s amazing how his lessons on improvisation within musical frameworks applies to the craft of graphic design.

On a related note, in this session from Webstock 08, Liz Danzico explores what it means to design in the age of frameworks and investigates their governing principles – learning from existing models as diverse as jazz music and oral cultures. Emphasis has shifted from editor to reader, stories have gone from individual to social, people are relying on patterns rather than interfaces. But as we move from designing artifacts to designing systems, are there new guidelines at work? We want users to be able to control their own experiences, but how do we ensure they have the right tools to do so?

The pursuit of change

Below is a short excerpt from a thought-provoking article entitled Creativity? The pursuit of change that was written by friend and colleague, Carole Guevin. Carole is internationally recognized through her work as editor and founder of Netdiver, an online magazine and international design portal that has been doing its thing since 1998.

“Consumerism is pursuing the potentiality of an endless dream stream of profits for a few and, exploitation of the most. There is a lot of brainware involved in figuring out the best way to construct cheap and sell a lot. Problem ‘solving’ is mostly attached to return on investment (ROI). As the downfall of the industrious rip of earth resources is surfacing, we are now facing a whole new ball game where a paradigm shift is required, shoving once again creativity to the forefront.

Relegating the pursuit of the creative process to the farthest realm of societal awareness is no longer possible! Now exists a planetary emergency and thus a new urgency to revive the value of creativity!

In our fast changing world, the foreshadow of a networked economy that sustained so much hype in the past couple of years, comprises an underlying fundamental truth: all problems are intertwined and interconnected somehow. In a world where distance, time and boundaries have shrunk to the size of your backyard – whatever happens elsewhere is no longer possible to put either out of mind or out of sight.”

Amen sister! Download the article in it’s entirety here.

We are Build

Michael C. Place of Build updates his always inspirational site with new work. Established in 2001, Build has forged an international reputation as a forward-thinking design studio with an exceptional eye for detail. Pictured above, a gatefold album design for the Los Angeles-based musician Flying Lotus. Photography by Timothy Saccenti and sculpture by Commonwealth.