Thinking for
a Living™

How Very Tokyo

How Very Tokyo has invited a selection of progressive British graphic designers to express their relationship with Tokyo in poster form. Curated by Studio Kanna the exhibition will create a new multi-faceted portrait of the city, highlighting unexpected aspects of Tokyo from an outsider’s point of view.

The fourteen selected designers have collectively made England a more visually exciting place, and we hope that through this exhibition their energy and passion will similarly infect and inspire the Tokyo art and design scene.

Adam Hayes
Alexandre Bettler
Bibliothéque
Browns
Daniel Eatock
Europa
Graphic Thought Facility
James Goggin
North
OK-RM
Sanderson Bob
Spin
Value and Service

HunterGatherer

HunterGatherer is the studio and workshop of designer, animator and filmmaker Todd St. John. It was founded in New York in 2000 and works with a limited number of companies on a select range of outside projects.

In 1994, St. John co-founded the independent label Green Lady with designer Gary Benzel. Nylon Magazine described it as “to the designer T-shirt world what RunDMC is to hip-hop”. Benzel is a collaborator on various HunterGatherer projects, and also operates the Igloo store in San Diego.

This weekend, the 222gallery in Philadelphia will be presenting a selection of new works on paper and wooden sculptural work that St. John has been developing over the past 6 years.

Letters & Ligatures

House Industries presents Letters & Ligatures, a new exhibition of prints, patterns, installations and sculptures based on their 15-year excursion into the alphabetical world, at Shepard Fairey’s Subliminal Projects. The show opens on November 8th and runs until December 5, 2008.

Cold War Modern

Cold War Modern at the V&A is the first exhibition to explore international developments in modern art, design, architecture and film in the context of the Cold War, as the Soviet Union and America engaged in an aggressive contest to build their own spheres of influence. The exhibition features a wide array of artists and designers of the period including Dieter Rams, Otl Aicher, Charles Eames, Le Corbusier and Stanley Kubrick.

The exhibition and guide were both designed by one of my long time favorite studios, Bibliothèque, a creatively-led graphic design consultancy that is based in Shoreditch, London.

Dawdle & Gape

Dawdle & Gape is the traveling 2008 Yale Graphic Design MFA Thesis Book show. The upcoming exhibition is at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, China from October 24–30, 2008. Future venues to be announced.

Raking Leaves in the Wind

CREATE BERLIN will host the exhibition Raking Leaves in the Wind, an exhibition by Berlin-based Canadians Julien Vallée, Eve Duhamel and Brent Wadden, featuring playful graphics, drawings, paintings, animations, and paper installations. The show will be up from October 29th through November 28th.

Art on the Underground

In recognition of the 100th anniversary of the symbol of London Underground and London’s transport system, the Roundel, which was refined by Edward Johnston in 1917, Art on the Underground have commissioned 100 artists to make brand new works of art that are inspired by the Roundel. The artworks are currently on show at the Rochelle School in Shoreditch, London, until October 30 and a selection of works will be exhibited on the Underground during September and October as posters and leaflets.

Pictured above is a poster design created by James Ireland.

Illustrative Zurich

From October 17th to October 26th Illustrative’s 4th forum of graphic arts will take place in the Zurich Messehallen. Conceived in 2006 by Pascal Johanssen and Katja Kleiss in Berlin, Illustrative is an annual forum, and the only one of it’s kind worldwide to present the latest inclinations which run the gamut of illustrative and graphic art in one exhibition.

The main exhibition features over 400 works by 35 artists and gives an international overview which represents the various facets of illustrative art. The exhibit features well-known artists such as German illustrators Olaf Hajek and Martin Haake, Spanish comic-artist Jorge Fabian Gonzalez Varela, American illustrators Eric Sandberg, Vincent Hui and Edwin Ushiro, as well as Japanese Artist Yoh Nagao.

Hot Rods and Hairy Beasts

Hot Rods, Hula Girls, Hairy Beasts, Himalayan Head Hunters and the Holy Bible are just some of the subjects under discussion by illustrators Linzie Hunter, Rod Hunt, Nishant Choksi and Allan Sanders. No subject is too small for this group of seasoned professional illustrators and adventurers. With clients spanning the world of advertising, publishing, design and editorial this band of battle scarred buccaneers are prepared for the eventuality of just about anything.

Hot Rods and Hairy Beasts is showing at the Coningsby Gallery beginning today until Saturday, October 4th 2008.

Synth Eastwood

Synth Eastwood is back with a new brief entitled Cycles. Cycles will take place on Friday the 24th of October in FilmBase, The Button Factory, Meeting House Square and Temple Bar in Dublin. The deadline for all submissions is Monday the 13th of October. All forms of work welcome. See the Synth Eastwood site for submission guidelines.

Maison Martin Margiela

In October 2008, Maison Martin Margiela celebrates its 20th anniversary. For this occasion, the Modemuseum Provincie Antwerpen presents a unique retrospective of his work. Conceived in close collaboration with Maison Martin Margiela, the exhibition takes place from September 12, 2008 through February 8, 2009. More images are available at A Shaded View.

Via Tyler Askew.

The Art of Self-Promotion

Students at the London College of Communication who recently completed a year in the industry have produced an exhibition entitled Shameless, The Art of Self-Promotion as part of the London Design Festival to showcase their experiences from the year. The students have drawn together their newly found experiences, knowledge and understanding for this exhibition to emphasize a topic that was key to their own professional practice; the clever and sometimes desperate ways students find employment post university. The show will be at The Sassoon Gallery from September 18th through the 23rd.

80 20 100

To celebrate the 80th birthday of Wim Crouwel and 20 years Nijhof & Lee, 100 works by Crouwel will be on display at VIVID gallery in Amsterdam from October 11 to November 23, 2008. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue designed by David Quay.

The Storyteller's Art

The Storyteller’s Art, a forty-year retrospective of the design work of Kit Hinrichs, is now on show at the University Library Gallery at Sacramento State. The exhibition presents more than 200 pieces of his work and is up through November 15th.

Hinrichs will also give a lecture at the University Union’s Hinde Auditorium, Tuesday, October 7th from 4:00–6:00 p.m. He will discuss his unique approach to narrative design by presenting a series of case studies from his career.

Via the Pentagram blog.

Specimen

Specimen will be showing at the Pôle graphisme Chaumont from September 10th to November 8th, 2008. The show consists of three exhibitions, all of which are dedicated to books and publishing, a theme initiated by Fanette Mellier.

Puzzling Simplicity

Ciao bella! I’m in love with these puzzles by Enzo Mari. Discovered while browsing, the graphic simplicity and clever arrangements of these pieces instantly pleased my eyes and made me smile. I wanted to share these ‘organized zoos’ immediately but thought I should have some facts to go with the visual inspiration. Tragically curious, here’s what I have learned about these puzzles that had so fully captured my attention.

Enzo Mari started his career with studies on visual perception and then focused his attention on games for children, graphics, design and architecture. He studied literature and art at the Accademia di Brera in Milan from 1952 until 1956. Entirely self-taught as an industrial designer, Enzo designed his first object for Danese called Sedici Animali.

Sedici Animali was launched in 1957 as a wooden puzzle carefully choreographed by Mari depicting an interlocking rectangle of simply carved animal shapes – including a hippo, snake, giraffe and camel. Pictured here are images of the 1974 reissues of Sedici Animali and Sedici Pesci which were created from cast resin. These amazing designs have stood the test of time and are still, in fact, available for purchase at Murray Moss (although at a collector’s price). In many ways, the pricing isn’t surprising as the puzzles have been documented as the favorite childhood design objects of designers like Yves Béhar who’s award-winning studio is responsible for the design of the well-known One Laptop per Child.

Coincidentally, the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in New York is currently hosting a traveling exhibition of Enzo Mari’s work that is up until Friday, September 5th.

Retrospective-One

Kemistry Gallery has asked eleven previous exhibitors to create pieces to celebrate four years exhibiting outstanding graphic design and illustration. With a lineup that speaks for itself, Retrospective—One is bringing together Experimental Jetset, Eine, James Joyce, Parra and Geoff McFetridge among others in a line up of graphic design all-stars. Pieces include hand-drawn typography, one-off collages, lightboxes, print editions, and objects showcasing the breadth of graphic design both as a communication form and as a aesthetic skill.

I’m a bit late on reporting this, but wow, what a line-up. If you’re in Shoreditch, don’t miss this show. In the meantime, you can read Wallpaper’s review of the show here.

The show poster was designed by Proud Creative.

And Kemistry likes pink too.

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.

Manystuff Reflet

Manystuff presents Reflet, an exhibition at Espace GHP in Toulouse, France that will be showing from June 20 to August 2, 2008. Manystuff likes to challenge contemporary designers by delivering a specific topic from them to develop their concepts around. For their first exhibition the theme will be “reflection of a landscape.” Participants include Le Club des Chevreuils, Yoann Dovier, Hey Ho, Jean Jullien, Benoit Lemoine, Damien Poulain, Superscript and Pierre Vanni.