Design
According to Ivan over at OnyxCube – the no.1 Mike Hinge resource on the web – Mike would have been 80 years old today. To celebrate he has all sorts of special treats that he’s dug up to show including typeface designs and memories of old friends so go and check his site out, it’s a goldmine.
Over here though I’ve got a lovely selection of images saved by my good friend Elisa from various lots on eBay that were auctioned around 2003 when his estate sold a lot of his work on. Amazingly she forwarded me a whole folder she recently found on a hard drive that she’d kept, she also won the Kiwifan 10 piece (included here left). The images aren’t great because they were taken by the auctioneer but I’ve tried to make them look as good as possible – thanks Elisa!
Love this Red Skull cover, don’t know who it’s by it’s by David Aja (thanks JB) – check his blog here for more. Here are a few more things from him in a similar vein. Nice to see comics quietly catching up on the graphic design side of things. I just found it whilst looking for something else, hmmm, 3 skulls in the last five posts.
Musically it’s not my bag but the cover is great, reminds me of Trevor Jackson‘s work for Soulwax a few years back. New 12″ ‘Black Waves’ EP on Civil Music.
Nice graphics on a French Border Control leaflet I picked up recently
So excited to finally be able to see this, I’ve been privy to some of the workings of this for the past year now (my wife works for them) and it opens this week in London at the National Maritime Museum. Part of a major new exhibition, although this will be a permanent installation, content-heavy video mapping based around the moon’s relationship to the sea, this is just a tiny part of it.
[vimeo width=”640″ height=”360″]http://vimeo.com/26328656[/vimeo]
I was very excited to learn that Remi and Augustine were going to be painting a wall together in London whilst Kofie was in the UK taking part in a couple of exhibitions. Little did I realise that they would be painting a local pub on the high street of the neighborhood where I (and Remi) live. Said pub is the Bishop on Lordship Lane in East Dulwich, South East London and they spent two days in very changeable weather transforming the side of the building much to the surprise of the locals who don’t have anything like this round here. The first three images are by Timid, via Remi’s blog.
Here’s a selection of pictures I took this afternoon and there should be a timelapse film at some point in the future. Kofie is off back to the US tomorrow and Remi has a new mini book out of Selected Paintings as well as an EP of new tracks, available here.
God I love these. Buy them and many more from here
Chemistry book, 1975, ex-library, carboot sale find.
[vimeo width=”640″ height=”300″]http://vimeo.com/20901980[/vimeo]
Another set of original Star Wars trilogy posters, this time by Jon E. Allen. Nicely done but Return of the Jedi doesn’t quite work for me. Also I think they’re too reminiscent of Andy Helms’ ones in this post.
via the Crack 2 blog, more here, utterly beautiful!
“These structures were commissioned by former Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito in the 1960s and 70s to commemorate sites where WWII battles took place (like Tjentište, Kozara and Kadinjača), or where concentration camps stood (like Jasenovac and Niš). They were designed by different sculptors (Dušan Džamonja, Vojin Bakić, Miodrag Živković, Jordan and Iskra Grabul, to name a few) and architects (Bogdan Bogdanović, Gradimir Medaković…), conveying powerful visual impact to show the confidence and strength of the Socialist Republic. In the 1980s, these monuments attracted millions of visitors per year, especially young pioneers for their “patriotic education.” After the Republic dissolved in early 1990s, they were completely abandoned, and their symbolic meanings were forever lost.
From 2006 to 2009, Jan Kempenaers toured around the ex-Yugoslavia region (now Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, etc.) with the help of a 1975 map of memorials, bringing before our eyes a series of melancholy yet striking images. His photos raise a question: can these former monuments continue to exist as pure sculptures? On one hand, their physical dilapidated condition and institutional neglect reflect a more general social historical fracturing. And on the other hand, they are still of stunning beauty without any symbolic significances.”
Much more detail on Kempenaers‘ book of these stunning monuments here and you can buy his book of the photographs on Amazon
[vimeo width=”636″ height=”380″]http://vimeo.com/3302330[/vimeo]
Incredible motion typography with music by Forss
By no means definitive, but seeing as I’m on a Mike Hinge kick at the moment, here is a selection of his book and magazine covers, scavenged from various blogs and galleries around the web.
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This has been going on for a while now over on Warren Ellis’ sprawling Whitechapel forum. The idea is that you get a few scraps of info about what has now become a classic comic or series, and have to imagine you’ve never seen or read the comic before but were given the job of illustrating the front cover of that issue or book.
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The Fantastic Four, Spiderman (via Amazing Adult Fantasy), 2000ad, Superman, Zap Comix and more have all come in for a re-imagining over the last year and I’ve rounded up my favourites in the gallery below.
More can be seen here and there’s also a Remake/Remodel series where you’re asked to redesign obscure characters from the past.
Much more to see and read here – just ignore the ultra geek programming / processing tech-speak of this piece and marvel at what it achieved on screen.
Love this cover for the new Gnod and White Hills LP
I can’t recommend this enough, a very good read for designers or even people with a just passing interest in design. You don’t have to know your kerning from your baselines to appreciate the information in this great book. Simon Garfield take a humorous, but well researched, look at fonts and typography across the ages, from design giants like Helvetica, Univers and Gill to the underdogs of the lettering community.
Chapters on Comic Sans prove he’s no type snob, a fascinating story about a lost typeface that drowned in the Thames and even a few eye openers will keep you turning the page. Who would have thought Eric Gill was into that? Also the new Olympic font comes in for a good kicking before he’s done.
If you’re a student just starting, a seasoned pro or you just know someone who likes their design but is really hard to buy a present for, this book is for you. I only wish something like this was around when I was in college, it might have saved me from making some of those dodgy font decisions in the past.
Yes, I know what you’re thinking, Katy Perry, I would too, but…
Aside from the fact that I have a thing for women in black bob haircuts and none other than Noisia have remixed her new single into a dubstep ‘anthem’, check out the font on the cover.
No, really. I don’t know who the designer is but I love some of those letter forms, the K, A and E especially. Shame they had to go and spoil it with the terrible dot matrix font for KanYe, no less than he deserves I suppose.
Mike Hinge was an illustrator, typographer and graphic designer, born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1931. Early in his illustration career he worked for the largest ad agency in New Zealand before moving to Los Angeles, where he attended the Art Center of the College of Design. In 1966 he moved to Manhattan, where he worked as an art director for several ad agencies. His graphic designs were notable, and his colorful and psychedelic illustrations appeared on numerous science fiction paperback books and magazines during the 1970s, including Analog, Mediascene, Heavy Metal, Fantastic, and Amazing.
Hinge also did design work for 2001: A Space Odyssey and produced illustrations for mainstream publications like Time magazine, including covers featuring Richard Nixon and Emperor Hirohito. He was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist in 1973, plus nominated for 6 Locus awards in the ’70’s. His designs for typefaces and graphics won him several awards and were exhibited, including a show at the Brooklyn Museum. A book about his art The Mike Hinge Experience was published in 1973 and he featured in the 1982 artists anthology The New Visions. He died of a heart attack in 2003 and still remains relatively unknown outside of the sci-fi community, for more info check out Ivan Richards’ Onyx Cube blog for many examples of his original artwork.
