“Final Decline & Total Collapse is a series of 50 posters dealing with themes of loss and decline through the image of antiquated chairs from bygone eras.”
Illustrator Anthony Gerace is responsible for this collection of images that I had no choice to post because of my love of print, illustration and vintage furniture. Ace.
Wanderlust has released a series of posters for Earth day 2010. The posters are selling for £30.00, £15 of which will be donated to Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders. There are 7 posters in all under the theme ‘wanderlust’ showing each of the 7 continents ranging from Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, to South America.
The posters are absolutely beautiful works of modern art but for me personally, even with the money going to charity, I just can’t afford one at the moment even though I would love to hang them in my studio. But if you can afford to pick one up, I highly recommend it considering that half of the total sale is being donated to charity which is practically unheard of.
Artem Gridin doesn’t have any information about himself at his website but what he does have is some very nice poster work with a rather unique and playfully experimental take on typography.
“The Double You Theory is an ode for individualism, freedom of expression and creativity. We can be more than we let ourselves to believe. The Double You is an initiative for making the unimaginable.
We believe in the spur of the moment, breaking the form and expanding our horizons. We believe in making life more colorful and fun.”
Well okay then. As a part of this ‘initiative’ The Double You has been hosting a design challenge with a grand jury award prize of $2000 that concludes on May 5th. There are some interesting images coming out of the challenge so far and for a decent cash prize, supported by what sounds like a positive network and message you might as well throw your hat in the ring if you are feeling up to it. Visit the Double You site for more information about entering the design challenge.
Barcelona design firm Heystudio has updated their Flickrfolio with some impossible-not-to-like work including this poster for the Lapsus Graphic Showcase Exhibition. They have been on a roll this year and last with continually impressive simple, clean, colorful and beautiful graphic design work.
“Them-And-Us is an initiative aimed at bringing together 20 European and 20 African visual artists, designers, illustrators and photographers. The project aims to explore the similarities and differences between first and third world views and aesthetics by pairing up artists from Europe with their African counterparts.
Through a series of 20 double sided posters, artists are invited to explore the notion of ‘Them–And–Us’ and the broader theme of tolerance (or intolerance).
Working in two prescribed colours, each artist will create a poster. The reverse will feature a poster designed by an artist from the other continent. Each pair of artists will be paired and introduced at the outset of the project. Together each team will choose a specific theme, such as ‘Light–And–Dark’ or ‘Smart–And–Dumb’ and communication and cross polination will be encouraged. The final outcome should be two posters that talk to each other yet are distinctly the product of their respective makers.
The final 40 posters will be packaged together along with a 64 page publication profiling each of the artists involved and detailing the purpose and process of the project. Them–and–Us will be exhibited in Durban, Cape Town, Stockholm and London early in 2010. All proceeds from sales will go to Amnesty International to help in the global fight against intolerance.
Them–And–Us is curated by South African design studio, disturbance, Stockholm resident and graphic designer, Noel Pretorius and British designer/writer Adrian Shaughnessy who will also write and edit the accompanying publication.”
There is some inspiring work on display at Them and Us.
Poketo was once a fun project in collaborating with artists and designers to produce wallets has evolved into a more robust fashion brand. They just relaunched a new website this week with some new and good looking goods in stock.
Aaron Carambula, Dennis Payongayong, Erik Marinovich, and Jason Wong from Friends of Type have printed and released their first series of beautiful letterpressed posters that combine to create the statement ‘always play amongst friends’. The posters look amazing and you can see more detailed images at For Print Only.
Bulgarian designer Kliment has created a nice series of typographical posters for the Barcelona series at Show Us Your Type. You can see them in the Kliment Behance-folio.
Polish graphic designer/illustrator Michal Bialogrzywy has a totally insane set of posters up in his Behance-folio that is guaranteed to inspire those leaning toward the vector scale. It would be nice to see these printed and available to purchase as they would make a striking series to hang on a wall.
“Moxie Sozo, the organizer of the 2005 Hurricane Poster Project, has teamed up with Josh Higgins, the organizer of the 2007 So-Cal Fire Project to produce the 2010 Haiti Poster Project.
The Haiti Poster Project seeks limited edition sets of posters from artists, designers and design firms from around the world. The donated posters will be sold online to raise money for Doctors Without Borders”
The posters go on sale April 5th. There are some beautiful posters there and it all goes to support an important cause. I am still hoping to have something to them by May as well. So stay tuned for that and in the meantime create your own poster and purchase one from your favorite artist (mine is Christopher David Ryan of Atmostheory).
I stumbled upon Mollusk Surf Shop tonight and was doubly impressed by the posters available for purchase and the t-shirts in stock. The site runs much deeper than that though offering up all kinds of amazing goodies. The poster shop offers up artwork from the likes of Geoff McFetridge, Thomas Campbell, Jessie LeDoux and Evan Hecox to name a few. It’s a little gold mine of good stuff supporting good artists.
Remember all the way back in 2009 when the Omega Code poster craze swept the net and everyone jumped on board to create their own (including myself)? Well a few of those posters are now actually available for purchase at Society 6. I have to admit that I my personal favorite (out of the grouping for sale) belongs to Tom Muller.
Well, I have been candid in the past about how my work sometimes is overly-influenced by other designers (the irony of the image I chose for that post and this incident was not lost on me). In an ever-increasingly globally digital creative environment it is something that I think happens to a lot of us. Sometimes you have to push away from the machine and pick up the pencil.
However, I was a little personally outraged when I saw this particular LRG shirt for sale at Karmaloop. I personally don’t really know very much about LRG, although I did buy a t-shirt of theirs a few years back at a boutique. Apparently their logo is a circular arrow pointing down, almost the inverse of my logo except that mine is a 3 quarter circle turned upward and the arrow is split down the middle. It’s not exactly a new or highly original logo treatment, but when I designed mine (over 5 years ago now), it was meant to symbolize the constancy of change. Again, ironically there is just so happens to be an article in the upcoming issue of Computer Arts describing what my logo stands for.
Regardless, I am not so sure that really gives LRG the right to just flat out lift a poster design I did to promote myself close to two years ago now. Here is the original post to Changethethought when I released my first poster series for sale. Being influenced by someone or bearing a similarity in styles to another designer or artist is one thing, straight taking an existing design, barely altering it and then calling it your own is another thing entirely. And I am positive after comparing my now 2-year-old, copyrighted and globally distributed poster design with this LRG t-shirt that is exactly what LRG did to me. Even the way I pulled all of the colors used in my original poster and placed them in circles at the bottom was handled the same on the LRG t-shirt. I was just kind of shocked when I stumbled upon it while shopping at Karmaloop. I really would like an explanation from LRG. I would also like to know if there is anything I can do legally to resolve the matter. I am guessing not, since I am the little guy but at least I have this blog where I can tell you about it. If I were you, I’d think twice about buying anything from LRG for a while, if not forever.
I design apparel graphics for all kinds of big brands and have been working almost exclusively on apparel graphics the last two months. I would have been happy to discuss designing some graphics for LRG and even consider altering some of my graphics if the price were right and it made sense for both my brand and theirs. Instead of contacting me, I guess LRG felt like it was fine to just go ahead and take without asking. Do me a favor if you feel so inclined, and send LRG an email telling them what you think. And if any of you know how to get in touch with their creative department, please email me and let me know how to get in touch with them. I’d very much like to speak to them myself.
UPDATE:
Just out of curiosity, I decided to recreate the LRG design using the design taken from my poster. You can see this depicted in the last image at the top of this post. The top left corner shows the original treatment from my poster. To the right you can see LRG’s design. In the bottom left my poster graphic has been flipped horizontally and then slightly warped by ‘squeezing’ the image and pulling in the edges. In the bottom right the warped image of my poster has been multiplied over LRG’s t-shirt graphic. Can you even tell which is which?
The Manifest Equality show kicks off this week in LA and will run from March 3rd through the 7th. I was invited to exhibit in the show after having exhibited in the Manifest Hope show during the Democratic National Convention. Manifest Equality’s focus is encouraging the equalization of civil rights for the gay community. It’s an issue I have strong feelings about. It’s my opinion, and you can call this liberal or whatever you like that under the constitution as citizens, so long as we are not breaking the law we should have equal rights to pursue happiness however we see fit. If there is any one group in this country, a supposed ‘free’ country who does not have those equal rights, then it is a threat to the rights of all the people and any other group could be singled out to have their rights revoked. This falls outside of the moral spectrum and lives in the realm of the private life. Sexuality and the expression of sexuality as well as the pursuit of relationships should be the right of every free person under a democratic state.
The original posters I created focused on a particular part of the male anatomy that I see as the central problem in the gay rights equation. The minute this bit of anatomy rears it’s head (yes, a pun is intended) is the minute everyone ruffles and loses their nerve. I am a married hetrosexual man who was raised in a very small town in Nebraska in a conservative household, but I have never understood this. I am not bothered by this part of the anatomy or what people choose to do with it. So I decided to put that right out front and make people have to face it head on (again, pun intended) and spend a moment thinking why it makes people so uncomfortable. Unfortunately, the posters (which I went to the trouble of having 100 screen printed and shipped to LA) were rejected on the grounds of being ‘too graphic’ and controversial for display.
Needless to say, I was very disappointed and lashed out by sending some angry emails Shepard Fairey and Ron English’s way. It was a snap judgement that I should have considered before jumping to and Fairey wasn’t very happy with my email. In retrospect, I know there is a time and place for everything. After speaking at length with the show organizer Yosi Sergant, I realized this just wasn’t the right place to be hanging a giant red, white and blue prick. Shepard Fairey remarked that I should ‘take it to the streets’ and maybe he is right. My point was that I felt some of the work should be provocative and angry in tone if this really is a ‘civil rights issue’. I think as a nation we have grown far too apathetic and just ‘accept’ a lot of the laws handed down to us by our government. Our government works for us. We do not work for them. If you want change in this country, you have to get out there knock on the Whitehouse door and say, ‘we the American public, want this to change now!’
So, I revised my work and created a new poster, which you can see at the top of this post that will now be exhibited at the show. It turned out alright, but I still think it lacks the teeth of the original posters which were really created to provoke the issue as a political one that begs a public outcry. I decided not to attend the show after losing out on my investment in printing the posters, but I do wish all the artists exhibiting the very best of luck, and I will be hoping the show is a huge success. It will be interesting to see the rest of the artists work from the show once images begin to hit the web. If you are in LA, the show opens Wednesday from 11am until 6pm at 1341 Vine Street. If you can be there, I wouldn’t miss this one. It should be a thought provoking event, and might I suggest standing outside and waiving one of my posters in the air?
Ventilate asked several artists to participate in their recent poster series with the theme ‘2000’. The idea being, ‘what inspired you a decade ago’. I still find it hard to believe that 10 years have passed since the start of the new millenium. The posters are available to download at 300 dpi via YouSendIt. Once again, Joshua Smith (Hydro74) put in a strong showing with a stark graphic vector poster of Darth Vader. That man just knows what he does and does it well.
Nick Tassone is expecting a BFA from Rochester Institute of Technology in the Spring of 2010. He is majoring in New Media Design & Imaging, encompassing print design, motion graphics, and all other aspects of the creative design world. He recently posted a series of simple movie posters based around the popular novels of Stephen King. You can see them in his Flickr-folio.
I have been working on an ongoing project featuring some of my favorite type faces using random platitudes to give the type a message to communicate thereby helping bring out the personality that is unique to each face. The series is titled ‘Random Platitude 2010 Type Specimen Posters’. I haven’t printed them as of yet and borrowed the technique of over laying the designs onto a template folded-poster background in order to create the illusion of physicality. It’s something I borrowed from Stefan Lucut and a technique I employ on all my designs since I rarely have any time to photograph them nor do I have access as of yet to decent photography equipment. I will most likely be making more of these and am planning to print some in the near future. I have recently completed some big projects for some big brands and I will be posting those soon as well. Big plans in the works for Changethethought in 2010.
You can view the rest of the posters in the PRINT section of the site.
