after a year of working with local dj joe king marketing his monthly POParazzi gig, we were asked to update the look and feel of the posters we were designing. while we had been thoroughly satisfied with the “magazine cover” style we had been using, we agreed that a new look and feel was in order. the client was interested in a look that represented the show’s style and spoke to the target audience that we were promoting to: the gay community. we were asked to produce something that was colorful and definitively gay without resorting to the more risque imagery often used in advertisements of this sort.
the resulting changes are depicted in this month’s poster design. our favorite change was the update made to the POParazzi logo itself, using a font we created specifically for this purpose. the font, called POParazzi, is stylish and modern, using simple lines, circles and gentle curves to give the letters a distinct “pop” feel. while this particular ad is bright and colorful, the general artistic style of the design allows for darker colors and edgier looks as well while retaining a pop culture vibe.
whether you see it as a portent for the coming apocolypse or simply the next step in the castration of modern art via pop culture, a 20 foot tall papier mache bust of Andy Warhol must truly be a sight to behold.
created by “food artist” (we use that term dubiously, at best) jennifer rubell, the massive, food filled icon to debauchery and general disdain will be on display at the brooklyn museum starting april 22 as the culmination to a food themed exhibition in honor of warhol and other contemporary artists.
according the the new york times blog where we discovered this little morsel, the public “will be allowed to hit it with bats”. hitting a pinata with bats? groundbreaking.
we love pixar films, especially the way they are able to animate so much, dare we say, humanity into their non-human characters. we once had what could have been a near distastrous date except that we got to watch wall-e, which we absolutely loved. the robotic main character had almost no dialogue and, yet, won over our hearts simply with the depth of emotion it was able to portray using only a pair of robotic eyes and an affinity for 20th century cinematic showtunes.
benoit millot accomplishes much of the same in his short film a day in paris. shot in live-action with a 3d animated main character, the film is heartwarming and fun; the robotic main character seeming all too human. the romance the filmaker feels for paris is clear, both in his cinematic depiction of the city and the tightly focused close ups of its inhabitants.
bravo, benoit. nous absolument adorons votre film.
sometimes we take a break from surfing the internet in search of the banal, the benign, and the bewildering in order to take a paying gig. here’s a logo we put together for a local personal assistance service, OhBeckAndCall.
the client had requested something colored predominantly in red and black, with a clean, streamlined yet powerful feel. through consultations with the client, we agreed that a superhero motif would best represent what her services could mean to her clients. we also took to calling the large, red, stylized oval “the big o” because, frankly, we’re all a little childish sometimes.
YOU KNOW YOU HAVE ACHIEVED PERFECTION IN DESIGN, NOT WHEN YOU HAVE NOTHING MORE TO ADD, BUT WHEN YOU HAVE NOTHING MORE TO TAKE AWAY.” — ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY
this is one of our most favorite quotes; so much so that it currently graces the front page of our website. artist, designer and writer austin kleon is clearly a man who shares the same vision. we present his recently published book, newspaper blackout, as evidence of this. the book’s unique premise and ingenius execution were immediately caught up in our imagination. kleon’s method was thus: create poetry by taking a new york times news article and blacking out the unnecessary words. the results were beautiful.
we like to think that we follow a similar path through our design process; throw in everything we can think of, everything that we think a project needs, then remove everything that doesn’t fit or doesn’t belong until we’re left with just exactly what works. it’s not often the smoothest process. it rarely takes us where we set out to go, but almost always gets us to where we needed to be. when we acheive both, to paraphrase the late, great douglas adams, the results are usually spectacular.
