The Inspire Japan site just got a bit of a facelift and a backend retrofit.

Really nice video review of the Open Skateboards team deck by a fellow who beats the crap out of it (and himself) while skating it.

Review: Two thumbs up – “poppy, reactive and responsive”. Good stuff!

The review includes a great primer about contemporary skateboard graphic production and why we choose to go with traditional silkscreened graphics over crappy heat transfers (which are the absolute WORST in both look and utility), which unfortunately dominate the contemporary skateboard market.

This year, I’ve been selected by Onitsuka Tiger to be one of their “ryoshi”, or hunters, presenting unique cross-sections of Japanese and Western culture.

The official blurb from Onitsuka Tiger:

MADE OF JAPAN

In 2011, Onitsuka Tiger will bring Japanese culture to the world in a way that uniquely blends arts and traditions of authentic Japan with the seductive urban design styles of the modern world.

Using talented storytellers from around the globe called Ryoshi, we will share inspiring and surprising stories that bring together Japanese and Western culture. Whether in business or the arts, in a retail space or at a festival in the forest, in music or in film, Onitsuka Tiger will be investigating and exploring the nature and results of Japanese and Western crossovers, and bringing these stories to the public, to let you know what it means to be “Made of Japan”.

Read all about it here on the Onitsuka Tiger website.

I am now being represented by Little Paper Planes in San Francisco for licensed designs to the textile industry. Here they are at the SURTEX trade show in New York repping our wares.

New Open decks out in a hot minute.

Japan Relief decks shipping now!

A number of relief projects I contributed to were featured in the latest issue of DesignNet, a Korean graphic design magazine.

The YACHT Trust has been showing a bunch of fun new contributions, including artwork inspired by the band and strategic design/branding.

Inside, more YACHT tattoos (obtained by Trust members adhering strictly to the official YACHT tattoo policy…

and some amazing non-body art.

New website up for Cross Films in lovely Seattle.

A project from ages ago that I forgot to add in to the archives, the website for Cooper the Photographer Cat!

Big thanks to Michael and Deirdre Cross for their constant support!

I have some drawings in this benefit show.

“Can you see the rainbow from there?”
Japan earthquake/ tsunami benefit :Art across the ocean
Place: 3331 Arts Chiyoda
6-11-14 Sotokanda Chiyoda-Ku Tokyo 101-0021
http://www.3331.jp/en/
Date: May 18 – May 30 (Closed on Tuesday)
Hour: 12:00 – 19:00
Opening Reception : May 21 Saturday
Place: 3331 Arts Chiyoda Main Gallery

I have a ton of work in the latest International Design Yearbook published by MDX in China.

Logo for The YACHT Trust, upholders of the darkness and light that is YACHT.

In huge news, I was invited to speak at this year’s TypeCon in New Orleans. I’ll be giving a wide-ranging lecture about Japanese typography, covering both the bases of the Japanese visual language, as well as a number of nuanced aspects. I’ll be presenting alongside heavy hitters like John Downer, Akira Kobayashi, John D. Berry and a number of others. Should be good!

I just finished editing the catalog for the upcoming exhibition Pacific at Scion’s gallery in Culver City in Los Angeles. Curated by PMKFA and Antonin Gaultier, the exhibition is a great overview of emerging Japanese contemporary artists. Read all about it here.

While the art itself is great, I think the catalog is a real slam-dunk. Designed by PMKFA, the book features writing by some of the best emerging critics in Japan, most notably Cameron Allan McKean. His lengthy essay on the work of artist Kyohei Sakaguchi, “Down By The River, I Built My Shelter”, is an exceptional piece of prose.

Beyond berating the writers involved and nagging art director Micke about widows and hyphenation, I contributed a lengthy essay on the work of Sweden-based artist Yuri Suzuki.

The artists involved in the exhibition are:
Atsuhiro Ito, Kyohei Sakaguchi, Megumi Matsubara, Motoyuki Daifu, PMKFA, Takashi Suzuki, Teppei Kaneuji, Ujino, Yotaro Niwa and Yuri Suzuki.

The official blurb about the exhibition:
“Cutting through the layers of reality and challenging the notion of what most of us consider as “everyday”, Pacific brings together ten artists that give their interpretation on what many ignore in the rush from point A to B or simply don’t see. In Pacific, the audience is invited to witness how; the mundane transforms the poetic; the unwanted morphs into the amusing and the practical ends up as the beautiful.”

If you’re in LA, I definitely recommend checking out the show. It’ll be an eye-opener.

Somehow, I didn’t catch this when it came out in 2009: the boombox I designed for Rap-Up made a cameo in the Chris Robinson-directed, guinea pig-infested music video for rapper Flo Rida’s “Jump.” The song can be found on Flo’s second album R.O.O.T.S. as well as in the Disney movie G-Force, in which a specially trained squad of guinea pigs is dispatched to stop a diabolical billionaire from taking over the world… nothing like having your hard work surrounded by CGI guinea pigs. Video also features a really awkward 3D model of Nelly Furtado. Bizarre, but Will Arnett is in it, which is usually a good sign…

Teyana Taylor and Akon model the boombox’s two colorways. The red was a special markup unit that only made it into limited release.

Due to tremendous support from the CalArts and Temple University communities, as well as numerous concerned individuals worldwide, my type foundry and select shoppe Wordshape generated $5000 for Japan’s Red Cross, which was just sent. A giant round of thanks to all who purchased magazines, books and licensed fonts – you all pitched in to help in a very meaningful way.

Also, a giant thank you to the participants worldwide in Inspire Japan events – together, you have raised over $40,000 (!) to benefit rebuilding projects in the north of Japan.

Loads of new work:

I finished this book design recently for Portland, Oregon’s Dill Pickle Club. It is called Walls of Pride and is a full-color guide and overview of African American public art in Portland. You can pick up a copy from the Dill Pickle Club here.

“If you know where to look, Portland is an art gallery. And somewhere amid this miles-wide showroom is a collection of African American mural art. But there’s no glass or alarms to protect what artists have made here; no guards to tell people not to touch. So, while bits have survived, some have been defaced and others have been torn down in the name of development…The booklet, “Walls of Pride,” offer[s] short histories on the pieces throughout the city, a map for self-guided tours and interviews with two local muralists, Shamsud-Din and Adriene Cruz, ‘to tell the story from the artists’ perspective rather than this outsider’s perspective.’”
– Ryan Kost, The Oregonian

The official blurb about the book:
Walls of Pride: A Tour of African American Public Art in Portland provides a self-guided tour to twenty of the city’s African American public artworks through color photos, a detailed map, mural descriptions and artist bios. The book gives context to these vital works through interviews with artists Adriene Cruz, Henry Frison and Isaka Shamsud-Din, and and a transcribed conversation between history professor Reiko Hillyer and curator Robin Dunitz. Walls of Pride at once celebrates Portland’s African American art, while underscoring the need to preserve these oft-overlooked cultural contributions.

I was included in the new book Designers’ Identities by Liz Farrelly, published by Laurence King Publishing.

Again, the official blurb:
For graphic designers no project is more personal or more crucial, both in terms of commercial success and peer-group positioning, than their own corporate identity. From the first hello, to delivering the invoice, designers are judged, again and again, on the quality of their printed and virtual presentation, including their company name, logo, business card, letterhead, website, blog, newsletter, delivery packaging, brochures, promos, even the typeface they choose.

This book examines the corporate identities of 76 designers, at various stages in their careers and from around the world, providing blueprints for best practice and inspiration. Along with detailed information about formats, materials and methods, the book includes a number of interviews with designers, who talk through their own corporate identity programme and the reactions they have had to this, their most personal design project.

I just put together a fun inspirational safari for Unilever with the kind folks at Five By Fifty. It consists of a 2-day walking tour of the coolest new spots in Tokyo rendered in a wall-size map, tour booklet, and a Google Map that Unilever employees can utilize to find inspiration over the upcoming vacation.

The booklet exterior.

Booklet interior.

And finally, I am transformed into Kevin Costner in hand model Patrick Tsai‘s latest post about the secret origin of our cat Willy.

I contributed a page to the latest issue of RRR – #003. It’s available now as a downloadable e-zine here.

Big thanks to Scott!

It is late. I have been up writing against a deadline that has long passed for a German design magazine (and is unpaid, and thus, ok) and listening to an album I have been really anticipating with a grimace on my face… that being said, this album was nowhere near as awful as the last fiasco Daniel Higgs was involved in…

My first official writing gig was for Buzz, a free local weekly in Albany, New York at age 16. I did album reviews. I stopped doing album reviews at age 18 when I went off to college. Honestly, I had little-to-no musical experience aside from knowing that Barbra Streisand was weirdly arousing and that I somehow liked Chuck Mangione’s soundtrack work. I was a rank amateur and my lack of depth in understanding music was palpable. Since that time, it has been 20 years. I have listened to a lot of frigging music in that time. I hope that I have learned something.

Here, I pick up the gauntlet. Assume the mantle. Take up the task. Talk about something other than fucking graphic fucking design at 4AM on a Sunday with my trusty cat at my side (and above, rendered in film by Patrick Tsai).

Unrequited Atmosphere “The Family Sign” LP review:

Surprise, it’s a new Atmosphere album.

Frankly, I found the instrumental production of the latest Atmosphere offering “mature” in that it is sparse, but beyond that, ill-considered. Some songs are just utterly phoned-in: ‘epic’ Satriani-esque guitar run through some hybrid Rat/phaser digital plugin accompanied by the oompa-oompa of a mid-century Casio keyboard drum pad arrangement (pre-pressure sensitivity) and an unfiltered Juno strain over the top. Just pain, pure and simple…

There’s no doubt that the band mulled over the arrangements, perhaps to the detriment of the music itself. Couple that with the mopey nature of the album – not a single upbeat song here… that’s good and fine, but we find Señor Daley rapping about werewolves (complementing the fucking horrid video for the album whose star is a Golden Retriever: the world’s most boring pet) and… camping!

World record: Atmosphere has crafted the first rap song about camping. And they’ve somehow simultaneously jumped on the Twilight bandwagon, as well. Good job, dudes…

Daley’s usually-entertaining diatribes about daily life fall a bit flat this time. Apparently mundanity has truly become boring this time around, and instead they have to dish out diss tracks at folks whom have left their hometowns and overtly bad parents, the latter being accompanied by the absolute w-o-r-s-t refrain of Atmosphere’s career so far, delivered in a nasal refrain that is physically cringe-inducing. Curious at best… Sluggo citing WKRP’s Les Nessman in one song did some fair collateral damage, as well – I was familiar with the name, but bewildered. Who? Ah… apparently, mediocre network TV made a deeper impression in the Twin Cities than it did in upstate New York.

We tend to have Atmosphere on smash at our house (or at least Patrick and I do), and this album feels like a lackluster addition to their oeuvre. The preceding EP far outshines it, feeling more like an album than this assemblage of mediocre, uninspired half-songs.

Next time around, bangers please, gentlemen. Please accept this invitation to make an album for your twenty-year-younger-than-me target audience next time. I will most likely enjoy it infinitely more than this.

Also: half of the lead-in samples sound like the beginning of an 80s soap opera. And that’s no theremin. You are not fooling anyone. And what exactly is a “rap hug”?

That’s my word. And my word is bond. And my bond is righteous.

I will now return to writing about graphic design.

Jean Snow and I will be presenting at INSPIRE JAPAN in Tokyo tonight. If you are in town, come on by! If not, tune in!

Ut Graphica Poesis, an essay I co-wrote and edited with Muroga Kiyonori about the lifework of Japanese graphic designer Hequiti Harata, kicks off the brand spankin’ new Idea Magazine #346.

Just finished up a lovely little micro-site for INSPIRE JAPAN, a global Pecha Kucha fundraising event to assist with rebuilding efforts in Sendai. Built on a Django framework put together by Brett Stilwell.

I have a new typeface available from Wordshape:

Maat is a modular geometric stencil display font that includes a number of modular pattern characters, and can be used to create designs that echo early Modernism by merely applying letters, patterns and color.

Maat is a loose interpretation of a hand lettered alphabet by the late Dutch designer Jurrian Schrofer called Sans Serious which was included in Wim Crouwel’s publication Letters of Maat. It is inflected with a bit of influence from British designer Ken Garland’s similar lettering form the cover of his textbook, The Graphics Handbook. Maat derives its name from the title of Couwel’s booklet.

I was inspired by Garland’s modular lettering a decade ago and took up the task of digitizing it, though never released it commercially. A designer in New York was coincidentally doing something very similar, and we talked of collaborating to release a version designed by the both of us. After a decade of waiting, I stumbled across Schrofer’s alphabet in an old publication by Wim Crouwel in one of my favorite bookshops in Tokyo last week, and it inspired me to take the project up again, though with more influence from Schrofer’s alphabet than Garland’s work.

Maat is available now from Wordshape. All proceeds go to the Japanese Red Cross.

One from the archives- I designed a ton of Micropops for the website Flipflopflyin.com years and years ago. You can see ancient history here. Includes Micropops of my cartoon characters Our Hero and his nameless sock puppet pal, as well as friends- with haircuts!

I recently designed the logo for Inspire Japan, a global Pecha Kucha event that will bring together 400 cities to help raise funds for relief in Japan. Please join us on April 16.

The past few months I’ve been working on a new type design project with the Japanese sports fashion brand Onitsuka Tiger in conjunction with Néojaponisme. You can read the first installment about the project here.

A lil’ wallpaper image for Twitter via Shinya Watanabe and Temple University Japan’s PSA project to conserve resources in Japan.

Trevor and I have put together a new skateboard model to help benefit Japan relief efforts.

3 color graphic on the bottom. 1 color graphic on the top which will be on a field of black stain.

it’s available now for PRE-ORDER and will ship in a month.

Three new pieces of writing in issue 13 of Slanted Magazine, the first in a two-issue series devoted to Grotesk typefaces.

Within, I interviewed designer Eiko Nagase of AQ and designer/painter Yosuke Yamaguchi, as well as contributing an essay about Japanese punctuation for my ongoing series of essays about Japanese typography.

There’s nothing radder than watching a stupid fantasy/adventure movie with Nicholas Cage in it and finding out that the movie’s namesake is wearing a tee shirt you designed throughout the whole movie.

The funny thing is that there’s a tiny logo on there that I designed a decade ago that says “Live the Fantasy” in Cooper Black Italic.

The Society of Typographic Aficionados is organizing Font Aid V — a collaborative project uniting the typographic and design communities with a goal of raising funds to expedite relief efforts after the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

I’ve put together a handful of glyphs for the compilation typeface that will be the result of the project. The resultant font will be sold online with all proceeds going to benefit reconstruction and relief efforts in Japan.

No bullshit. 100% of ALL proceeds help. Please support. A dozen new magazines and books added to our inventory.

New article up on Néojaponisme about the work of Daijiro Ohara and Kunihiko Okano.

Just launched: the long overdue redesign of the Wordshape website- featuring retail fonts and select books, magazines, zines, posters, stationery and other design products.

Wordshape offers select issues of Idea Magazine at an affordable price including postpaid international shipping. Idea is Japan’s foremost graphic design publication- each issue has more care put into it than the bulk of graphic design monographs- consistently unique content, multiple paper types and printing processes utilized in each issue, and featuring a mix of English and Japanese content. Idea is, simply put, the best graphic design magazine out there.

Wordshape’s type selection offers a variety of fonts – from the most complete and accurate range of revivals of the work of Oz Cooper to exciting contemporary display faces to workhorse text faces.

We offer a variety of publications on assorted topics, as well. The books we carry include handy guides on how to pick locks, vegan cookbooks, ponderings on the death of the physical book in the current e-publishing craze, contemporary photography from Japan, type design sketchbook sets, underground pop music, and even a D.I.Y. bicycle repair guide.

Wordshape operates as a hobby enterprise – an online select shop offering a curated, hand-picked selection of goods, choosing quality over quantity. We invite you to come peruse.

Fancy new decorative tags for the latest bag line from Joshu + Vela.

I just released a new font via Wordshape/MyFonts: Off Broadway, a 1920s-style Broadway display typeface with a bit of pen swashiness and a bit of rough edges a la Ben Shahn. Inspired by the roaring 20s in Chicago and a bit of showcard lettering, Off Broadway is perfect for sign and display work, as well as logo use and the occasional odd job that needs some thing casual, yet refined.

Photos from Little Bird‘s new intranet, the contents of which were shot in December during a marathon session on location in Portland.

One from the archives: I Can’t Tell You What Love Is, But I Can Tell You What I Love, a print circa 2006 for a group exhibition put on by The Wurst Gallery called We Heart Gocco.

I wrote this thing for this thing…. it’s gonna make some people not happy… but it’s also gonna make other people happy.

I helped Lullatone with a bit of Wes Anderson-style title treatment for this new video they put together for their new album Elevator Music.

I recently designed the logo and identity for Fukuoka house music label Vrillo.

Their first single after the redesign is “Starlight” by Aquamode, featuring the vocals of Lori Fine.

I recently designed the cover for the compiled anthology of Dreamwhip zine issues #1-10.

Spanning 1994 to 1999, this 352-page pocketsize anthology collects issues 1 through 10 of the long-running Dream Whip zine. Inside, Bill Brown hits the road and finds adventure far and wide. Each page is lovingly handwritten or typed and illustrations and photographs abound. It’s tornadoes and pet cemeteries, Alaskan highways and the lonely ruins of government missile sites. Bill Brown’s America is seen with the big, dreaming heart of a romantic, everything recorded in sweet, smart, funny, beautifully-simple prose.

Available via Microcosm.

The OPEN Union welcomes new rider Jay Isolini. Nice video part here.

Dorsal is a new font that I just released via Wordshape/MyFonts.

Alone or paired with its mate, Crüller, these spidery bits of lettering conjure up an atmosphere of yore.

Two new editions in the Poster Initiative series: an abstract composition using generated and found imagery….

… and a look at religions in Japan. You down with O.P.P.?

I’ve been editing essays and interviews in the past few issues of Idea, including the latest issue Idea Magazine #345 interviewing Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic.

Emily King’s interview Dutch designer with Karel Martens in Idea Magazine # 344.

Essay by Japanese graphic design legend Tadanori Yokoo in Idea Magazine #343.

I did a lecture in Osaka on December 11- a “talk show” with Akiyama Shin about our mutual practices.

A super-accomplished typographer, designer and art director, Shin has steered his office through the creation of innumerable projects for cultural clients in Japan and abroad, taking home the Leipzig book award no less than twice.

The interview and accompanying exhibition of a lifetime of graphic design work took place at Pantaloon in Osaka. Giant thanks to the Pantaloon team!

Rolling through and archiving old stuff- my business card circa 2004.

TAB shirts advertised in the Tokyo Art Map.

Spot illustration used for Blunt Mechanic‘s tour CD-R prior to the release of their LP/CD.

I just started writing for Bangback, a print-centric graphic design blog. The inaugural post is a book report examining Tobias Frere-Jones’ 2009 monograph.

Shots of some logo designs in the new Los Logos book, Los Logos: Compass published by Die Gestalten Verlag.

New font release! Cooper Black Swash is a luscious swash version of the American type design classic, Cooper Black.

The history of this typeface:

Cooper Black, the most famous and successful of Oswald Cooper’s type designs was released in 1920, following a year of development fleshing out the weight of the typeface and filling out the full character set. Cooper redrew the lowercase characters multiple times, toying with the rounded forms of the “m” and “n” and engaged in a lively debate with Barnhart Bros. & Spindler foundry Manager Richard McArthur over the final form as McArthur requested that the typeface be drawn bolder and bolder. Cooper famously said the face was “for far-sighted printers with near-sighted customers”, and the public agreed. Sales of Cooper Black were voluminous, and Barnhart Brothers and Spindler had a difficult time keeping up with the demand for the typeface. Conservative typographers were critical of Cooper Black, though it was overwhelmingly popular, helping to shape the American advertising landscape through the 1920s and 1930s.

Cooper released swash characters for his popular Cooper Black Italic, but never an upright set of swash capitals. A number of prototype versions appeared in the 1960s and 1970s, though none have been ushered into the digital age. Cooper Black Swash has been created in the spirit of Oz Cooper’s work and is a design that we believe he’d be quite pleased with!

Available as a webfont, as well!

Micke Thorsby/PMKFA will be lecturing tomorrow in my Computer Imaging class at Temple University Japan at 2:45 PM in Room 507 at Azabu Hall. Guests are welcome! Directions are here.

New project in the Identity section of the site, a full identity for Saga, a swimwear company based in San Francisco.

I created the template and typographic standards for The Zinester’s Guide to NYC by Ayun Halliday, published recently by Microcosm Publishing.

Joe Biel did the production and all of the heavy lifting while Nate Beaty held down the cover design and illustration.

We’ve been doing a roundup of notable events of 2011 over at Néojaponisme including a review of the year in manga, the kanji of the year, a look back at 2011 in Japanese politics, a podcast on otaku culture featuring Matt Alt and Patrick Macias, an overview of trending in the Japanese music industry and the rise of Korean pop stars in Japan.

My pal Yoshi of Megane zine made a rad dollhouse for his daughter and rocked some of my patterned designs from the Poster Initiative series for wallpaper.

Just finished up a poster/flyer design for the Fukuoka Flower Party- a music event in Kyushu.

Nice lengthy profile just came out in the Japan Times.

I wrote a quick article about “screamers”- oversized italic exclamation points that were once a part of the American typographic vernacular, but now appear to live only in formal use in Japan over at Néojaponisme recently. Coinciding with the article is the release of a set of screamers designed by Oz Cooper via Wordshape.

You can download the full Cooper Screamer set via MyFonts/Wordshape.

In other news, the website for Le Pigeon– Portland’s hottest fine dining establishment- has gotten a bit of a revamp. New CSS including @font-face under the hood.

Big news for the end of the year: my type foundry Wordshape is now offering a selection of typefaces for use on the web. That’s right- full web-fonts for online deployment using @font-face. No better Xmas gift for the web-savvy designer in your life than a web font!

Check out the selection here!

I’m pleased as punch to have shot some images of Portland’s newest fine dining establishment, Little Bird.

The understated, French-inspired identity we designed for the restaurant came out really nicely across business cards, menus, signage and assorted print ephemera.

Congratulations to Paul, Andy, Gabe, and the other partners in the venture. The restaurant looks beautiful and the food is amazing!

My album design for Blunt Mechanic was just featured in the article 90 Notable Album covers from 2010 over at Redefine Magazine.

I have a one-of-a-kind print in the ROM: Space Knight exhibition up at Floating World in Portland, Oregon at present.

The exhibition is a fundraiser for ROM creator Bill Mantlo. You can bid on the print here. The proceeds of sales of the exhibition prints will be directly donated to Bill.

ROM was one of my favorite comic books as a kid, along with Micronauts, Mantlo’s other masterpiece. These series synthesized the perfect balance of late 70s comics- dense story lines, compelling characters, and enough romance to make adolescents feel the onset of puberty encroaching. Amazing, thought-provoking work.

On July 17, 1992, Mantlo was struck by a car. The driver of the car fled the scene and has never been identified. Not wearing a helmet at the time, Mantlo suffered severe head trauma. According to his biographer, David Yurkovich in 2006, “For a while Bill was comatose. Although no longer in a coma, the brain damage he suffered in the accident is irreparable. His activities of daily living are severely curtailed and he resides in a healthcare facility where he receives full-time care.”

In 2007, cartoonist David Yurkovich released the benefit book Mantlo: A Life in Comics, with all proceeds from the book donated to Mantlo’s brother and caregiver, Michael Mantlo, to help toward the costs of maintaining Mantlo’s care.

On December 6, 2007, the Portland, Oregon, comic-book shop Floating World Comics sponsored “Spacenight: A Tribute to Bill Mantlo”, an art show made up entirely of various artists’ interpretations of ROM, to help raise funds for Mantlo’s care.

This exhibition is the next installment of this exhibition series.

It’s been an interesting week- just finished up a short project helping Fostex with the naming for their new “201” collection of Kotori customizable headphones.

With recent forays into strategy for other brands, as well as holistic identity projects that extend into writing and naming, the scope of what the studio accomplishes feels both more comprehensive and more gratifying.

Thanks to Yuki and Chiemi at IMGSRC for the chance to collaborate on an interesting foray into brand identity.

If you aren’t familiar, the Kotori brand of headphones manufactured by Fostex are pretty much the hottest headphones out there- fully customizable earbuds and Dj headphones with thousands of color combinations. Imagine if NikeID was as rad and customizable as they purport to be. Sadly, available only in Japan.

I was just interviewed in English and Italian for the Milan Triennale Design Museum / La Triennale di Milano Design Museum by Alice Twemlow, Chair of New York’s School of the Visual Arts’ Design Criticism Department. The interview is featured in A Diary of an Exhibition– the logbook of Graphic Design Worlds, the exhibition that will open in January 2011 at the Triennale Design Museum in Milan.

Curated by Giorgio Camuffo, the exhibition will display the multifarious worlds of graphic design by featuring the work, the ideas and the stories of some of the most interesting designers in the contemporary international scene.

Featured on the blog are texts, interviews, videos, pictures, and photographs, as well as thoughts and considerations, that provide a look behind the scenes of the making of the exhibition.

Read the interview here.

I just had some work published in a new book of identity design. Details from the publisher:

Designers’ Identities, by Liz Farrelly and published by Laurence King in November 2010 showcases the corporate identities of 76 designers, at various stages of their careers and from around the world, providing blueprints for best practice and inspiration.

For graphic designers no project is more personal or more crucial, both in terms of commercial success and peer-group positioning, than their own corporate identity. From the first hello, to delivering the invoice, designers are judged, again and again, on the quality of their printed and virtual presentation. This includes their
company name, logo, business card, letterhead, website, blog, newsletter, delivery packaging, brochures, promos, even the typeface they choose.

Along with detailed information about formats, materials and methods, the book includes a number of interviews with designers, who talk through their own corporate identity programme and the reactions they have had to this, their most
personal design project.

Details:
350 colour illustrations
290 x 210 mm
272 pages
Paperback

Full overview here.

The new issue of Idea features an interview with design legend Karel Martens, which I edited.

I’ll be participating in a really interesting event in Osaka this weekend- an overview of the work of Schtücco, the Tokyo-based graphic design and typography office run by Akiyama Shin. On December 11th at 8pm, I’ll be interviewing Shin onstage about multilingual typography and the development of his design office, as well as its calculated death, as Shin is retiring from the graphic design profession (at least for now).

A super-accomplished typographer, designer and art director, Shin has steered his office through the creation of innumerable projects for cultural clients in Japan and abroad, taking home the Leipzig book award no less than twice.

The interview and accompanying exhibition of a lifetime of graphic design work takes place at Pantaloon in Osaka.

If you are in town, I’d venture that it will be the graphic design event of the year in terms of getting context on an award-winning, comprehensive graphic designer from the 1980s through today.

Roommate, conspirator and fine art photographer Patrick Tsai will be having an exhibition in Osaka this weekend, as well, so no better time to get some visual culture in than Saturday! (Excellent interview with Patrick by Cameron McKean here.)

I’ve been doing a rash of talk shows/on-stage interviews as of late. This past weekend, I spoke about the work of Tokyo-based oil painter Akira as part of a Scotch Malt Whisky Society event called Ménage à Trois which assessed the triumvirate of whiskey, cocktails and fine art. The event was produced by Nonaca in collaboration with Whisk-e, and was an utter smash!

Out now: Designer’s Whisky- a duo of fantastic Scottish whiskies from Japan/Uk spirits importer/exporter Whisk-e that I designed the labels for.

One is a 13 year old Bowmore from Islay.

The other is a 10 year old Caol Illa.

Both will knock your socks off- premium whiskies in bespoke packaging that is a mix of custom patterns, Wordshape fonts, and modern layouts.

Huge thanks to David Croll for the chance to collaborate.

Also, available now via MyFonts/Wordshape: Hanger.

Hanger is a limited character display typeface. Based on the shapes of the alphabet if made out of a bent wire hanger, Hanger is suitable for apparel design, merchandising, and identity design projects.

Really nice thoughts on the Type Sketcher project from Akira Kobayashi, the type director of Linotype.

I got to spend some time with Akira last month one-on-one for the first time. We’ve been in contact for a few years, as I interviewed him for PingMag ages ago, as well as for my book, Parallel Strokes. We met up at TypeCon in Los Angeles earlier this year, then finally sat down and chopped it up in Ebisu a few weeks ago. He brought along an original print that uses Caslon’s O.G. grotesk for discussion, and we talked about the state of typography and typographic education in Japan.

A few days later, I caught his presentation on Japanese folks working in the arts and industry of lettering and type design outside of Japan at Aoyama Book Center. It was quite engaging- covering the work of Kunihiko Okano and a number of others.

I can’t emphasize how important Kobayashi-san is as a connecting force in the world of graphic design- he brings people together from all over the world with a maximum of kindness and openness. Japan needs more informal ambassadors out in the world to help push design and design education.

Little Bird, the fledgling sister restaurant to Le Pigeon, Portland, Oregon’s crown prince of restaurants, opens next month. We’ve been furiously working away creating a bespoke, yet related identity system for the restaurant including menus, signage, @font-face-powered website, business cards, and a ton of surprises.

Little Bird opens on December 8- same day as my birthday. Couldn’t get a nicer gift!

Out now: Slanted Magazine #12– a whole issue of the Berlin-based design magazine dedicated to Women, Typography and Graphic Design.

For this issue, I contributed my second essay installment toward understanding Japanese typography, as well as interviews with Susanna Baer of so+ba and Akiko Kanna, two of the most talented graphic designers working in Japan today.

New kisekae mobile device theme for W+K TokyoLab available now for your phone. Just navigate here using your phone to download.

One more Pecha Kucha Night presentation down! Lots of free designed goods distributed to the people. Mega-thanks to Hisae for the awesomest co-presenting!

Hisae and I will be presenting the Year In Review- a bilingual roundup of project highlights, as well as giving away a grip of free stuff, at Pecha Kucha Night on Wednesday in Tokyo.

I acted as a member of the Editorial Committee for the Asia Pacific Design Awards this year and the resulting book of award winners- Asia Pacific Design VI, published by Sandu Media in China.

I was asked to pick the graphic designers whose work I felt was the best in Japan for inclusion in the awards, and thus, here they are, officially, the best of the best in a country teeming with creativity:

Artless Inc.
Ohara Daijiro
PMKFA
Shin Akiyama
so+ba
Yosuke Yamaguchi

Heartfelt congratulations to all the Award winners!

In a surprise move, the other Editorial Committee members also gave me an award, as well, so a big thank you to the other Committee members and to Sandu Media! It’s an honor.

New website for Tsudaro, a new cultural center, restaurant, and highlight for vacationers and locals alike in Kyoto.

Space Is The Place continues its travels through Asia and Europe as part of VISCOM- the international printing industry trade show this month with stops in Spain and Italy.

New book redesign for Microcosm out now– Chainbreaker Bike Book: A Rough Guide to Bicycle Maintenance. A D.I.Y. bike maintenance book and reprint of Chainbreaker, a bike-centric zine published in New Orleans.

Great new feature by Gianni Simone about expatriate self-publishing and zines in Japan in the new issue of Metropolis, where I and other zine-makers serve up our thoughts on the Japanese small press.

I made this little video series of a new lecture posted online in 3 parts by whiz kid Adam Greenfield of Do Projects and former design director at Nokia.
Called “Becoming Real”, Adam chronicles how and why certain projects fail while others succeed.
Produced by the kind folks at AQ.

Nice review of the new issue of Slanted Magazine.

New Ian Lynam “pro model” deck out via Open Skateboards.

The BetterLetter series of events now has its very own website.

Nice example of Wordshape type in use by Josh Petrin for Creepsville Records.

Just designed a poster for Walls of Pride, a tour of African American murals in Portland, Oregon, organized by the Dill Pickle Club. More soon!

Launched this week: a brand spankin’ new website for Knee High Media Japan, publishers of Plants+, Paper Sky, and Mammoth Magazines, as well as founders of Tokion Magazine.

The site is all souped-up using a number of different programming languages, and we’re happy to have rolled it out.

Print ad from new campaign for Roland printing in Japan’s Popeye and MdN magazines.

I’ve been working closely with the team at Roland for the past few months creating work output using their new metallic inkjet oversize printing system. You can take a look at some of the posters designed for this project and read an interview on Roland’s new “The World Is Metallic” website.

German release of Blunt Mechanic’s “World Record” out now on Grand Hotel Van Cleef with 2 extra tracks.

New limited edition three-color print (signed series of 200, hand numbered) for the BetterLetter X Artalking House Industries presentation in Tokyo available now for $20 postpaid via Paypal. Email to pick one up.

Printed in fluorescent green, fluorescent pink, and silver.

I have a batch of typefaces in the new Typodarium published by Magma Brand Design in Germany. Typodarium is a daily tear-off calendar that collects the best in independent font releases annually.

Typodarium 2011 is available here.

A more full showing of the TypeCon-only Type Sketcher is available in the Print + Product section.

Konexi!!!

Konexi was published by the nice folks at Zimzala Games.

Finally, the latest installment of the Poster Initiative series of posters is out now. They’ll be distributed around Tokyo later this week.

The House Industries lecture at Tokyo Midtown in Roppongi was a smash success!

Over 120 folks came down to check out the lecture, eat some food, and sip some drinks while checking out a stellar presentation by Andy Cruz.

Giant thanks to my co-organizer Julia Barnes of Artalking/Nonaca, Andy and Steph Cruz, our amazing sponsors: Entropy Design and IDEA Magazine, all who pitched in to help out, and everyone who attended!

It was a great first event and we are looking forward to presenting more design-oriented events in the near future!

Got a nice mention on the Swatch/MTV Playground blog this week.

One of those career benchmarks just happened- I purchased the new album by the Nick Cave project Grinderman online, and look at that fancy cover that I ignored: the type is none other than Wordshape’s own Devil’s Advocate typeface.

Another fine type-in-use showing: this one a poster for a show by Daniel Higgs by David D’Andrea. Designed using Cooper Italic Swash

Renna Okubo has put together a fancy exhibition of published artworks called Printed & Bound on display now at Gallery/Wako in Hatsudai. She went and whipped up a fancy identity for the show using Cooper Italic Swash, as well. Thanks, Renna!

It’s a bit less than a week until the House Industries lecture event here in Tokyo. I would like to welcome Entropy Design and Idea Magazine as sponsors.

Giant thank you(!!!)s to the Cannons and to Muroga-san at Idea Magazine for sponsoring the event!

I was just interviewed by Michael Dooley for Print Magazine alongside Erik von Blokland, Matthew Carter, Jeff Keedy, and a few others about TypeCon and our collective thoughts about WebFonts.

Onslaught of news here… I should be in bed, as the new semester at Temple University starts at 8AM, but I’d rather procrastinate…

Hot off the presses, the Type Sketcher! A collaboration between myself and Austin Whipple at Scout Books/Pinball Publishing, it’s a trio of type design sketchbooks with modular grids for designing letterforms.

The inside covers feature illustrated essays showing users how to properly draw letters (overshoot, ascender ratios, type anatomy), as well as showing samples of type design that I find particularly intriguing).

At $12 a pop, they’re cheap, as well. The perfect gift for the type nerd closest to you.

アンディー・クルズ氏がご自身の今までの軌跡や、チャールズ&レイ・イームズ両氏の遺作とコラボした最新の作品についてのトークライブを行います。

最新鋭のデザインを生み出していくハウスインダストリーズの一員として、アンディー・クルズ氏は過去15年以上にわたって、ペインティング、現代的デザイン、大衆的商業デザイン、ブランドデザイン等、ありとあらゆる芸術・美術に常に挑戦し、新しい風を吹かせながらビジュアルカルチャーという航路の舵取りを担ってきました。

今までアンディー・クルス氏がどんな旋風を巻き起こしてきたのか、また、これからどんな新しい未来を作り上げていくのか、是非会場に足を運んで時の目撃者となってください。

日時：　2010年9月17日 (金)　
開場：　19:00
トークライブ/質疑応答： 19:30
ディナー：　20:00
会場：　オークウッド プレミア 東京ミッドタウン
住所：　107-0052 東京都港区赤坂9-7-4
電話：　03-5412-3131
費用：　3500円（前売り）　4500円（当日）
＊費用の中には、トークライブ参加費、軽食ビュッフェディナー、 お飲み物、限定発行の出版物が含まれます。
言語：　英語に日本語の通訳がつきます。

詳しくは、ノナカアートプロダクションズのウェブサイト( http://nonaca.net/ )をご覧ください。

I have a bunch of new work in the latest Los Logos book, Los Logos Compass. Again, more once I get a physical copy.

In a rare and intimate one-night event, apparel/book/font designer, publisher, and manufacturer of design objects, Andy Cruz of House Industries will speak about his work and House’s most recent collaboration with the estate of Charles and Ray Eames.

As a partner in the cutting edge design phenomenon House Industries, Andy has helped steer the course of visual culture over the past fifteen years, creating design work with toes dipped liberally in fine art, Modern design, vernacular commercial art, and brand-oriented graphic design. See the past and the future collide and how the aesthetic of tomorrow will emerge!

Friday, September 17 2010
Doors Open: 19:00
Presentation / Q&A: 19:30 – 20:00
Dinner: 20:00

Oakwood Premier Tokyo Midtown
Address: Akasaka Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0052
Map: Click here.
Telephone: 03-5412-3131
Fee: ¥3,500 (Advance) ¥4,500 (Door)
Includes presentation, light buffet dinner, drink, limited edition publication and limited edition print.
Language: English with Japanese Interpretation

RSVP NECESSARY
Email info@nonaca.net before Friday, Sept 10. 6pm.
Advance payment can be made here:

More: nonaca.net

アンディー・クルズ氏がご自身の今までの軌跡や、チャールズ&レイ・イームズ両氏の遺作とコラボした最新の作品についてのトークライブを行います。

最新鋭のデザインを生み出していくハウスインダストリーズの一員として、アンディー・クルズ氏は過去15年以上にわたって、ペインティング、現代的デザイン、大衆的商業デザイン、ブランドデザイン等、ありとあらゆる芸術・美術に常に挑戦し、新しい風を吹かせながらビジュアルカルチャーという航路の舵取りを担ってきました。

今までアンディー・クルス氏がどんな旋風を巻き起こしてきたのか、また、これからどんな新しい未来を作り上げていくのか、是非会場に足を運んで時の目撃者となってください。

日時：　2010年9月17日 (金)　
開場：　19:00
トークライブ/質疑応答： 19:30
ディナー：　20:00
会場：　オークウッド プレミア 東京ミッドタウン
住所：　107-0052 東京都港区赤坂9-7-4
電話：　03-5412-3131
費用：　3500円（前売り）　4500円（当日）
＊費用の中には、トークライブ参加費、軽食ビュッフェディナー、 お飲み物、限定発行の出版物が含まれます。
言語：　英語に日本語の通訳がつきます。

詳しくは、ノナカアートプロダクションズのウェブサイト( http://nonaca.net/ )をご覧ください。

I have a new essay and interviews with my favorite young Japanese designers, Kunihiko Okano and Daijiro Ohara, in the latest issue of Slanted Magazine.

More once I get my hands on one!

NORTHWEST PASSAGE RELEASE PARTY
FRIDAY, AUGUST 27th, 7PM | FREE
READING FRENZY | 921 SW OAK ST.

Celebrate the release of the Dill Pickle Club’s newest publication, Northwest Passage: 50 Years and Independent Music from the Rose City, with a short talk by the book’s editor, Marc Moscato, and the publication’s audio editor, Erin Yanke.

Northwest Passage is a book and audio CD highlighting the history of Portland’s burgeoning independent music scene, and includes contributions from: The Dill Pickle Club, Mississippi Records, Oregon Historical Music Society, PDX Pop Now!, Joe Kregal, Ural Thomas, Valerie Brown, Fred and Toody Cole, Vanessa Renwick and Erin Yanke, Calvin Johnson and Cool Nutz.

Afterward, DJ HWY 7 spins a special set of forgotten Portland classics 1950s-present, mined from his archive of local vinyl – from punk to funk and blues and deep PDX soul. This event is free, with beer donated by Ninkasi.

I spent a good chunk of time designing Northwest Passage over the past few weeks- in my estimation, it’s a pretty righteous book content-wise, charting the history of Dead Moon/Pierced Arrows, Portland soul singer Ural Thomas (the man responsible for opening many an Otis Redding concert and for providing James Brown with many of the hooks he’s so famous for), along with Beat Happening/Dub Narcotic/K Records’ Calvin Johnson, and a ton of others.

Thanks to Marc Moscato and the Dill Pickle Club for inviting me to collaborate on what will definitely be a milestone in American music history.

A while ago, I posted on Facebook that I wanted to host a little event where typographically-minded folks could get together and have a fun day where we could play with letterforms and experiment with type both formally and informally. After mulling this over for a bit, I decided to go ahead and start a formal lecture and event series called BetterLetter to explore these ideas.

In collaboration with Artalking, BetterLetter is going to have its first event, a lecture by Andy Cruz of the famed type foundry and manufacturer of design objects, House Industries, on September 17 in Tokyo. It is going to be a fun, intimate, one-night event where Andy talks about his work and recent collaborations with the Estate of Charles and Ray Eames.

More info will be posted tomorrow about the kickoff.

Mammal is playing LIVE on Saturday at Lamai in Shibuya for their KIDS’ DISCO event- live music for parents and kids. The event is sold out, but feel free to try to sneak in!

I’ll be in LA for TypeCon, repping the studio, Wordshape, and Pinball Publishing next weekend. Pinball and I will be debuting our new joint project, TypeSketcher at the conference.

And while we’re on the subject of typography…

I just released a new typeface, Neuerland, an attempt to update Rudolf Koch’s traditional hand-cut display typeface, adding ligatures and alternate characters inspired by the forms of Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase’s Avant Garde.

I’ve been out of the form-making loop for a few years now, confined to other territories (web, identitiy, research, etc), but a handful of new projects have lit a fire under my tuckus to dig into exploring Japanese typography and stabbing away at image-rich visuals. Above, a draft for an image + lettering treatment for Plazm Magazine Issue #30.

On occasion, I like to do projects alongside my students. Full report in Print + Product section!

Here’s a bit of a preview for a massive new project I’m working on with Roland, manufacturer of fine musical instruments, vinyl cutters, and amazing printers. More soon… and yes, that is metallic ink in there.

The past few months have been particularly busy at the studio, and I wanted to take a moment to thank the amazing folks I’ve gotten to work with lately. Praise is due:
Paul Sather, my constant cohort when it comes to creating innovative work for screen-based devices and the web. Thanks for years of friendship and hard work.
Patrick Tsai, my co-director on a few new projects and one of my best friends in the world.
Hisae Higuchi, my new assistant, has been rocking in so many ways- holding down translation duties, business communications, and making sure meetings run smoothly while being super-fun to work with the whole time, always with a smile.
Hannah Smith has been up to her ears in shooting all of the studio’s work despite the heat and still finding the time to bang away at WordPress and Photoshop. Thank you!
Darin Bendall busted ass on a number of Flash projects, showing his tenacity and patience for the quickly dying art that is AS2.
Thien Huynh has been held down the programming on a number of site projects, showing off his acumen at making flexible XHTML/JS/CSS when not listening to me kvetch about the daily grind.
I am truly lucky to be able to work with each and every one of you. Thank you for all of your hard work!!!

Chris Palmieri, Craig Mod and I were interviewed in the latest issue of Japan’s Web Designing magazine about the potential of webfonts.

The feature features a tasty lettering treatment by the tremendous Daijiro Ohara. Within, we discussed sites that work, sites that don’t, @font-face, and the future of the web.

Thanks to Ishida-san, Nakano-san, and all at Web Designing!

New font release: Cooper Black Italic. This typeface is the definitive version of Oswald Bruce Cooper’s classic typeface Cooper Italic.

1926 saw the release of Cooper Black Italic. During the design process, Cooper relentlessly experimented with the forms of the letters, creating multiple options for each letterform. It includes a full uppercase, lowercase, figure, and punctuation character set, Response to Cooper Black Italic was overwhelmingly positive and the typeface sold very well.

This typeface is the result of researching Cooper’s original drawings and series of engraved proofs for both typefaces. The typeface includes the original ligatures, and a range of punctuation and diacritics, et al, that fill out a full character set. The typeface has been lovingly kerned for the smoothest result in text setting.

This font updates and complements the fun, friendly Cooper Black Swash Italic, an old Chicago-style display typeface. It is great for retro designs and forward-thinking contemporary graphic design.

I’ll be teaching two classes in Temple University Japan’s Continuing Education department in the fall semester: Imagemaking 101 and Typography 101. Take a look at the links to see details.

I have an interview in the new issue of Xerography Debt zine, available via Microcosm.

New cover and inside cover design for the Dreamwhip collection, published by Microcosm.

New brochure design for the Dill Pickle Club, Portland’s fun culture club!

One podcast I have a particular affinity for is NPR’s Planet Money. They recently had a show about tee shirts, which was basically a giant intro to a pitch to their listeners to participate in a graphic design contest to make, surprise surprise, a Planet Money tee shirt.

This is my submission, which just went out via email to the show.

Above is legendary sumo wrestler Konishiki with the live painting that I made for Whisky Live 2010 at Tokyo Big Sight a few months ago. The big guy and I chatted over a live broadcast for Japanese TV after I interpreted the taste of some Scottish whiskey in painted format for 90 minutes.

Interview coming in the next issue of Whisky Magazine Japan. Thanks to Julia Barnes, Clint Taniguchi, and David and Dave at Whisky Mag!

Critical Mass
Compiled by Ian Lynam + Idea magazine

An inquiry into contemporary critical practices in graphic design featuring:
Mark Owens, Zak Kyes, Jon Sueda, Brian Roettinger, Daniel Eatock, Scott Ponik, Michael Worthington, Yasmin Khan, Metahaven

Subterranean Modernism: A Critical Retrospective
By Randy Nakamura + Ian Lynam

On the Uselessness of Design Criticism
by Randy Nakamura

You can pick up a copy here.

Also new:

I have a handful of projects featured in the new Choi’s Gallery Magazine.

New shirts out for Blunt Mechanic.

Also new: Migraine, my decade-dead publishing imprint resurfaced from the grave this month to release an illicit edition of Al Burian’s comic Al Burian Goes To Hell. All I can say is that I was responsible for the design, and that I hope Al doesn’t kick my teeth in.

Now out: A Guide To Picking Locks Volume Two, published by Crimethinc. I designed a snazzy two-color cover for this second volume, picking up where I left off with Volume One.

New typeface release from Wordshape/MyFonts:

Cooper Black Condensed is a less wide, but not squished variation on Cooper Black.

The history of this typeface:

Cooper Black, the most famous and successful of Oswald Cooper’s type designs was released in 1920, following a year of development fleshing out the weight of the typeface and filling out the full character set. Cooper redrew the lowercase characters multiple times, toying with the rounded forms of the “m” and “n” and engaged in a lively debate with Barnhart Bros. & Spindler’s General Manager Richard N. McArthur over the final form as McArthur requested that the typeface be drawn bolder and bolder. Cooper famously said the face was “for far-sighted printers with near-sighted customers”, and the public agreed. Sales of Cooper Black were voluminous, and Barnhart Brothers & Spindler had a difficult time keeping up with the demand for the typeface. Conservative typographers were critical of Cooper Black, though it was overwhelmingly popular, helping to shape the American advertising landscape through the 1920s and 1930s.

1925 saw the release of Cooper Black Condensed, a “condensed but not squeezed” variation on the Cooper Black theme. McArthur and Cooper had the usual lively back-and-forth over the shapes of some of the letterforms, in particularly the uppercase “Q”, resulting in a thoroughly accomplished alphabet. The first showing specimen of Cooper Black Condensed compared the new face with Cooper Black, showing that it was 20 less wide and that it promised to “show something of gentility while being able to spit on its hands and make itself useful”.

This typeface is the result of researching and faithfully redrawing characters from Cooper’s original drawings and series of engraved proofs for the typeface. The typeface includes the full range of punctuation and diacritics that fill out a full character set. The typeface has been lovingly kerned for the smoothest result in text setting.

My type foundry, Wordshape, released a new typeface this week: Interno.

Interno is a headline typeface built from a Walter Ballmer Olivetti logo exploration drawn sometime in 1960. Work on Interno commenced in 2006 by Eli Carrico, but was soon abandoned. In 2009, Eli picked it back up and ran with it, completing Interno 1. I picked through Eli’s development stages of the typeface and edited together a slightly different version, Interno 2, utilizing a mix of development characters and original characters.

Interno is Italian for internal (or at least that is what the translation widget told us). A great deal of the classic Olivetti design was down in-house (i.e. internal). Also, the typeface has internal switchbacks reminiscent of a paperclip. Interno sounds a bit like “turning inside” phonetically(In-Turn-O). Additionally, Interno takes the first letter and last letter of Olivetti and flips it.

Available now via Wordshape/MyFonts.

One of the most difficult things to find in Tokyo is a really deep collections of writing on graphic design in English. It’s one of those dark holes in consumer friendliness that is totally understandable, given that English isn’t the native language.

As a stopgap measure, I’ve put together 3 volumes of copies of design history, criticism, and theory titled “Design Research – Additional Reading” and put it on reserve in the Temple University Japan Library. The three volumes cover a lot of ground – from Adolf Loos to Robert Brownjohn, John Ruskin to Rick Poynor. Copious copies of articles from graphic design books, publications, and pamphlets are within. If you have the time and inclination, as well as a penchant for reading blobby xeroxed stuff, it’s at least one more resource.

For the past few months I’ve been working on a 100-page feature of IDEA Magazine called Critical Mass, an inquiry into contemporary critical practices in graphic design. Critical Mass features interviews with Mark Owens, Zak Kyes, Jon Sueda, Brian Roettinger, Daniel Eatock, Scott Ponik, Michael Worthington, Yasmin Khan, and Metahaven; looks at the books Forms of Inquiry, Wonder Years, and Iaspis Forum on Design and Critical Practice: The Reader; and new essays by myself and Los Angeles-based designer/writer Randy Nakamura.

This new issue will be released shortly. Here’s a sneak peek at one of the pieces within, an essay called Subterranean Modernism: A Critical Retrospective that I co-authored with Randy Nakamura:

The idea of “oppositionality” is mostly anathema to graphic designers today. Designers may speak of “criticality” or “inquiry” but the notion of rejection is absent. Designers prefer the idiom of choice and preference. If one had to choose a ground zero for a prototypical critical design practice for the past decade it would have to be the Arnhem-based Werkplaats Typografie (WT). Part school, workshop and meeting place, the Werkplaats sees itself as fostering a kind of critical design practice “by the position which the designer adopts in relation to the world at large – the social, political or technological developments taking place in contemporary society.”

The origins of this kind of design practice might be found in a variety of modernism that is a bit more underground and quieter, a “subterranean modernism”. It emerged from the post-World War II era, but its proponents were not the European emigres in New York City or canonical modernists of the International Style in Europe. They were the more peripheral and less well known British designers Norman Potter (1923−1995) and Anthony Froshaug (1920−1984). Both are less ideological than their predecessors, in many ways they can be understood as an inflection point between modernism and postmodernism. They had a preference for process, the subjective, and the local. There was an assertion of the poetic, not through the unconsciousness or deliberately nihilist assaults on aesthetics and society, but by an attention to reason, craft, and materiality. The spheres of design were not advertising agencies or large corporate studios, but print shops, schools, museums and cultural clients. A distinct bias can be seen towards the typographic, the book, and the reader. They were more communitarian in spirit than reformist, sustaining certain traditions, but far from hidebound. It was the reign of the idiosyncratic, not the revolutionary. If this was modernism, it was a modernism devoid of master narratives, though inflected with a way of working that are humanist and craft-centered…

New website for Upswell, a digital communications agency based in Portland, Oregon. Erica and Armando are awesome to work with, visionary in allowing us to execute their website and identity as we saw fit while throwing down with some seriously helpful and thoughtful insight, and wonderful folks to chat with over wine and small plates.

A serious thank you to both of them, as well as to Thien, the latest member of our team (and all-around super-rad friend) for making their site come to life.

Rad folks to work with + rad folks to work for = total amazingness!

Booklet design for the latest Artalking event, Tokyo Fashion Cultures.

Wordshape, my type foundry, has just released a new font – Black-Out Stencil, a typeface designed by L.A. resident and designer extraordinaire, Eli Carrico.

Black–Out is a result of three things: the need for a distinctive ultra-black display typeface, an admiration for slab-serifs and Clarendons, and the love of systematic stencil type. Fusing all the desires together resulted in Black–Out.

Black-Out was used for the cover and interior of the Barbara Bestor book, Bohemian Modern, designed by Eli and Michael Worthington a few years ago over at Counterspace, a stunning book about L.A. architecture and interiors. Since then, it’s seen super-limited use by a select few folks, but Eli decided (with a little prodding) that the time was nigh for public release.

Available now via Wordshape/MyFonts!

A few years ago, some of my design work went into the permanent collection in MoMA, which was a huge step in terms of creative legitimation for me on a personal level. Fairly recently, a large body of my work went into the permanent collection of the Newberry Library in Chicago (due utterly to the interest of Paul F. Gehl, curator extraordinaire), holders of great collections of some of my heroes, namely Oz Cooper and Will Dwiggins.

I am really excited to have my work be part of an officially documented continuum of American graphic design in such a prestigious institution. It happened casually and with zero pomp and circumstance, though inside I was jumping up and down with excitement.

Giant thanks to Paul and the amazing staff at the Newberry. You are my favorite library in the world. Machida’s doesn’t touch you with a long stick.

Over at Néojaponisme, we’ve been doing some fun stuff for Infiniti as of late.

Lesque has been getting a whole lot of love as of late in the press- features in Japanese magazines like Ollie, Warp, Secret Cut, Transworld Skateboarding, Paper Sky, Samurai, and the Skater’s 2010 Bible.

Today saw the release of all of the Roman weights of my new typeface family, Clobber via Wordshape/MyFonts.

Just found this out in the webosphere: Eric Cruz of W+K Tokyo presenting one of our collaborative projects at the last Pictoplasma Conference in Berlin.

Designed a bunch of assorted graphic items for Ryochi Yamazaki’s upcoming exhibition at Nakaochiai Gallery over the past few weeks– postcard design above.

Latest collection for Lesque in Japan’s Samurai Magazine.

A big, fat, smoochy thanks to Lullatone for providing the early morning soundtrack for the INTAPAC promotional video. One cannot find a better sound designer out there.

My new column is up over at Snow Mag.

My contribution to the CitID project is here, as well- a new website that suggests logos for global cities.

New font release: Pompeian Cursive is a calligraphically-inspired display typeface featuring a limited number of alternate characters and a handful of graceful ligatures. A lively set of non-lining numerals accompanies, as well as a few calligraphically-inspired flourishes for ornament.

The history of this typeface:
Oswald Cooper’s relationship with the Barnhart Brothers & Spindler foundry was one instigated under the auspices of creating new styles of type in lieu of following stylistic trends. In 1927, BB&S requested that Cooper create a script-like cursive typeface design in step with Lucien Bernhard’s Schoenschrift and ATF’s similarly-styled Liberty typeface.

In response to BB&S’s desire to emulate instead of innovate, Cooper wrote to Mcarthur, “I am desolated to see Barnhart’s hoist the black flag. Your own efforts through the years to boost the foundry into a place in the sun as an originator seem wasted.” Still, Cooper took up the task at hand, creating a delicate, sophisticated type design which he named Pompeian Cursive. The typeface featured a limited number of alternate characters and a handful of graceful ligatures. A lively set of non-lining numerals accompanied, as well as a few calligraphically-inspired flourishes for ornamenting the end of lines of type accompanied the typeface, as well.

By reviewing the few remaining original drawings for the type, as well as copious samples of Pompeian Cursive from both Cooper & BB&S’ proofing process and period-specific type specimens, Wordshape presents the first digital version of this classic hybrid script/sans typeface, complete with all original alternate characters and ornaments. Pompeian Cursive has been intensively spaced and kerned for the finest setting for weddings, announcements, and general display work.

Available from MyFonts.