Badge Exhibition: One Week Left

If you’re a regular reader of CR you probably know that our very own Gavin Lucas has collaborated with CR’s art director, Nathan Gale, (who is also one third of design studio Intercity) on a book project: Badge/Button/Pin (CR May)…

Penguin by Designers: David Pelham

Detail from the cover of A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.
Cover by David Pelham (1972)
As part of Penguin Books’ 70th anniversary celebrations in 2005, a study day was held at the V&A that brought together distinguished Penguin designers, art directors and typographers John Miles, Romek Marber, Jerry Cinamon, Derek Birdsall, David Pelham and Jim Stoddart. The intention was to examine the changing attitudes to cover design over some five of the seven decades in which Penguin has been the world’s best known and best loved publisher. The talks, and some 250 cover illustrations, have subsequently been turned into a paperback, Penguin by Designers, and we present an exclusive extract from the book here on CRBlog: the full transcript of the talk given by designer David Pelham who started at Penguin in 1968.

Wanted: CR Art Director

Creative Review’s highly-esteemed art director, Nathan Gale, has finally decided that he has had enough of us. So, we are looking for his successor.

Gormley’s Ghosts

Blind Light, 2007, all images courtesy of the artist and Jay Jopling/White Cube, London, all photos (except Event Horizon): © Stephen White
In his first major UK solo exhibition, at the Hayward Gallery, Antony Gormley has colonised the building, literally.

Messing with Lord Vader’s Helmet

What better way to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Star Wars by getting a group of artists to customise a selection of Darth Vader helmets. Of course! The project will form part of the Star Wars Celebration extravaganza which takes place next week in LA (May 24 – 28).

The Sun Highlights Global Warming

So often it’s the simple ideas that work best in advertising – and a new billboard for the World Wildlife Fund created by DraftFCB Toronto makes the point rather well…

Out Of Darkness, Light

Cover of Darkness, by Magnus Voll Mathiassen, Grandpeople
Distributing ‘zines used to be a dirty, tiring and distinctly unglamorous business. The only way to get your precious products seen was to trudge around town with a big, heavy bundle of them begging shop owners to take a few on sale or return. That and the dizzying technological heights of the stamped, addressed envelope.
But in one gratifying example of the new media actually offering its older brother a helping hand (as opposed to kicking it in the groin and running away laughing) the internet has changed all that. By way of illustrating our somewhat obvious point, we give you Soyfriends, the Oslo-based purveyor of little printed rays of sunshine.

The Quiet Man of Magnum

Workers bring reinforcements at a wine-tasting party near Paarl in the Cape, 1984. All images © Ian Berry/Magnum Photos
Magnum photographer Ian Berry took to the lectern last week at the Royal Geographical Society in London, to talk through his photographs of South Africa in the second in the PhotoVoice/Magnum lecture series.

Behind The Barricades

Golf Five Zero watchtower (known to the British Army as Borucki Sanger), Crossmaglen Security Force Base, South Armagh. Photographed by Jonathan Olley, 1999
“These structures are like Martian spacecraft, one breaks the terraced main street of what looks like a country town and shows that the irenic structures of ordinary architecture must give way to these armed gods, meshed objects that represent the failure of politics and civic values”. Tom Paulin
It’s been a historic week for Northern Ireland. Past enmities have been buried (we hope) as the power-sharing legislative assembly has finally been reconvened.
The evidence of past conflict is slowly being tidied away. Those famous territory-marking murals are being painted over. The British Army has long since begun to dismantle the physical evidence of its controversial presence. But not everyone wants to forget. Some argue that both the murals and the armoured observation posts that loomed over the province should be preserved as a warning from history.

Wim Crouwel: From Groningen to Gridnik

“If I don’t know what to do, I use blue.” Just one of several nuggets delivered deadpan by the charming Wim Crouwel at last night’s D&AD President’s Lecture.

Promos of the week(ish)

Time has whizzed by again and another stack of brilliant music videos has accumulated at Creative Review, longing to be shared with you. First up is a typically crazy promo from director Tom Kuntz, for The Bumblebeez’s Dr Love.

Vote for Virals

Jazz Dispute by Jeremiah McDonald
Germ, the international viral awards established in 2005 and set up by Channel 4’s 4Talent in conjunction with BoreMe.com – is soon to announce the winners of this year’s competition to unearth the best virals…