Pillows by House Industries

13Dec09

House Industries, founded by Rich Roat and Andy Cruz. To eager typophiles and graphic designers the name of House Industries as a prolific type foundry is known and appreciated for some time now. They began in 1994 from a spare room of Rich’s apartment and there was a time when they had only drawn enough letters to spell out the names of the fonts and they had to come up with the “allow four to six weeks for delivery” clause. Now they employ 14 people however they stay loyal to the premise from their beginnings; to seek the inspiration in the world of unsophisticated graphic design.

They certainly prefer to create their own projects rather than to try to please art directors who insist they should just do their thing. That’s why the typefaces. And later textiles and other products based on their own typefaces. Those projects allow more creative freedom and research of specific theme, the luxury that a work for hire really doesn’t give them much chance to have.

There is a lot more to say about them, but since the Christmas is shortly knocking on the door, let’s illustrate House Industries with some fine, comfy pillows of their making.

On the left Ampersand pillow, on the right Neutra face Slab pillow.  At House Industries are explaining: “Type designers Christian Schwartz, Kai Bernau, Susana Carvalho, Ken Barber and Ben Kiel spent countless hours seated at their desks and toiling over our forthcoming Neutraface Slab font collection, so we designed this type-patterned pillow to remind their respective lumbar areas that typography can provide visual and physical comfort.”

A family of Neutra pillows: brown, orange, red in an elegant color shading.

First two: Chalet with a marvelous interlocking pattern. At the end Simian, pairs of back-to-back E’s.

House Industries can be visited on: http://www.houseind.com/

Filed under: Thinking Machine   |  2 Comments
Tags: graphic design, design, house industries, pillow, gifts, textile, typography, type-foundry, Rich Roat, Andy Cruz, pattern

9 kovancev

21Nov09

Just to make you posted on current events.

With my colleague and friend Domen Fras we are preparing “9 kovancev” (9 coins), an exhibition on graphic design of the coins.  We are going to show the projects we’ve done in recent years for the competitions of the Bank of Slovenia.

The opening is set on 8th of December in City Museum of Ljubljana. If you are at the time around Ljubljana, do pop in, it will be fun.

You are welcome to follow the news on our Facebook group.
If you are more on the twittering side, follow us on Twitter, I am managing the account there.

See you!

Filed under: The Must See, Thinking Machine   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: coins, design, Domen Fras, exhibition, graphic design, Ljubljana, Maja B. Jancic, slovenia

On Behance

04Nov09

Behance is a network for creative professionals, of which I had a vague notion, but didn’t look into it, until recently.  My dear Swedish friend Suzi warmly recommended it and I signed in.

I was and still am pleasantly surprised.

There are very few network sites that can offer this level of quality. I dare say that it’s due mostly to a good measure of exclusiveness. You either get a membership through an invitation or you get reviewed by a staff, a method which certainly needs to be sustained. No matter what you say and we all love democracy … but in terms of creativity there is no democracy. You either are talented and skillful or you produce junk, there is no way around it.

This exclusiveness ensures Behance to be alive, is a place where you meet people on your own level and I am positive it also prevents the decaying into the bland, dead network full of self proclaimed want-to-be art directors and web specialist. Last but not least: the profile and showcase frame is clean, fairly designed and can be used as a portfolio, which you will have no shame to show around.

And there you go, this is my Behance profile & portfolio:  http://www.behance.net/MajaBJancic
You are warmly invited to visit!

Filed under: The Must See, Thinking Machine   |  4 Comments
Tags: behance, creative, design, network

Lunki and Sika: The Chosen One

19Oct09

YES, finally! It is about time to post something by my favorite comics, my friends: Lunki and Sika. Their quirky, particular humor just doesn’t stop to amaze me. And make me laugh, of course. This is the most recent movie they made. Enjoy!

Filed under: My friends, Thinking Machine   |  3 Comments
Tags: comic, humor, lunki-sika, movies

Pictograms for London 2012 Olympics

19Oct09

The Olympics pictograms. I’d say the assignment that big and complex needs:
1. A skillful, nifty, experienced and knowledgeable head of one creator with a small team of mouse pushers.
2. Enough development time.
3. The mindful, experienced and respectful client.

In the case of the London 2012 Olympics pictograms I have a hunch none of these conditions were present. The well awaited were released a few days ago and they look like this.

I am terribly sorry but what we see here is a job of such a poor quality, I am at awe. I haven’t seen worse Olympics pictograms. I don’t even dare to compare them with Otl Aicher’s work for Munich 1972 Olympics. Every single Olympics, the Winter Olympic Games included, had better pictograms.

Let’s see for example Sarah Rosenbaum’s for Lillehammer Games in 1994. They are particular ones, highly imaginative and excellent in execution.

Or not to forget the Masasa Katzoumie and Yoshiro Yamashita pictograms for Tokyo Olympics of 1964. It is not the style of the age which makes them excellent, it is the thinking behind them.

I understand that when comes to assignments like this, clients are in plural. I hear that today’s industry gets involved in the pure core of design concept, and I hear: designers are working on a brief and “gets pushed around by the idiot client”. That’s a bunch of rubbish excuses. Agencies pay people to do a job of persuading, and no, no client is an idiot. They don’t know better, they need a specialist to tell them what is the best for them.

It is actually terribly sad. In this release I see a design-project manager team which didn’t work. I see a haste and not much development, no study, no thinking. Drawing is thinking. Design is thinking. Just look: people are formed as if someone was sketch-practicing, they are disproportionate, images are mashed together in a rush, a lot of them unclear, crumpled, with no balance, no refinement. It looks as if someone creating them was utterly confused.

On the London 2012 official blog a Yasmine (no full name given) of London 2012 brand team explains: “The agency had to come up with something that fitted in with our brand identity but at the same time create something new and exciting.” Well, dear Yasmine, I say you certainly succeed to force badly analyzed formal characteristics of London 2012 identity but you certainly didn’t create anything new. Disappointing failures like that can be seen on every home-made leaflet advertising stuff of dubious quality.

At the end I wonder if the clients realize how huge is the cost they’ll pay for this shabby work. I am not talking about numbers although I am sure the amounts here are far from modest. I am talking about being remembered by the worst designed pictograms in the history. Pretty high price, wouldn’t you say?

Filed under: Thinking Machine   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: design, graphic design, London 2012, Masasa-Katzoumie, Olympics, Otl-Aicher, pictograms, Pictograms for London 2012 Olympics, Sarah-Rosenbaum, Yoshiro-Yamashita

Sarah’s Toilet

18Oct09

If Sarah Lucas knows she’s been labeled with the mark of “post-feminism”, what she has to say about it? I always wondered what artists say or think when they read or hear the blown-up rubbish the art historians are able to put into print.

Sarah Lucas is a very interesting artist of the Young British Artist movement. And even if recently her work circles around odd ideas of phallus-like forms, there is one piece I am greatly amused by. ‘Nature Abhors A Vacuum’, a toilet covered in cigarettes is a fabulous-witty-tragic mockery of life and I think one of those rare pieces of art which speaks to audience with ease and wit.

Sarah Lucas, Nature Abhors A Vacuum, 1998.

What does Sarah has to say about it? In interview with James Putnam she observes: “I first started smoking when I was nine. And I first started trying to make something out of cigarettes because I like to use relevant kind of materials. I’ve got these cigarettes around so why not use them. There is this obsessive activity of me sticking all these cigarettes on the sculptures, and obsessive activity could be viewed as a form of masturbation. It is a form of sex, it does come from the same sort of drive, and there’s so much satisfaction in it. When you make something completely covered in cigarettes and see it as solid it looks incredibly busy and it’s a bit like sperm or genes under the microscope.” – (Putnam, J. 2000. Interview with Sarah Lucas. London: Sadie Coles HQ.)

What do I think?
Her fabulous toilet actually speaks in two ways. Not just that: it speaks to two absolutely opposite audiences: smokers and smoker-haters. To the first it says: “I give a shit if I smoke.”, to the others it says: “Cigarettes are shit, they (or the smokers) belong where the shit belongs.”
Simply brilliant!

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Tags: art, Nature Abhors A Vacuum, Sarah-Lucas

A quotes pick

17Oct09

“I’ve come close to working with a couple of agencies for very big brands, but either the money isn’t there or the agency just has a stupid idea that I’m not interested in working on. Like they want type with a bunch of bullshit curlicues coming off it. Yawn. Go away.” Marian Bantjes

“Art has been lost in a labyrinth of theory. If this sounds anti-intellectual, let me clarify. There is no good work of art that cannot be described in intelligible English, however long it might take, however much patience is required. And yet this book (Art Since 1900) begins with four theoretical essays explaining the post-structuralist concepts the authors believe we need before we can meaningfully discuss a single work of art. It is the supreme expression of an art culture that sneers at ‘empiricism’ as a dirty word.” Jonathan Jones

“Stop acting dead!” Bruce Sterling

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Albert Einstein

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Tags: quotes

That’s what the friends do.

16Oct09

Social networks can get pretty boring, especially Twitter tends to go that way recently. The reason? First: people’s style of twitting a.k.a. publishing are starting to become robotic. Second: when someone follows you (when someone follows you or you follow him it’s kind of similar of being friends on Facebook) it is not by curiosity or by personal want of getting to know you. No, the following is mostly automated or led by one sole purpose; advertising whatever it is to advertise for: a new show, a shopping website, or tits and ass, you just have to pick and get a stream of vomiting.

I guess I am lucky. When I was joining into Twitter, it was about 9 months ago, it seemed fresher. More alive. And yes, I am lucky, on Twitter I meet a few interesting people. And some of them I really like and consider them friends.

One of them is Suzi. When I opened my portfolio website back-office today, I was shocked by the jump of number of visitors. Where did they come from? There is a source.
That’s what the friends do. Thank you, Suzi.

Filed under: My friends   |  1 Comment
Tags: Made by Suzi, Twitter