Robert L. Peters

8 June 2011

"To be a designer means not only to sensibly manipulate techniques and analyse production processes, but also to accept the concommitant social obligations… Thus quality of design is dependent not only on function, science, and technological processes, but also upon social consciousness."

László Moholy-Nagy


7 June 2011

When a logo becomes… "unfortunate."

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This is the “award-winning” logo designed for the Catholic Church’s Archdiocesan Youth Commission by Gerry Kano in 1974.

Perhaps the 1970s really were simpler, gentler, more innocent times (?)… and it can happen that designers at times “get too close” to their own work to “see the bigger picture”—yet it seems hard to believe that no one in the decision-making and client-side approval process saw just how badly this could be interpreted.

Steven Heller offered some astute comments on this design in an AIGA article (from 2009): “On some occasions, logos are more than marks of failure or malfeasance; sometimes they unintentionally illustrate the foibles or folly of a company or institution all too vividly… the unfortunate pictorial relationship between the priest and the child, given our collective awareness… suggests a much too ironic interpretation. It’s a challenge to see what this positive/negative image once suggested, a guardian protecting the innocent, since the benevolence of its subject is no longer black and white. When a good design signifies bad deeds, the result is, well, a really unfortunate logo.”


6 June 2011

"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought."

Albert von Szent-Györgyi de Nagyrápolt


5 June 2011

Any questions?

oopsmark.ca


4 June 2011

John Heartfield | Helmut Herzfeld

Esslingen, Germany

Three weeks ago I was visiting designer friends in this charming Swabian burgh… the after-dinner conversation swung towards influential German typographers and Gestalter such as John Heartfield—to my delight, when I mentioned his name our hostess jumped up from the table to fetch (after a bit of searching) a portfolio of Heartfield prints she had acquired back in the 1980s when she was a socialist activist in Berlin (all prints I had never seen before).

John Heartfield was born Helmut Herzfeld on 19 June 1891 in Berlin-Schmargendorf, Germany to Franz Herzfeld, a socialist writer and Alice née Stolzenburg, a textile worker and political activist. He changed his name in part as a way to protest World War I (and he even feigned madness to avoid returning to the service). During the Weimar period he became a member of the Berlin DADA group, where he used his collage work as a political medium, incorporating images from the political journals of the day. He edited “Der DADA” and organized the First International DADA Fair in Berlin in 1920. Sharply critical of the Weimar Republic, Heartfield’s work was banned during the Third Reich, then rediscovered in the German Democratic Republic in the late 1950s.

I’ve posted about John Heartfield before and have long been fascinated by him—his politically charged photomontages during the Nazi regime ended up influencing successive generations of artists and graphic designers.

Above: a small sampling of Heartfield’s diverse work; The hand has 5 fingers; Serenade; Adolf the Superman. Below: a 1971 stamp from DDR (East Germany) in Heartfield’s honour.


3 June 2011

Drink Gorgeous…

Vienna, Austria

Once in a while you come across an image that just smacks you on the cheek… like these flavour-saturated compositions by Staudinger+Franke, a team of photographers and artists, created for the TMW London advertising campaign for Lipton Tea.

(found on designtaxi.com)


2 June 2011

Learning from the past…

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I hold deep appreciation and great respect for ancient cultures and original peoples (and the incredible lessons that they have to teach us) if we are open and willing to listen, look back, and learn. I included this beautifully elegant example of traditional Japanese egg packaging in my recent talk ‘Welcome Change‘ in Vilnius, Lithuania. No energy consumed in production, no chemical waste produced… the ultimate recyclable/compostable package.

The above image is from the 1969 book How to Wrap Five Eggs: Traditional Japanese Packaging by Hideyuki Oka, with photographs by Michikazu Sakai.


1 June 2011

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

Jimi Hendrix

 


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