Here’s lookin’ at you (and your social justice legacy) Herb…
Above: a sampling of the remarkable editorial cartoons of Herbert Lawrence Block, commonly known as Herblock (October 13, 1909 – October 7, 2001). Lots more good stuff left us by Herblock here.
Austin, Texas
Yesterday President Obama signed new legislation that will heavily restrict the nicotine content and marketing of cigarettes, including the requirement that colorful ads and displays be replaced with black-and-white-only text. For a piece in its Sunday Perspectives section, the St. Petersburg Times asked DJ Stout (of Pentagram’s Austin office) what cigarette manufacturers like Marlboro might do to follow the new marketing rules… Stout suggests that to comply with the crackdown, tobacco companies should embrace the restrictions and make cigarettes look truly dangerous. This, of course, will still appeal to a core group of smokers.
“Over the years there has been an onslaught of public awareness messaging about the evils of smoking,” says Stout. “Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last 50 years you are very aware that smoking is not only bad for you, it could very likely kill you. All smokers know this for sure but it doesn’t deter them.”
“Our marketing advice to cigarette companies in the new heavily regulated era is to fully accept the new aggressive anti-smoking restrictions and wallow in the government’s apocalyptic health warnings. Don’t make excuses or dance around the stepped-up marketing regulations, just transform the whole cigarette pack into a three dimensional warning label.”
Images above: Some of DJ Stout’s cigarette packages for an exercise in the St. Petersburg Times.
(Thanks Adrian for the link).
Mill Valley, California
Craig Frazier has decided to “post a new drawing every week in desperate need of a caption.” He invites anyone so inclined to write the words you think belong to that drawing, and to submit a line of no more than 30 words in length by Friday at 5:00 pm. The week’s submissions are then judged by “an editorial review board of one” with the winner announced the following week… and then appearing forever in the Drawords book.
Here’s how @Issue (where I came across this project) describes the gig… “For illustrator Craig Frazier, Drawords started as a welcome “relief from a day job where I’m given copy and am supposed to draw to it. Every stroke has to communicate something.”
“This is the reverse,” he says. Instead, as a way to keep his head and his drawing skills sharp, Frazier gave himself the assignment of producing a whimsical sketch a week, which he decided to email to contacts with an invitation to give it their own captions. “It was a way to connect with clients and give them a peek at the way I work and the way I see,” he explains.
The drawings were outside of Frazier’s commercial illustrations, experimental and surreal. He says that he discovered if he put enough “silly elements” in, then people let their imaginations take over from there. “They have come back with things that I would never have seen in the drawing. There is a collaboration going on that is very innocent and satisfying.”
Hartford, Connecticut
That’s a parental dictate that Kevin Van Aelst obviously never took to heart… see more of the man’s quirky (and often edible) oeuvre here. Shown above: Apple Globe (2007); Oreo Yin Yang (2005).
(Thanks for the link, Gerald).
Portland, Oregon
I’ve seen a number of these memetic cartoon character depictions in the past and finally stumbled across the source—Michael Paulus. View the rest on his website here. Following is what Michael says about his “character study” of 22 present and past cartoon characters…
Animation was the format of choice for children’s television in the 1960s, a decade in which children’s programming became almost entirely animated. Growing up in that period, I tended to take for granted the distortions and strange bodies of these entities. These Icons are usually grotesquely distorted from the human form from which they derive.
I decided to take a select few of these popular characters and render their skeletal systems as I imagine they might resemble if one truly had eye sockets half the size of its head, or fingerless-hands, or feet comprising 60% of its body mass.
These characters have become conventions that are set, defined, and well-known personas in our culture. Being that they are so commonplace and accepted as existing I thought I would dissect them like science does to all living objects—trying to come to an understanding as to their origins and true physiological make up. Possibly to better understand them and see them in a new light for what they are in the most basic of terms.
Taipei, Taiwan
My good friend Professor Apex Lin (distinguished designer and educator) is currently publishing a book entitled “設計論語” about “designers’ definitions of design.”
Shown above are a few of the pages I’m submitting—my views on the role design can play re: a better future; a proposal for how a simple, proactive reshuffling of the norm can “raise the bar” as regards ascendant creativity; and a depiction of visualization in relation to the role individual Weltanschauung plays in the conveyance of visual communication (the latter is a re-work of an invitational poster I first created for the GDC@50 celebrations with the statement: Design is the application of intent. Graphic design targets the eye, and ultimately the mind’s eye, of both the individual beholder and the broader audience. Strategy, concept, message, and visual vocabulary connect sender and receiver by means of graphic acuity and attraction… you see?”).
“Having a wonderful time—wish you were her…”
Hong Kong
Excellent graphic depictions of various global statistics by recent Central St. Martins graduate Toby Ng. See more here.
Paris, France
Mijn Schatje (aka Marie Blanco Hendrickx) is a young, highly successful artist with a distinctive style. I posted a few of her illustrations on this blog last month after she was listed in the Netdiver Powagirrrls* directory.
Today I received a very interesting e-mail entitled “Is Mijn Schatje an art thief?” from an anonymous source claiming that Mijn takes her archetypic doll faces (mostly Asian ball-jointed dolls, or BJDs) and other components of her work from photographs by other artists without permission and without giving credit to the original creators… the site offers numerous examples (with overlays demonstrating the appropriation process in a compelling manner) along with a variety of postings by and on behalf of “the people responsible for the sculpting, delicate painting, and painstaking photography of these labor-intensive creations.”
Homage? Appropriation? Certainly not coincidence…
*(I have just received a related post/link from Carole Guevin at Netdiver that opens a debate online; also a link to QBN where Mijn’s plagiarism is in hot discussion).
