Time For A Change

So I'm back at Uni next week. Which means, shock to end all shocks, I'll not be a free man for much longer. It also means I get a timetable. Mondays are off, as are Wednesdays. The rest of the time it's full days. Sweet deal. Don't know if I'm in with many of my friends yet, but we shall see.

Clusters Last Stand

Just came across the work of Michael Steele over on Design Is Kinky. His stuff is nicely painted, but I can't help but wonder about the depth of his rationale — he creates 'clusters', a series of objects portrayed as part of a larger whole. To quote: 'I feel this gives images or objects a stronger presence rather then being displayed by themselves, creating a much more dynamic experience for the viewer.' The street art style lessens the impact of these objects, while the juxtaposition of elements fails to create any true meaning within the painting. They seem put together haphazardly, with little thought to their final meaning as a cluster, rather than a collection of somewhat related elements.

Proof of Youth

Meta has officially been through it's first proof! We finished the design on Friday and went on over to the book binders in Nunawading. It was only $15 to get it trimmed and perfect bound, which is way cheap for a single run. Here are the results! The cover is a pattern by Kumiko Michishita, who I've featured here before. Now we just need to come up with $3100 to print it... Thanks to Vincent for some fierce modelling!

Give Me Your Badge

Made a whole heap of badges for Meta yesterday — 130 to be exact. My arms were very tired and also very sore, mostly from cutting the circles out. It took a very long time! Overall I'm happy with the results, I think they're nice and varied. I used the bad press at Sticky — you can make badges for 50c each, and you can then sell them for whatever price you want at the store. Last time I made an edition I netted a grand total of $9.80. Yep.

Stefan's Stories

Just borrowed a copy of Stefan Sagmeister's Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far. It really is a very nice book, composed of several small booklets, each with an item from Sagmeister's list of Things. His honesty and commitment to his work is refreshing, I think, and so far I've found it interesting reading. It's quite a strange reaction I have to him, as though I should feel passionately about him one way or another, and yet I find myself strangely unmoved by work I know to be great design. Is this the part where design fails to reach art, where we see the designer's hand at work, crafting something for a specific need? I find myself asking; "What if this was art? What would you think?" And I would argue that some, if not most, of it is art, such as his six page spread that started it all. The brief was to fill six pages with anything he wanted, and while that may be considered enough to render it design, I've seen enough art commissions to know that they often have more complex criteria. What is striking about these maxims (quotes seems inaccurate) is that they stay away from the classic stuff you find printed on a mug, or calendar, or inspirational poster. They are more subtle, and their application seems much more heartfelt and thoughtful.

Meat Meta

The other day the Meta team tasked themselves with creating some stickers to either go on the front of the journal or to be used as promotional items. There were some nice results, with Vincent's being chosen as the official sticker for issue one. Mine was OK, and I decided to try and take the idea a little further. This is what came from that, and I think it goes to show that if you have a good idea, you get good results.

Got Milk!

This is not a photo. It's a painting by Diego Gravinese. The first time I saw this I thought it was a very strange photograph. I still think it's strange subject matter, but Gravinese is one of the first photo-realistic painters I've seen that really captures the ideals behind the genre, and his works are astounding technical accomplishments. However, as will all such works, once the glow of amazement has passed, we must question the content and themes of the work. There's little substance here — they seem introspective, relying on interpretation from the artist himself. Unlike others that have gone before him, Gravinese does not appear to question or probe the world around him, and does not use this style to critique the reality in which the painter finds himself. Instead, we get painted polaroids. Beautiful polaroids, though. I almost prefer this process shot to the finished work — imagine it with the line work removed. There's something intriguing about the way she fades into the canvas.

Read Design

Just finalised the redesign of this glorious little home — it's a pretty happy place right now. Header is still set in Trade Gothic, while the bones of the site are based off a great little Blogger template that I've reworked some. The theme was inspired by Electric Light Orchestra, namely a sense of romantic drama, probably lurking somewhere in space. In other news, I've been working on Meta, which is very nearly finished. Hopefully by the end of Friday we'll have some solid results to go home with. Our interview subjects have been great, and their chat was interesting (to me at least) — I can only hope that others will be as engaged by them as I am.

Sunday Debate

Didn't really do much today. Worked mostly on getting a t-shirt design finished for the ANU debating society. Needs to be at the printer tomorrow morning. I decided to work with the design some more, changing the plain red into a red, green and blue. Gave me an idea for their spring tournament promotional poster — it would probably need refinement before final production, but at this stage it's visually strong.

Paper Plate

Came across this awesome plate at Metropolis today. Really great find — especially as I'd been thinking about doing something with paper dolls all day. I find the illustrations a little heavy in their line work, but otherwise they're quite sweet. At Safeway I found Disney's publication of Wall-E as a picture book. It's a little odd seeing such a wordless film rendered in images and written words — I'm not sure that it captures that particular feeling the film has, but the drawing work within its pages is very nice. iPhone photos don't quite do it justice.

Alley Invader

Found this in an alley off Flinders Lane. I forget who does them — they may be international? But there's been a real wave of them lately.

Shit Just Got Real

Just found the work of Augustine Kofie. Does abstract street art. Nice stuff. I like the strong use of colour and awareness of the medium, particularly this use of the cube canvas. I've always found it odd viewing street art on a 2D plane — this makes more sense, I think. Also found this awesome picture. Science is great, but geology rocks! That's right, it's a photo of a thunderstorm over an erupting volcano. Just incredible.