Let’s keep things light this morning. Why don’t you enjoy some colorful, playful, just-plain-full illustration and type from Ana Benaroya. Lady’s got some sweet gig posters for damn sure. Break your eyes off a piece of that.
I lived in Florida for a couple of years when I was younger, down Miami way, and the only thing that I can remember about it is that drivers would swerve to try and hit pedestrians and people would pay me a lot of money to remove reptiles, amphibians, spiders and scorpions from their outdoor trashcans. Overall it’s not a bad memory, but it’s not great either. That’s fine. There are a lot of people who aren’t me that love Florida. I’m a little more fond of America’s schlong since coming across the illustration work of Mark Malazarte. Dude lives in Tampa, but is originally from the Philippines, and is part of the Calavera Comics crew. That’s a talented group of misfits and rebels if ever I’ve seen one, which I have, like all the time. Mark’s illustration work dazzles my eyes because of his tight type control and color palettes, especially when throwing down with his illustrative counterweight Alexis Ziritt. Since Mark’s website isn’t up and running, yet I’m just gonna throw you into his Flickr stream. Sink or swim, bitches.
I’ve been thinking a lot about messages lately, namely the messages that artists are trying to convey to their audience with their work, if they are at all. You’ll probably notice that I post a little less frequently, and that’s because I’m focusing on finding works that actually have a purpose. I appreciate the scribbly drawings of a hesher rocking out in a van, but it’s not what I’m interested in right now. What I am interested in is work like Marian Bantjes’ new piece for Creative Review titled Love Stories. Each piece in the series is an illustrated text story of someone that she loves, and very few can illustrate text as well as Bantjes. This series explains fairly well what I mean about a message. It’s personal to the artist, explains to the reader something powerful that is felt, and does so in a way that is original and insightful and beautiful. Ta da: art. Bantjes covers the loves of her life including, oddly enough, the dentist and cake. Oh my God do I understand her about the cake. Each piece reflects the nature of the person(s) who inspired it, and at the same time shares a personal insight about that person’s relationship with the artist. Even without her immense talent, Bantjes could never have failed with this work, because she’s discussing an emotion as she feels it. I’m pretty sure that I can’t discuss this in less than 2000 words or more than three. Art must feel.
San Francisco artist Jeff Canham’s work puts me in mind of Jim Houser. There is a similar style of composition (and the artists kind of look alike), although Canham is clearly a master of hand-painted type and knows it. I could bathe in those tasty fonts they’re so damn buttery. Canham creates canvas collages of type and pattern in his fine art steez, and some killer font work on the print tip. What is it about designers who can create amazing type that makes them also able to break images down into their most basic parts? McFettridge manages it, too. It must stem from having to create type that conveys a mood through its design on top of the straight forward written message it presents. Canham’s got the shit on lock. It’s no wonder he has an entire section devoted to his sign painting. If I had half his talent I would probably have a whole site dedicated to it. I’d actually like to see Canham and Espo in an epic sign painting battle. It would be a close call for sure, but I think Canham would pull it out right at the end. And he’s only across the Bay from Secret Still HQ. That’s way closer than Houser or McFettridge. Game-Set-Match: Canham.
Designer/Illustrator Jeremy Pettis has created 26 different typefaces to each correspond with an animal beginning with the letters A-Z. My favorite: Zebra or Yak. This must have taken a long time to complete. Congratulations of a job well done, sir.
British graphic designer Mike Lemanski kills it on the typography tip.
For some reason videos made entirely of typography never lose their appeal to me. For some reason the part of me that gets laid wants to punch the part of me that just wrote that sentence in the face. The turmoil of mankind continues.
Also, I think Abbott and Costello were fucking amazing.
How many times have you been working on a project and none of the fonts in your arsenal are right for your needs? You could go out and find suitable typography but chances are it’ll cost you some stupid high amount to purchase. Worry slightly less! I love Typography has a nice tutorial on creating fonts. It lists everything you’ll need to start mapping your own lettersets from software to tips and tricks. What more do they have to do, spell it out for you? Because that’s, uh…that’s what they did actually. So don’t come bitching to me about how Helvetica is played out, sucka.
There is a great article up on Design Observer by Michael Bierut, who is my hero. Seriously good stuff. He mentions his new book and I think it will be the first ever book about design that I buy with my own money. Working in a library has it advantages.
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