Design objects

“Styling and the Experimental Car”

Sponsored by Ford Motor Company in 1964, this consummate design process piece manages to be both expressive and promotional whilst educating its audience about sophisticated ideas such as product design, branding and styling.

Video still - click to play

I particularly like the segments that focus on the value of design and how the separate disciplines work together — something that still needs defining fifty years later! These design fields are also positioned as something that the audience may not be aware of but consciously or subconsciously respond to, and that these instincts have existed as cultural phenomenon since the ‘dawn of time.’

The film goes on to leverage the company’s design prowess further by saying that it is this attention to detail, embodied in a culture of innovation that makes their products the obvious choice in an evolving consumer marketplace that demands quality, style and [aspirational] luxury.

Enjoy…

Avalanche magazine covers

Artist Magazines + Ephemera

Saw some great works in this show at 871 Fine Arts in SF – here’s an excerpt from the curatorial statement:

It’s really difficult to successfully show printed works as opposed to strictly visual works of art in a gallery setting. You either have a choice of showing the cover or opening up to an inviting interior page, leaving the rest unseen. It’s the same whether you’re showing artists’ books, periodicals, exhibition catalogs, correspondence or other published ephemera. They are best perused in a comfortable position, at ones leisure, thumb to page. That said, printed matter is an integral part of a comprehensive artistic experience and a highly interesting aspect to boot. So despite the drawbacks of display, the attempt to highlight these materials goes on, and from my viewpoint, it is most welcome…

 

Cover image from Spanner NYC (with green highlight)

 

Bronze brutalist sculpture

 

Artist ephemera

Work at MASS MoCA

Mass MoCA poster

I designed this poster for a show that Anne was in at MASS MoCA. She showed her video work Cracked Actor which was part of Moyra Davey‘s One Minute Film Festival which is being celebrated with this exhibition:

The One Minute Film Festival took place annually in a barn outside of a small town in upstate New York, on the first Saturday after the 4th of July, from 2003-2012. On that day, artists, writers, film- and video-makers would arrive in the afternoon with food and drink and a one-minute movie. After sunset, everyone took their seats and the movies began, usually lasting two or three hours, and afterwards people danced. The festival was organized and hosted by artists Jason Simon and Moyra Davey.

Inspiration from inspiration

The web is full of inspirational resources, they’re everywhere in fact. From the elite and esoteric to the banal and superficial these sites have the power to inspire and infuriate.

What elements make for the best and/or inherently original and exclusive of these repositories? Are these cultural apertures significant or just self-referential?

Here are a few I enjoy and (sometimes) get inspired by, in no particular order (if I think of more I’ll add to the list):

But does it float
It’s Nice That
24 ways
Designspiration
K-Hole
Ministry of Type
The Sixteenth Division