Mike Simpson » Illustration

Interview with Ray Larabie – Font Designer

Mike — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 14:01:13 +0000

Early this year I interviewed Ray Larabie, a Canadian font designer (from Ottawa), who lives and works in Nagoya, Japan. Ray studied animation at Sheridan college and worked initially in the video game industry. He runs a successful company called Typodermic. I knew about Ray back in my early days of design (mid 90s) because I had on occasion searched for free fonts on the web. At that time he operated as Larabie fonts (there are still dozen of his freebies out there!). I rediscovered Ray doing some font browsing at MyFonts.com. Ray is an interesting guy and I’m pleased to announce he’s the first subject in my newly launched interview page (which will archive other interviews I’ve done as well, with a variety of artists, musicians, designers and thinkers). Check out the interview!

Do we get the General Idea? Art Exhibit arrives at AGO

Mike — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 13:38:26 +0000

There is a quite a buzz surrounding the arrival of a large exhibition of work by General Idea at the Art Gallery of Ontario. GI were a Toronto-based art collective, founded in 1969 and comprised of: AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal. They were renowned for their irreverance and satirical wit – playful yet antagonistic in their sometimes harsh critiques of beauty, sexuality, the art establishment and the media.

The exhibit occupies most ofthe top two floors in the general collection, which means there is no additional charge. We arrived on a rainy Wednesday evening at 6 o’clock – coincidentally the night that the gallery is free for a couple hours, and made our way straight to floor 5, with the plan to work our way down to 4. We bypassed the classics on floor 1 and headed straight to the elevator. The scale of the work exhibited is impressive. It basically occupies two entire floors (there are only 5 in the general gallery) and features impressively large works (some of which though may fatigue the eyes with their incredible saturated color schemes).

The work itself is interesting but grows a tad tiresome – there are a handful of major works involved, motifs, that are worked again and again. The AIDS logo, if we can call it that, is a fabulous reworking of the classic LOVE sculpture created by Robert Indiana. It appears in various guises, and is an incredible example of the modern art of sampling, recycling and reworking earlier design for a modern purpose. When displayed across a 5 metre by 10 metre wall though, the motif loses something and truthfully is a little disorienting and painful to look at (there is actually a physically uncomfortable component that both me and my companion noticed – was that part of the intent? I’ll guess the answer is no and that the curators are simply milking the themes for all they are worth).

I was very intrigued by “Miss General Idea” – a paraody beauty contest that was a major early work. It is genius – they created this contest, publicized it and playfully attacked the institution of the beauty contest. It’s too bad the displays consist mostly of blown-up images from their pamphlets, or a few simple props (though the props are sometimes outstanding – the venetian blind dress comes to mind!).

There are motifs that entertain and bring true giggles – the Poodles orgy images are omnipresent but beautifully designed (and the babies illustration is wickedly brilliant!). The Poodles are a welcome image that recurs throughout the exhibit and somehow have true staying power never losing steam and are ingrained in my mind.

General Idea is arguably, one of the most important artistic groups to have been generated in Toronto, and , not being an art expert, I won’t judge their significance in that way. I will give them a nod and say that I greatly admire their pioneering DIY spirit, the verve with which they threw themselves into areas like publishing (FILE magazine), and their masterly manipulations of the establishment (“Miss General Idea”) and the art industry. A great sense of humour is readily apparent, though truthfully many pieces have a dark, serious quality. The aesthetic is very punk – which is always good. Even if you don’t “get it” necessarily, you will feel the visceral quality and never ever be bored. That said, I have been lucky enough to visit a few exhibits in the last year, including “Rear View Mirror” at Power Plant, Tim Burton at TIFF, and Marian Bantjes at OCAD, and I can definitely say there is room for improvement in the layout and presentation of the General Idea group’s art.

This exhibit relies too much on the AIDS imagery, tries to blow things up to a scale which doesn’t necessarily serve the message in the medium, and unfortunately lacks proper vehicles for two important elements. The first is a proper history of the group, something to give the average gallery-goer some context, and secondly, a proper venue for the multimedia aspect. Power Plant had small mini rooms that are dark and allowed one to sit and immerse onself in a movie for a few minutes. The AGO has monitors with either shabby speakers or headphones – which is not even close to good enough. Is the multimedia worth displaying? Then put it in a dedicated room!

General Idea were a compelling group of artists with some amazing ideas. This exhibit is probably your best opportunity to engage with those ideas. I just recommend going on Wednesday when it’s rainy and there is no line-up for the AGO’s free-admission night.

“Haute Culture – General Idea” runs from July 30, 2011 to January 1, 2012 at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.

Links:

Toronto Star article – provides an introduction and overview
http://www.thestar.com/article/1032194–general-idea-haute-culture-at-the-ago

Art Gallery of Ontario website

http://www.ago.net/haute-culture-general-idea

Iconic Canadian Graphic Artist Marian Bantjes Exhibit at OCAD

Mike — Sun, 22 May 2011 21:59:14 +0000

"I want it all" - Marian Bantjes

If you get a chance you must head to the Onsite gallery at OCADU and catch the Marian Bantjes exhibit. Marian recently published, “I Wonder,” a beautifully printed and design “illuminated manuscript” (as design guru Steven Heller has described it). She is definitely one of Canada’s hottest designers. She is a graphic artist who brings passion and personality to her intricate crafty work. Specializing in highly detailed illustration and beautiful typographic work, Bantjes captivates with a variety of works, from magazine covers to posters to laser-cut valentine cards. The detail is phenomenal and the approach highly original. A little bonus is the sound recording of her reading one of her “love letter” pieces aloud, which you’ll find in the main room. This show is here for another two weeks – so be sure to check it out.

Read Steven Heller’s review of “I Wonder” in the NY Times (with slideshow of book spreads):
http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/graphic-content-marian-bantjes-illuminated/

Visit the Onsite gallery is on the second floor of the main OCAD building at 100 McCaul St. in downtown Toronto (beside the AGO). The exhibit is on from March 2 – June 5, 2011
http://www.ocad.ca/onsite.htm

Free Online Course – DIY Graphic Design and Marketing – July 5- Aug 9

Mike — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:52:00 +0000

I’m a teacher and designer offering a free online course for people interested in developing skills in areas like Graphic Design and Marketing. I’m offering the course to people who are not artists, but who have “artistic” or “artsy” tendencies and would like to develop some materials to promote themselves, their business or their organization. Many of my current students are working in various fields, including the arts, education, media, entertainment and law/finance. The most successful students are those with some strong ideas about design projects they’d like to work on in areas like print and web (business cards, logos, blogs etc). If you are interested and can commit 3-4 hours a week toward readings, participating in forums and completing assignments, you are welcome to apply.

June 25th is the deadline to receive formal letters of interest/intent. Please contact me for more detailed information.

You might also check out this post from when I first offered the course (includes link to PDF outline)

Mike Simpson

mike | strongandfree.ca

Photoshop Turns 20

Mike — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 21:22:19 +0000

It’s amazing to think about the importance of Photoshop in my life. As a graphic designer I have fired up Photoshop nearly every day for the last ten years, and for a few years prior to that, friends were doing the “firing up” and I was just along for the amazing ride.

In 1996, with the help of my friend Pete, I started designing logos for t-shirts. My first design was a pure bite of the Kiss logo – my brainstorm was that “kiss” (pronounced) backwards was “sick.” And so Sick was clothing was born. I took a paycheck and optimistically printed 100 t-shirts with my Sick-Kiss hybrid logo, including Gene staring out from the middle. One night Pete and I went down to Kinko’s to scan a Guitar Player magazine and a half hour later we were deep in an early version of Photoshop, chopping up the lettering to create my first logo.

I created many of my early logos with Photoshop, somehow never needing to get anything generated with Illustrator. I suppose many designs were based either on photographs, scanned images, hand drawn imagery and simple shapes or text.

About 6 months ago I got my hands of the Adobe Master Suite CS4 and I’ve spent a hundred hours or more in that version of PS. Just a few weeks ago CS5 was released and it looks amazing. I am teaching an online course in Graphic Design and I’m encouraging my students to download the trial – a behemoth at 1 GB (includes option to install “enhanced” version). On the preview page there is are some small flash movies that show off some killer new functions, including HDR photo creation, complex selections and content-aware fill (check this last one out — you can erase an object in your picture and the program automatically fills in the background like the object was never there). This is too amazing. I may have to check out the trial version too.

Layers Magazine has an in-depth article with interviews with some Photoshop developers:

http://layersmagazine.com/photoshop-turns-20.html

Graphics and Illustrations of 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games

Mike — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:26:07 +0000

The branding and identity work for the Olympics features some stunning illustration. Kudos to the Vancouver Olympic committee!

Today I fired up Google Chrome and saw the Olympic graphic (or “doodle”) Google created for their homepage. (It’s pictured at the end of this article). The image is subtle and appealing. It doesn’t even use the color scheme that the Vancouver Games have been using – relying instead on a range of subtle blues punctuated by a dull orange flame. On the other hand, I’m fed up already with the punishing barrage of TV commercials from CTV, McDonalds, HBC, and the dozens of other companies that have jumped on the back of the Olympics in an effort to increase their brand appeal.

Perhaps you have seen the amazing illustrations that were created for the games. I didn’t know much about who created these icons and images until I picked up a couple of magazines recently – Applied Arts, and How Magazine – both of which feature articles on the talented people behind the look of the 2010 Olympic graphics. A Vancouver company called Karacters Design Group consulted on the project but the work was done in-house by the Vancouver Olympic Committee. The key designer on the VOC project, Leo Obstbaum, apparently passed away in the summer of 2009.

Google Doodle for Vancouver 2010 by artist Dennis Hwang

Links:

How Magazine article on Olympic Design Process

http://www.howdesign.com/article/winterolympics/

Iconic Towers: What do the CN Tower and Burj Khalifa Represent?

Mike — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:00:31 +0000

"World's Tallest" Illustration by Strongandfree.ca

From our old building we could see, through a sliver of highrises, Toronto’s downtown and the CN Tower. Now we look west to the green canopy of the west end and if we peer south from the balcony edge we have a view of the immensity of High Park, where we walk and cycle, when the weather’s warm.

When my girlfriend’s parents see a clip of Toronto on Russian TV there will inevitably be a shot from the harbourfront with the tower prominent. I know my former students, scattered around the world, in Asia, Mexico, Brazil and Europe, will reminisce and the CN Tower, and Toronto’s skyline, will forever be a backdrop to their memories. Why is the tower so compelling? What does it mean to us? How did the CN Tower come to be?

Conceived as both tourist attraction and communications tower, ultimately the size of the tower was the result of a motivation to go higher than the Ostankino tower in Moscow. A claim to be “the biggest and the best” was central to the mission. Today it is both landmark, reminding locals and tourists which way is south, and decorative addition to the skyline – with its thousands of LED lights lit up at night — the world’s tallest free-standing Christmas tree. The construction of the tower (1973-1976) followed the buzz of 1967 (the Montreal Expo, Canada’s world coming out party) and remains a symbol of hope and pride to Torontonians and visitors to the city.

This weekend’s Saturday Star had an article by the architecture critic Christopher Hume, about the excesses that have wracked Dubai and produced the Burj Khalifa tower. Hume tends to write about the positives on the Toronto skyline: new green buildings, LEED certification, and rooftop gardens, among many other discussions. (In a recent blog post I referred to his article on Douglas Coupland’s new waterfront park in Toronto’s downtown).

The Star’s critic writes:

Of course, there’s nothing new about the desire to build higher and higher. The “edifice complex” has been around at least since the ancient Egyptians started building pyramids 4,500 years ago. Since then, things have grown ever taller.

In North America, the heyday of the race to the sky was played out in New York during the 1920s and ’30s. It reached a climax with the rivalry between the Chrysler and the Empire State buildings.

Toronto’s flight into the architectural stratosphere came in the 1970s with the construction of the country’s tallest building, First Canadian Place, and more dramatic still with the world’s tallest free-standing structure, the CN Tower.

Hume astutely compares the Burj tower to another modern relic, the Hummer. They both represent conspicuous consumption and a new world order that worships at the “bigger is better” altar, and stubbornly refuses to economize for the common good. The Burj was constructed in part with a massive crew of immigrant labor, and as we have seen unfold, under a badly mismanaged financial system which worked furiously for a brief moment to convince the world that they were building a modern utopian cosmopolitan and super-rich city.

What will the Burj come to represent for the locals? The names refers to the “caliph” or “successor” (to Muhammad). Will the tower be a destination for rich locals and foreign tourists? Will it be a point of pride on their horizon? Does it represent a changing of power away from the west, or the rise of the “developing world?”

_ _ _ _ _

Post-script: It is worth noting that China is constructing a half-dozen gargantuan towers (one of which is not finished and already taller than the CN Tower), all of which rival the biggest skyscrapers in the world. Today, the CN Tower is the 3^rd tallest “man-made structure.” The next biggest Canadian structure on the list is the “Inco Superstack” nickel smelter in Sudbury (29^th in the world).

Read more / watch video

Christopher Hume says the “proletarian” Burj may be iconic but lacks “poetry” and could have been the perfect Soviet skyscraper. He also argues that we often forget that architecture is “not just an economic phenomenon, but also an art form.” In any case the Burj tower is fascinating and Hume’s article is an engaging devil’s advocate view. http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/747815–hume-tallest-tower-emblematic-of-dubai-s-ugly-excess