IKEA Digitizes & Puts Online 70 Years of Its Catalogs: Explore the Designs of the Swedish Furniture Giant

in Business, Design | September 8th, 2020

The time­less mod­ernism of the IKEA cat­a­log, its promise of tidi­ness, clean, eco­nom­i­cal lines, and excel­lent val­ue belie a strug­gle ahead, an ordeal cus­tomers of the glob­al Swedish build-it-your­self jug­ger­naut know too well. Will the bulky, major­ly-incon­ve­nient­ly shaped box­es fit in the car? Will the rebus-like instruc­tions make sense? Will we assem­ble a bed with love and care, only to find our­selves in a pile of its bro­ken parts come morn­ing?

Clear­ly out­weigh­ing such tragedies are the many hap­py mem­o­ries we asso­ciate with buy­ing, build­ing, and liv­ing with IKEA prod­ucts. The com­pa­ny itself has built such mem­o­ries over the course of almost eight decades with an empire of Scan­di­na­vian design super­mar­kets.

“As of 2019,” Marie Pati­no writes at City­Lab, “IKEA boasts 433 stores across 53 coun­tries.” The IKEA cat­a­log is as wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed as the Bible and Quran. The Swedish com­pa­ny with the quirk­i­ly named prod­ucts and leg­endary cafe­te­ria meat­balls defines fur­ni­ture shop­ping.

The lay­out of IKEA’s show­rooms may turn “retail into retail ther­a­py,” with cor­ri­dors filled with mono­chro­mat­ic visions of clut­ter-free liv­ing. In these times, of course, we’re far more like­ly to take refuge in those ven­er­a­ble cat­a­logs or the company’s always-improv­ing web­site. Now we can do both at once with a trip through sev­en decades of IKEA cat­a­logs, uploaded to the web­site for the 70th anniver­sary of the first 1950 release.

1951 “marked the first prop­er IKEA cat­a­log,” writes Pati­no, as well as the first icon­ic cov­er fea­tur­ing the first icon­ic design, the MK wing chair. Cov­ers became more elab­o­rate, with smooth mid-cen­tu­ry mod­ern liv­ing room lay­outs that tan­ta­lized, but the con­tents of the cat­a­log looked like gov­ern­ment order forms until the late 60s and 70s. It did not appear in Eng­lish until 1985. In these ear­ly lay­outs we can see just how dat­ed so many of these designs appear in hind­sight.

The company’s sig­na­ture busi­ness mod­el came togeth­er slow­ly at first. It start­ed in 1943, found­ed by Ing­var Kam­prad in Swe­den, as a mail-order busi­ness for sta­tion­ary sup­plies. The fur­ni­ture arrived soon after, but it would take anoth­er decade or so for the flat-pack idea to ful­ly emerge. The BILLY book­shelf, per­haps the most pop­u­lar IKEA design ever, debuted in 1979. Oth­er sta­ples fol­lowed, and in 2013, the orig­i­nal wing­back chair made a mod­i­fied come­back as the STRANDMON. Through it all, the cat­a­log has doc­u­ment­ed Swedish design trends in a glob­al mar­ket­place.,

The 21st cen­tu­ry has seen not only the return of the wing­back but of the mid-cen­tu­ry Scan­di­na­vian mod­ernism with which the com­pa­ny made its name in the 1950s and 60s. Maybe that’s why it’s easy to think of IKEA as con­sis­tent­ly embody­ing this trend, slight­ly updat­ed every few years. But brows­ing through these cat­a­logs shows how thor­ough­ly IKEA absorbed all sorts of Euro­pean influences—as well as the look of hotel room fur­ni­ture from Mia­mi Vice.

What kind of ther­a­py is this? Gaz­ing at dat­ed or retro-hip prod­ucts we are years too late to buy? It offers the same expe­ri­ence as all IKEA cat­a­log shopping—without the strug­gle and expense of trans­port­ing and assem­bling the results: the dis­trac­tion of a world with­out dis­trac­tions. Explore the new archive of IKEA cat­a­logs here.

via Bloomberg and Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mas­sive Har­rods Cat­a­logue from 1912 Gets Dig­i­tized: Before Ama­zon, Har­rods Offered “Every­thing for Every­one, Every­where”

The Bauhaus Book­shelf: Down­load Orig­i­nal Bauhaus Books, Jour­nals, Man­i­festos & Ads That Still Inspire Design­ers World­wide

Meet the Mem­phis Group, the Bob Dylan-Inspired Design­ers of David Bowie’s Favorite Fur­ni­ture

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A Beautiful 1897 Illustrated Book Shows How Flowers Become Art Nouveau Designs

in Architecture, Art, Books, Design, Nature | August 28th, 2020

The art of draw­ing is not the art of observ­ing forms and objects alone, it is not mere mim­ic­ry of these objects; it is the art of know­ing how far and where­in, and with what just lim­i­ta­tions, those forms and objects can be repro­duced in a pic­ture, or in a dec­o­ra­tive work. — Eugène Gras­set, 1896

Flow­ers loomed large in Art Nou­veau, from the volup­tuous flo­ral head­pieces that crowned Alphonse Mucha’s female fig­ures to the stained glass ros­es favored by archi­tect Charles Ren­nie Mack­in­tosh.

Graph­ic design­er Eugène Gras­set’s 1897 book, Plants and Their Appli­ca­tion to Orna­ment, vivid­ly demon­strates the ways in which nature was dis­tilled into pop­u­lar dec­o­ra­tive motifs at the end of the 19th-cen­tu­ry.

 

Twen­ty-four flow­er­ing plants were select­ed for con­sid­er­a­tion, from hum­ble spec­i­mens like dan­de­lions and this­tle to such Art Nou­veau heavy hit­ters as pop­pies and iris­es.

Each flower is rep­re­sent­ed by a real­is­tic botan­i­cal study, with two addi­tion­al col­or plates in which its form is flat­tened out and mined for its dec­o­ra­tive, styl­is­tic ele­ments.

 

The plates were ren­dered by Grasset’s stu­dents at the École Guérin, young artists whom he had “for­bid­den to con­de­scend to the art of base and servile imi­ta­tion”:

The art of draw­ing is not the art of observ­ing forms and objects alone, it is not mere mim­ic­ry of these objects; it is the art of know­ing how far and where­in, and with what just lim­i­ta­tions, those forms and objects can be repro­duced in a pic­ture, or in a dec­o­ra­tive work.

He also expect­ed stu­dents to hone their pow­ers of obser­va­tion through intense study of the organ­ic struc­tures that would pro­vide their inspi­ra­tion, becom­ing inti­mate­ly acquaint­ed with the char­ac­ter of petal, leaf, and stem:

Beau­ti­ful lines are the foun­da­tion of all beau­ty. In a work of art, what­ev­er it be, appar­ent or hid­den sym­me­try is the vis­i­ble or secret cause of the plea­sure we feel. Every­thing that is cre­at­ed must have some rep­e­ti­tion in its parts to be under­stood, retained in the mem­o­ry, and per­ceived as a whole

When it came to adorn­ing house­hold imple­ments such as vas­es and plates, Gras­set insist­ed that dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments exist in har­mo­ny with their hosts, snip­ing that any artist who would dis­tort form with ill con­sid­ered flour­ish­es should make a bas-relief instead.

Thus­ly do chrysan­the­mum stems pro­vide log­i­cal-look­ing bal­last for a chan­de­lier, and a dandelion’s curved leaves hug the con­tours of a table leg.

Gras­set’s best known stu­dent, Mau­rice Pil­lard Verneuil, whose career spanned Art Nou­veau to Art Deco, absorbed and artic­u­lat­ed the master’s teach­ings:

 

It is no longer the nature (artists) see that they rep­re­sent, that they tran­scribe, but the nature that they aspire to see; nature more per­fect and more beau­ti­ful and of which they have the inte­ri­or vision.

 

View Eugène Grasset’s Plants and Their Appli­ca­tion to Orna­ment as part of the New York Pub­lic Library’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions here. Or find illus­tra­tions at Raw­Pix­el.

via The Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

His­toric Man­u­script Filled with Beau­ti­ful Illus­tra­tions of Cuban Flow­ers & Plants Is Now Online (1826 )

Beau­ti­ful Hand-Col­ored Japan­ese Flow­ers Cre­at­ed by the Pio­neer­ing Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ogawa Kazu­masa (1896)

Dis­cov­er Emi­ly Dickinson’s Herbar­i­um: A Beau­ti­ful Dig­i­tal Edi­tion of the Poet’s Col­lec­tion of Pressed Plants & Flow­ers Is Now Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Milton Glaser’s Stylish Album Covers for The Band, Nina Simone, John Cage & Many More

in Art, Design, Music | August 12th, 2020

Mil­ton Glaser hard­ly needs an intro­duc­tion. But if the name some­how doesn’t ring a bell, “Glaser’s many con­tri­bu­tions to pop cul­ture,” as Ayun Hal­l­i­day writes in a pre­vi­ous post, cer­tain­ly will. These include “the  I ❤NY logo, the psy­che­del­ic por­trait of a rain­bow-haired Bob Dylan, DC Comics’ clas­sic bul­let logo.” All images that “con­fer unde­ni­able author­i­ty.” Many chil­dren of the six­ties also know Glaser well for his album cov­ers.

Glaser designed the album art for The Band’s clas­sic Music from Pink, though he stepped back from the cov­er and used one of Bob Dylan’s paint­ings instead. He designed cov­ers for clas­sics like Peter, Paul & Mary’s The Best Of: (Ten) Years Togeth­er and Light­nin’ Hop­kins’ Light­nin’! Vol­umes One and Two.

“Glaser had a long his­to­ry with record labels,” writes design­er Rea­gan Ray. “Accord­ing to Discogs, he was cred­it­ed with the design of 255 albums over the course of 60 years. His rela­tion­ship with record label exec­u­tive Kevin Eggers led him to explore a vari­ety of cov­ers for the Pop­py and Toma­to record labels, includ­ing the career of Townes Van Zandt.”

Glaser illus­trat­ed rock, folk, blues, jazz…. “Clas­si­cal album cov­ers nev­er get much atten­tion in graph­ic design his­to­ry,” Ray points out. But “his col­or­ful paint­ings were inter­est­ing and unique in an oth­er­wise stuffy genre.” He even illus­trat­ed an album by Al Caiola’s Mag­ic Gui­tars called Music for Space Squir­rels, what­ev­er that is. Did he lis­ten to all of these albums? Who knows? Glaser left us in June, but not before dis­pens­ing “Ten Rules for Work and Life” that set the bar high for aspir­ing artists.

One of his rules: “Style is not to be trust­ed. Style change is usu­al­ly linked to eco­nom­ic fac­tors, as all of you know who have read Marx. Also fatigue occurs when peo­ple see too much of the same thing too often.” If any­one would know, it was Glaser. “His work is every­where,” writes Ray, “and his lega­cy is vast.” He also had a very rec­og­niz­able style. See a much larg­er selec­tion of Glaser’s album cov­ers, curat­ed by Ray from over 200 albums, here. And vis­it an online col­lec­tion of Glaser’s oth­er graph­ic design work at the School of Visu­al Arts.

  

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mil­ton Glaser (RIP) Presents 10 Rules for Life & Work: Wis­dom from the Cel­e­brat­ed Design­er

Art Record Cov­ers: A Book of Over 500 Album Cov­ers Cre­at­ed by Famous Visu­al Artists

Enter the Cov­er Art Archive: A Mas­sive Col­lec­tion of 800,000 Album Cov­ers from the 1950s through 2018

The Icon­ic Album Cov­ers of Hipg­no­sis: Meet “The Bea­t­les of Album Cov­er Art” Who Cre­at­ed Unfor­get­table Designs for Pink Floyd, Led Zep­pelin, Peter Gabriel & Many More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Milton Glaser (RIP) Explains Why We Must Overcome the Fear of Failure, Take Risks & Discover Our True Potential

in Design, Life | June 29th, 2020

Mil­ton Glaser died last week at the age of 91, a long life that includ­ed decade upon decade as the best-known name in graph­ic design. With­in the pro­fes­sion he became as well-known as sev­er­al of his designs did in the wider world: the Bob Dylan poster, logos for com­pa­nies like DC Comics, the Glaser Sten­cil font, and above all  I ❤ NY. Glaser may have become an icon, but he did­n’t become a brand — “one of my most despised words,” he says in the inter­view clip above. He also acknowl­edges that spe­cial­iza­tion, “hav­ing some­thing no one else has,” is the sine qua non of “finan­cial suc­cess and noto­ri­ety.” But “the con­se­quence of spe­cial­iza­tion and suc­cess is that it hurts you. It hurts you because it basi­cal­ly does­n’t aid in your devel­op­ment.” When we suc­ceed we usu­al­ly do so because peo­ple come to rely on us to do one par­tic­u­lar thing, and to do it well — in oth­er words, nev­er to fail at it.

But as Glaser reminds us, “devel­op­ment comes from fail­ure. Peo­ple begin to get bet­ter when they fail.” As an exam­ple of devel­op­ment through fail­ure he holds up Pablo Picas­so: “When­ev­er Picas­so learned how to do some­thing, he aban­doned it, and as a result of that, in terms of his devel­op­ment as an artist, the results were extra­or­di­nary.”

We may, of course, ques­tion the rel­e­vance of this com­par­i­son, since many would describe Picas­so as an artis­tic genius, and not a few would cast Glaser him­self in sim­i­lar terms. Sure­ly both of them, each in his own way, inhab­it­ed a world apart from the rest of us. And yet, don’t the “the rest of us” won­der from time to about our our own poten­tial for genius? Haven’t we, at times, felt near­ly con­vinced that we could achieve great things if only we weren’t so afraid to try.

Glaser breaks this fear down into con­stituent threats: the “con­dem­na­tion of oth­ers,” the “crit­i­cism of crit­ics and oth­er experts and even your friends and rel­a­tives,” the prospect that “you won’t get any more work.” But “the real embar­rass­ing issue about fail­ure is your own acknowl­edg­ment that you’re not a genius, that you’re not as good as you thought you were.” We can’t bear to acknowl­edge “that we real­ly don’t exact­ly know what we’re doing,” an inescapable real­i­ty in the process of self-devel­op­ment. But there is a solu­tion, and in Glaser’s view only one solu­tion: “You must embrace fail­ure, you must admit what is, you must find out what you’re capa­ble of doing and what you’re not capa­ble of doing.” You must “sub­ject your­self to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that you are not as good as you want to be, hope to be, or as oth­ers think you are.” And as the famous­ly nev­er-retired Glaser sure­ly knew, you must keep on doing it, no mat­ter how long you’ve been cel­e­brat­ed as a pro­fes­sion­al, a mas­ter, an icon, a genius.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mil­ton Glaser’s 10 Rules for Life & Work: The Cel­e­brat­ed Design­er Dis­pens­es Wis­dom Gained Over His Long Life & Career

Saul Bass’ Advice for Design­ers: Makes Some­thing Beau­ti­ful and Don’t Wor­ry About the Mon­ey

Paulo Coel­ho on How to Han­dle the Fear of Fail­ure

“Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Bet­ter”: How Samuel Beck­ett Cre­at­ed the Unlike­ly Mantra That Inspires Entre­pre­neurs Today

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Milton Glaser (RIP) Presents 10 Rules for Life & Work: Wisdom from the Celebrated Designer

in Design, Life | June 28th, 2020

“None of us has real­ly the abil­i­ty to under­stand our path until it’s over,” the cel­e­brat­ed graph­ic design­er Mil­ton Glaser (RIP) mus­es less than a minute into the above video.

Glaser’s many con­tri­bu­tions to pop culture—the  I ❤ NY logo, the psy­che­del­ic por­trait of a rain­bow-haired Bob Dylan, DC Comics’ clas­sic bul­let logo—con­fer unde­ni­able author­i­ty. To the out­side eye, he seems to have had a pret­ty firm han­dle on the path he trav­eled for lo these many decades. Aspi­rant design­ers would do well to give extra con­sid­er­a­tion to any advice he might share.

As would the rest of us.

His “Ten Things I Have Learned,” orig­i­nal­ly deliv­ered as part of a talk to the AIGA—a ven­er­a­ble mem­ber­ship orga­ni­za­tion for design professionals—qualifies as sol­id life advice of gen­er­al inter­est.

Yes, the Inter­net spawns bul­let-point­ed tips for bet­ter liv­ing the way spring rains yield mush­rooms, but Glaser, a self-described “child of mod­ernism” who’s still a con­tender, does not truck in pithy Insta­gram-friend­ly apho­risms. Instead, his list is born of reflec­tion on the var­i­ous turns of a long and most­ly sat­is­fy­ing cre­ative career.

We’ve excerpt­ed some of his most essen­tial points below, and sug­gest that those read­ers who are still in train­ing give spe­cial empha­sis to num­ber sev­en. Don’t place too much weight on num­ber nine until you’ve estab­lished a sol­id work eth­ic. (See num­ber four for more on that.)

MILTON GLASER”S TEN RULES FOR WORK AND LIFE (& A BONUS JOKE ABOUT A RABBIT).

1. YOU CAN ONLY WORK FOR PEOPLE THAT YOU LIKE

Some years ago I real­ized that… all the work I had done that was mean­ing­ful and sig­nif­i­cant came out of an affec­tion­ate rela­tion­ship with a client.

2. IF YOU HAVE A CHOICE NEVER HAVE A JOB

Here, Glaser quotes com­pos­er John Cage: Nev­er have a job, because if you have a job some­day some­one will take it away from you and then you will be unpre­pared for your old age. 

3. SOME PEOPLE ARE TOXIC AVOID THEM.

Glaser rec­om­mends putting a ques­tion­able com­pan­ion to a gestalt ther­a­py test. If, after spend­ing time with that per­son “you are more tired, then you have been poi­soned. If you have more ener­gy, you have been nour­ished. The test is almost infal­li­ble and I sug­gest that you use it for the rest of your life.”

4. PROFESSIONALISM IS NOT ENOUGH (or THE GOOD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GREAT)

Glaser con­cedes that a record of depend­able excel­lence is some­thing to look for in a brain sur­geon or auto mechan­ic, but for those in the arts, “con­tin­u­ous trans­gres­sion” is the qual­i­ty to cul­ti­vate. Pro­fes­sion­al­ism does not allow for that because trans­gres­sion has to encom­pass the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fail­ure and if you are pro­fes­sion­al your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat suc­cess. 

5. LESS IS NOT NECESSARILY MORE

I have an alter­na­tive to the propo­si­tion that I believe is more appro­pri­ate. ‘Just enough is more.’

6. STYLE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED

Style change is usu­al­ly linked to eco­nom­ic fac­tors, as all of you know who have read Marx. Also fatigue occurs when peo­ple see too much of the same thing too often.

7. HOW YOU LIVE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN

The brain is the most respon­sive organ of the body…. Thought changes our life and our behav­ior. I also believe that draw­ing works in the same way…. Draw­ing also makes you atten­tive. It makes you pay atten­tion to what you are look­ing at, which is not so easy.

8. DOUBT IS BETTER THAN CERTAINTY

One of the signs of a dam­aged ego is absolute cer­tain­ty. Schools encour­age the idea of not com­pro­mis­ing and defend­ing your work at all costs. Well, the issue at work is usu­al­ly all about the nature of com­pro­mise…. Ide­al­ly, mak­ing every­one win through acts of accom­mo­da­tion is desir­able.

9. IT DOESN’T MATTER

Glaser cred­its essay­ist Roger Rosenblatt’s Rules for Aging (misiden­ti­fy­ing the title as Aging Grace­ful­ly) with help­ing him artic­u­late his phi­los­o­phy here.  It doesn’t mat­ter what you think. It does not mat­ter if you are late or ear­ly, if you are here or there, if you said it or didn’t say it, if you are clever or if you were stu­pid. If you were hav­ing a bad hair day or a no hair day or if your boss looks at you cock­eyed or your boyfriend or girl­friend looks at you cock­eyed, if you are cock­eyed. If you don’t get that pro­mo­tion or prize or house or if you do – it doesn’t mat­ter.

10. TELL THE TRUTH

It’s inter­est­ing to observe that in the new AIGA’s code of ethics there is a sig­nif­i­cant amount of use­ful infor­ma­tion about appro­pri­ate behav­ior towards clients and oth­er design­ers, but not a word about a designer’s rela­tion­ship to the pub­lic. If we were licensed, telling the truth might become more cen­tral to what we do.

BONUS JOKE

A butch­er was open­ing his mar­ket one morn­ing and as he did a rab­bit popped his head through the door. The butch­er was sur­prised when the rab­bit inquired ‘Got any cab­bage?’ The butch­er said ‘This is a meat mar­ket – we sell meat, not veg­eta­bles.’ The rab­bit hopped off. The next day the butch­er is open­ing the shop and sure enough the rab­bit pops his head round and says ‘You got any cab­bage?’ The butch­er now irri­tat­ed says ‘Lis­ten you lit­tle rodent, I told you yes­ter­day we sell meat, we do not sell veg­eta­bles and the next time you come here I am going to grab you by the throat and nail those flop­py ears to the floor.’ The rab­bit dis­ap­peared hasti­ly and noth­ing hap­pened for a week. Then one morn­ing the rab­bit popped his head around the cor­ner and said ‘Got any nails?’ The butch­er said ‘No.’ The rab­bit said ‘Ok. Got any cab­bage?’’

Read Mil­ton Glaser’s “Ten Things I Have Learned” in its entire­ty here.

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in April 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mil­ton Glaser Draws Shake­speare & Explains Why Draw­ing is the Key to Under­stand­ing Life

Mick­ey Mouse In Viet­nam: The Under­ground Anti-War Ani­ma­tion from 1968, Co-Cre­at­ed by Mil­ton Glaser

Dieter Rams Lists the 10 Time­less Prin­ci­ples of Good Design–Backed by Music by Bri­an Eno

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Construct Your Own Bayeux Tapestry with This Free Online App

in Art, Design, History, K-12 | June 19th, 2020

A wise woman once quoth that one man’s adult col­or­ing book is another’s Medieval Tapes­try Edit.

If tak­ing crayons to emp­ty out­lines of man­dalas, flo­ral pat­terns, and for­est and ocean scenes has failed to calm your mind, the His­toric Tale Con­struc­tion Kit may cure what ails you.

Pro­gram­mers Leonard Allain-Lau­nay and Math­ieu Thoret­ton and soft­ware engi­neer Maria Cos­mi­na Ete­gan cre­at­ed the online kit as a trib­ute to a late, great, ear­ly 21st-cen­tu­ry appli­ca­tion designed by Acad­e­my of Media Arts Cologne stu­dents Björn Karnebo­gen and Gerd Jung­bluth.

They sep­a­rat­ed out var­i­ous ele­ments of the Bayeux Tapes­try, allow­ing you to freely mess around with 1000-year-old images of war­riors, com­mon­ers, beasts, and build­ings:

Craft thy own Bayeux Tapes­try

Slay mis­chie­vous beasts

Rule the king­dom

Rotate, resize, clone…

Choose a back­ground, add some text in your choice of Bayeux or Augus­ta font and you’ll have done your bit to revive the fad­ing art of the Medieval Macro (or meme.)

The orig­i­nal tapes­try used some 224 feet of wool-embroi­dered linen to recount the Bat­tle of Hast­ings and the events lead­ing up to it.

You need not have such lofty aims.

Per­haps test the waters with a Father’s Day greet­ing, resiz­ing and rotat­ing until you feel ready to export as a PNG.

The inter­face is extreme­ly user friend­ly, kind of like a tech-savvy 11th-cen­tu­ry cousin of the online drag-and-drop graph­ic design tool, Can­va.

The His­toric Tale Con­struc­tion Kit’s most impres­sive bells and whis­tles reside in the paint­brush tool in the low­er left cor­ner, which allows you to lay down great swaths of folks, birds, or corpses in a sin­gle sweep.

Your palette will be lim­it­ed to the shades deployed by the Bayeux embroi­der­ers, who obtained their col­ors from plants—dyer’s woad, mad­der, and dyer’s rock­et (or weld).

The text, of course, is entire­ly up to you.

It pleased us to go with the emi­nent­ly quotable David Bowie, and only after we groped our way into the three fledg­ling efforts you see above did we dis­cov­er that we’re not the only ones.

Pre­sent­ing Ear­ly Pre-Bowie Ref­er­ences to “Space Odd­i­ty”


Throw on some Bard­core and begin rework­ing the Bayeux Tapes­try with the His­toric Tale Con­struc­tion Kit here.

If you are inter­est­ed in some­thing a bit more tech­ni­cal, the design­ers have put the open­source code on GitHub for your cus­tomiz­ing plea­sure.

The Bayeux Tapes­try has also been recent­ly dig­i­tized. Explore it here: The Bayeux Tapes­try Gets Dig­i­tized: View the Medieval Tapes­try in High Res­o­lu­tion, Down to the Indi­vid­ual Thread

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Medieval Cov­ers of “Creep,” “Pumped Up Kicks,” “Bad Romance” & More by Hilde­gard von Blin­gin’

160,000 Pages of Glo­ri­ous Medieval Man­u­scripts Dig­i­tized: Vis­it the Bib­lio­the­ca Philadel­phien­sis

Why Knights Fought Snails in Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Why This Font Is Everywhere: How Cooper Black Became Pop Culture’s Favorite Font

in Design, History | June 19th, 2020

You know Times New Roman, you know Hel­veti­ca, you know Com­ic Sans — and though you may not real­ize it, you know Coop­er Black as well. Just think of the “VOTE FOR PEDRO” shirt worn in Napoleon Dyna­mite (and in real life for years there­after), or a few decades ear­li­er, the cov­er of Pet Sounds. In fact, the his­to­ry of Coop­er Black extends well before the Beach Boys’ mid-1960s mas­ter­piece; to see and hear the full sto­ry, watch the Vox video above. It begins, as nar­ra­tor Estelle Caswell explains, in Chica­go, at the turn of the 1920s when type design­er Oswald Bruce Coop­er cre­at­ed the series of fonts that bear his name. Near­ly a cen­tu­ry after the 1922 intro­duc­tion of the vari­ant Coop­er Black, we see it every­where, not just on album cov­ers and T‑shirts but store­fronts, movie posters, and can­dy wrap­pers all over the world.

 

The evo­lu­tion of print­ing, specif­i­cal­ly the evo­lu­tion from carved wood type to cast met­al, made Coop­er Black pos­si­ble. Its dis­tinc­tive look — and the curved edges that made it for­giv­ing to imper­fect print­ing process­es — made it a hit. And when film strips replaced met­al type, allow­ing the kind of close­ly-spaced print­ing that Coop­er thought best pre­sent­ed his font, the already-pop­u­lar Coop­er Black under­went a renais­sance.

“It thrived, as always, in adver­tis­ing,” says Caswell. “Its friend­ly curves fit the tongue-in-cheek aes­thet­ic of the 1960s and 70s, but it also showed up in mag­a­zines, movies, and hun­dreds of album cov­ers.” To typog­ra­phy enthu­si­asts, Pet Sounds seem­ing­ly remains Coop­er Black­’s finest hour: “Just look at the way the D works with the E and the Y, and ‘Boys’ fits so nice­ly over the O,” as art direc­tor Stephen Heller says in the video.

In the 1920s Coop­er Black not only show­cased cut­ting-edge print­ing tech­nol­o­gy, its aes­thet­ic looked exhil­a­rat­ing­ly mod­ern as well. Now, of course, it looks com­fort­ing­ly retro, evoca­tive of the era of hand­made graph­ic design slip­ping out of liv­ing mem­o­ry in our dig­i­tal 21st cen­tu­ry. But the 21st cen­tu­ry so far has also been a time of “retro­ma­nia”: with all pre­vi­ous media increas­ing­ly at our fin­ger­tips, we draw inspi­ra­tion (and even mate­r­i­al) for our art and design more direct­ly and instinc­tive­ly than ever from the trends of the past. No won­der we con­tin­ue to feel a res­o­nance in Coop­er Black, whose let­ters, as Caswell puts it, bring with them the weight of “a cen­tu­ry’s worth of changes in tech­nol­o­gy and pop cul­ture.” Nor is Coop­er Black­’s next cen­tu­ry, what­ev­er uses it sees the font put to, like­ly to dimin­ish its appeal.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Typog­ra­phy Told in Five Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

Com­ic Sans Turns 25: Graph­ic Design­er Vin­cent Connare Explains Why He Cre­at­ed the Most Hat­ed Font in the World

Down­load Hel­l­veti­ca, a Font that Makes the Ele­gant Spac­ing of Hel­veti­ca Look as Ugly as Pos­si­ble

The Mak­ing (and Remak­ing) of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, Arguably the Great­est Rock Album of All Time

Enter the Cov­er Art Archive: A Mas­sive Col­lec­tion of 800,000 Album Cov­ers from the 1950s through 2018

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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DEVO Is Now Selling COVID-19 Personal Protective Equipment: Energy Dome Face Shields

in Current Affairs, Design, Fashion, Health, Music | May 18th, 2020

Accord­ing to DEVO’s co-prin­ci­ple song­writer and bassist Ger­ald Casale, the exper­i­men­tal art band turned ear­ly MTV pop-punk dar­lings were “pro-infor­ma­tion, anti stu­pid con­for­mi­ty and knew that the strug­gle for free­dom against tyran­ny is nev­er-end­ing.”

Their sin­gu­lar per­for­mance garb also set them apart, and none more so than the bright red plas­tic Ener­gy Dome hel­mets they donned 40 years ago this month, upon the release of their third album, Free­dom of Choice.

The record, which the band con­ceived of as a funk album, explod­ed into main­stream con­scious­ness. The visu­als may have made an even more last­ing impact than the music, which includ­ed the chart top­ping “Whip It.”

Even the most anti-New Wave met­al­head could iden­ti­fy the source of those domes, which have been likened to upturned flower pots, dog bowls, car uri­nals, and lamp shades.

What they prob­a­bly don’t know is the Ener­gy Dome was “designed accord­ing to ancient zig­gu­rat mount pro­por­tions used in votive wor­ship. Like the mounds, it col­lects ener­gy and recir­cu­lates it. In this case, the dome col­lects ener­gy that escapes from the crown of the human head and push­es it back into the Medu­la Oblon­ga­ta for increased men­tal ener­gy.”

Thus sayeth Casale, any­way.

DEVO’s 2020 con­cert plans were, of course, scotched by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, but the band has found an alter­na­tive way to mark the 40th anniver­sary of Free­dom of Choice and the birth of its icon­ic head­gear.

In addi­tion to face masks embla­zoned with the famil­iar red tiered shape, DEVO­tees with mon­ey and con­fi­dence to spare can ante up for a DIY Per­son­al Pro­tec­tive Equip­ment kit that trans­forms a stan­dard-issue Ener­gy Dome into a face shield.

It’s worth not­ing that before tak­ing your con­vert­ed ener­gy dome out for a par­ti­cle deflect­ing spin, you’ll have to truf­fle up a hard hat sus­pen­sion lin­er and install it for a prop­er fit.

Casale her­ald­ed the open­ing of DEVO’s merch store in a Face­book post:

Here we are 40 years lat­er, liv­ing in the alter­nate real­i­ty night­mare spawned by Covid 19 and the botched response of our world “lead­ers” to do the right thing quick­ly. We are not exag­ger­at­ing when we say that 2020 could be the last time you might be able to exer­cise your free­dom of choice. If you don’t use it, you can cer­tain­ly lose it.

Uh, he’s talk­ing about vot­ing, right, rather than storm­ing the capi­tol build­ing to demand the pre­ma­ture reopen­ing of inessen­tial busi­ness­es or mak­ing out­sized threats in response to gro­cery store mask poli­cies?

Per­haps the pow­er of the Ener­gy Dome is such that it could reawak­en the pro-infor­ma­tion, anti-stu­pid­i­ty sen­si­bil­i­ties of some dor­mant DEVO fans among the unmasked rank and file.

As Casale him­self posit­ed in an inter­view with Amer­i­can Song­writer: “You make it taste good so that they don’t real­ize there’s med­i­cine in it.”

Pre-order masks and PPE kits from DEVO’s offi­cial merch store.

Down­load instruc­tions for installing a hard hat sus­pen­sion replace­ment inside the Ener­gy Dome pri­or to attach­ing the shield.

via Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Japan­ese Design­er Cre­ates Free Tem­plate for an Anti-Virus Face Shield: Down­load, and Then Use a Print­er, Paper & Scis­sors

The Phi­los­o­phy & Music of Devo, the Avant-Garde Art Project Ded­i­cat­ed to Reveal­ing the Truth About De-Evo­lu­tion

The Mas­ter­mind of Devo, Mark Moth­ers­baugh, Presents His Per­son­al Syn­the­siz­er Col­lec­tion

Devo’s Mark Moth­ers­baugh & Oth­er Arists Tell Their Musi­cal Sto­ries in the Ani­mat­ed Video Series, “Cal­i­for­nia Inspires Me”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Here lat­est project is an ani­ma­tion and a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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