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

in Design | January 3rd, 2013

It comes as no sur­prise that the man who cre­at­ed the title sequences for The Man with the Gold­en Arm, North by North­west, Psy­cho, and Ver­ti­go can tell you a thing or two about graph­ic design. He can even tell his estab­lished col­leagues a thing or two about graph­ic design, as seen in the clip above. The man, of course, is Saul Bass, and this footage of him comes from a long-form inter­view con­duct­ed by design­er and edu­ca­tor Archie Boston.

In 1986, Boston paid a vis­it to Bass’ stu­dio for a project called 20 Out­stand­ing Los Ange­les Design­ers, shoot­ing a con­ver­sa­tion that touched on many sub­jects, includ­ing the emi­nence’s main piece of advice for graph­ic design stu­dents. “Learn to draw,” Bass pro­nounces.

“If you don’t, you’re going to live your life get­ting around that and try­ing to com­pen­sate for that.” Design, as observers of the dis­ci­pline say, ulti­mate­ly comes down to com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Accord­ing to Bass, aspir­ing design­ers fail to mas­ter draw­ing, one of com­mu­ni­ca­tion’s most basic but rich­est forms, at their per­il.

The clip just above goes deep­er than giv­ing prac­ti­cal advice, get­ting down to the very rai­son d’être of the graph­ic design­er. Bass puts it unam­bigu­ous­ly: “Aes­thet­ics are your prob­lem and mine. Nobody else’s. The fact of the mat­ter is, I want every­thing we do — that I do per­son­al­ly, that our office does — to be beau­ti­ful. I don’t give a damn whether the client under­stands that that’s worth any­thing, or that the client thinks that it’s worth any­thing, or whether it is worth any­thing. It’s worth it to me. It’s the way I want to live my life. I want to make beau­ti­ful things, even if nobody cares.” Explore our relat­ed con­tent sec­tion below to get an exten­sive idea of the fruits of Bass’ unbend­ing desire to cre­ate beau­ty. You may or may not find, say, his reimag­ined Amer­i­can Bell office lady uni­forms beau­ti­ful, but you can’t deny that they come from a mind whol­ly ded­i­cat­ed to aes­thet­ics — and one that cared not just about the how of cre­ation, but the why as well.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Saul Bass Gives Ma Bell a Com­plete Makeover, 1969

Saul Bass’ Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short Pon­ders Why Man Cre­ates

A Brief Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Saul Bass’ Cel­e­brat­ed Title Designs

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The Creators Project Presents the Future of Art and Design, Brought to You by Intel and Vice Magazine

in Art, Design | November 13th, 2012

The Cre­ators Project, a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Intel and Vice Mag­a­zine, pro­duces behind-the-scenes short films with con­tem­po­rary artists, musi­cians, and film­mak­ers. Call­ing itself “a glob­al cel­e­bra­tion of art and tech­nol­o­gy,” the three-year-old project offers per­haps the best way to keep up with incred­i­ble advances in visu­al and audio tech­nol­o­gy in the arts. The project also spon­sors new work (from, for exam­ple, visu­al artists Mick Rock and Bar­ney Clay and musi­cians J. Space­man and Karen O) and hosts glob­al events and meet-ups.

I per­son­al­ly check in with the project’s YouTube chan­nel on a semi-dai­ly basis, and I nev­er fail to find some­thing cap­ti­vat­ing, whether an intro­duc­tion to a new artist or new work from an old favorite (if you pre­fer Vimeo, they’ve got you cov­ered there too). Most recent­ly I’ve dis­cov­ered the aston­ish­ing work of a per­for­mance artist/photographer from Bei­jing, Li Wei, whose work involves Buster Keaton-style stunts—or, more pre­cise­ly, Kung Fu-film high-wire action—captured on cam­era in ver­ti­go-induc­ing images of impos­si­bil­i­ty. In the short film above, Li Wei walks us through his process and his phi­los­o­phy, which begins with the unset­tling notion, “We are all con­trolled by some­one else. Our thoughts and actions are con­trolled by unseen forces.” His work is a high-tech attempt to out­wit one of those forces for brief moments, ren­dered time­less by pho­tog­ra­phy and the mag­ic of Pho­to­shop.

In the video below, a for­mer aero­space engi­neer for NASA, James Pow­der­ly, now occu­pies strange ter­ri­to­ry between design and engi­neer­ing. Inspired by anoth­er cor­po­rate engi­neer­ing dropout, Pow­der­ley left aero­space engi­neer­ing for a res­i­den­cy at New York art and tech­nol­o­gy cen­ter Eye­beam to refine his visu­al aes­thet­ic, which he’s tak­en all over the world.

Final­ly, in the short video below, The Cre­ators Project vis­it­ed Min­Suk Cho, founder of futur­is­tic Seoul archi­tec­ture firm Mass Stud­ies. Cho describes the vision and pur­pose of Mass Stud­ies over a mind-blow­ing series of images of archi­tec­tur­al designs from worlds you’ve nev­er seen before but (if you’re like me) always hoped exist­ed some­where.

http://vimeo.com/44749711

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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The Rijksmuseum Puts 125,000 Dutch Masterpieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

in Art, Design, Museums, Technology | November 2nd, 2012

The Rijksmu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam is one of the grand Euro­pean muse­ums. Home to many of the Dutch mas­ters (Rembrandt’s Night Watch, which seems to glow from its cen­ter, and Vermeer’s Milk­maid, to name just a few), the muse­um is locat­ed on the city’s Muse­umplein, sur­round­ed by the small­er Vin­cent Van Gogh muse­um and mod­ern Stedelijk.

All those mas­ter­pieces are now avail­able for close-up view online at the Rijksmu­se­um’s dig­i­tized col­lec­tion. Users can explore the entire col­lec­tion, which is hand­i­ly sort­ed by artist, sub­ject, style and even by events in Dutch his­to­ry. The new dig­i­tal archive has all the same great learn­ing poten­tial as any oth­er online col­lec­tion. It’s search­able, as is the muse­um’s library.

But the Dutch are a whim­si­cal peo­ple, so it seems right that, in dig­i­tiz­ing its col­lec­tion, the muse­um went a step fur­ther than fur­ther. Not only can users cre­ate their own online gal­leries from select­ed works in the museum’s col­lec­tion, they can down­load Rijksmu­se­um art­work for free to dec­o­rate new prod­ucts. (Note: users will need to cre­ate a free account to get start­ed.)

By vis­it­ing the muse­um’s Rijksstu­dio, art lovers can cre­ate their own “sets” of Rijksmu­se­um works. Sets can include images of just flow­ers (think of the lus­cious ros­es and tulips in Dutch still life paint­ings of the 1600s), faces appear­ing in por­traits, or paint­ings of Ams­ter­dam itself through the ages. Just select a work of art and drop it into your own image col­lec­tion. Then use these select­ed images to cre­ate your own per­son­al­ized prod­ucts. From tat­toos to wall­pa­per to scoot­ers (yes, scoot­ers) to smart phone skins. Unusu­al yet every­day items of all shapes and sizes can now bear the image of gor­geous art. The art is free and the object could be as sim­ple as a T‑shirt.

All of this can be done with the bless­ings and sup­port of the muse­um, which pro­vides links to sites that offer var­i­ous forms of print­ing on demand.

What bet­ter way to make the col­lec­tion acces­si­ble to the pub­lic? Some might say it is sac­ri­lege to put Rembrandt’s face on the side of a van; the Rijksmu­se­um encour­ages it. None of the artists are alive any­way to claim copy­right infringe­ment, now are they?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rembrandt’s Face­book Time­line

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

16th-Cen­tu­ry Ams­ter­dam Stun­ning­ly Visu­al­ized with 3D Ani­ma­tion

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at and thenifty.blogspot.com.

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Dan Philips Presents Sustainable Housing with Wildly Creative Designs

in Art, Design, TED Talks | August 15th, 2012

“Unique” is an overused word, so much so that it appears in overqual­i­fied redun­dan­cies like “com­plete­ly” or “very unique.” But, what the hell, I’m going to go ahead and call Dan Philips very unique. Philips, who has worked in army intel­li­gence, and as a dance instruc­tor and antiques deal­er, seems to have final­ly found his call­ing at age 64: build­ing cus­tom hous­es out of up to 80 per­cent sal­vaged and recy­cled materials—from con­struc­tion castoffs like old doors and odd-shaped beams to cat­tle bones, wine bot­tles, and license plates. In the TED talk above, Philips, a very wit­ty and engag­ing speak­er with a slight build and bushy han­dle­bar mus­tache, walks an audi­ence through some of his idio­syn­crat­ic designs, remark­ing on details like eggshells as dec­o­ra­tive but­tons, sal­vaged vin­tage appli­ances, his own low-tech solu­tions for laun­dry chutes and bath­tubs, and a sur­pris­ing­ly taste­ful “Bud­weis­er House.”

If any of this sounds a bit quirk-for-quirk’s sake, it’s not (entire­ly). Philips is a man with a seri­ous pur­pose. As a New York Times pro­file put it, he is “fer­vent­ly com­mit­ted to his vision of build­ing for low-income peo­ple,” espe­cial­ly poor, sin­gle moth­ers (Philips’ father aban­doned his fam­i­ly when he was 17). A self-taught plumber, car­pen­ter, and elec­tri­cian, his vision—articulated through his Huntsville, TX com­pa­ny Phoenix Com­mo­tion—includes hous­ing that is not only struc­tural­ly sound, but also archi­tec­tural­ly beau­ti­ful. “I think mobile homes are a blight on the plan­et,” he says. “Attrac­tive, afford­able hous­ing is pos­si­ble and I’m out to prove it.” While many of his buy­ers default­ed on their mort­gages dur­ing the recent crises, and some of his hous­es have been “gentrified”—sold to upper mid­dle-class fam­i­lies attract­ed by the design fea­tures and ener­gy efficiency—Philips is still pleased that his con­struc­tion rep­re­sents the real­i­ty of sus­tain­able design with recy­cled mate­ri­als and a build­ing phi­los­o­phy that tran­scends the end­less vis­tas of bland nou­veau colo­nials, ranch homes, and shod­dy tract hous­ing that seems to stretch across every sub­ur­ban land­scape.

Click here for a slideshow of sev­er­al of Philips’ cre­ations.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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