The same but different

Sustainable as the aforementioned way-cool dumpsters, this Temporary Trees Project, located not too far from the store Delice Dell'Orto in Vicenza, made me think of Worldstudio and AIGA's Urban Forest Project.

The sign crediting Alessandro Mendini includes the sponsor I heart EC. Was the logo okayed by Milton Glaser? To be continued . . .

Me No Longer Talk Pretty Some Day

James Victore galvanized students in the AIGA/NY AIGA/NY Mentoring Program to create posters using the theme "I Have a Voice." Decrying "Pretty Pictures," (guilty?), Victore urged kids and everyone to test and push themselves. Arielle Jennings, my excellent student who's a Junior at the High School of Art & Design, holds her poster about racial discrimination. Arielle is a diligent high-achieving student, was not upset by James's occasional expletives; her takeaway was to follow your passions and be true to yourself—and, of course, to sign your work.

Designing by a Star

I confess.

I love ABC's reality show Dancing With The Stars I love the dancing, the sometimes-teeny and always over-the-top costumes, and the show's evolving self-satirical bits. But wait! Before the AIGA revokes my membership, I rush to give a big disclaimer. I don't love the design. The graphics couldn't be cheesier. The show open with its script, is laughable. (Despite my comment about a flirty script in the TRAJAN TRUMP post, flirty scripts are pretty dang lame—and why do they pair one script with another, Nuptial Script to be precise? Oddly enough, my out-of-focus screen shot from the TV showing the sans serif label "STILL" provides a tacky but welcome typographical accent).



Looks 3; dance 10. But oh, the dance.

Luckily, dance and design-wise, it's possible to have the best of both worlds. A total aesthetic contrast to ABC's shows are the breathtaking dance publications issued by 2wice.



Running till May 15 at the AIGA gallery on Fifth Avenue, the exhibit honors Abbott Miller's collaboration with Patsy Tarr. Together, Tarr and Miller have produced the most glorious, exciting, extraordinarily tactile, and witty magazine that exalts dance. I give it them and the exhibit a 10! If you're following the DWTS metaphor, I'll be three judges and give it three 10s!

Dance Ink and 2wice are high to DWTS's low, but the magazines are never snooty, embalmed, or inaccessible. The designs (and editing; Abbott Miller has also been the editor for years) are so wonderful that they soar. The exhibit design/installation is also glorious—complete with mirror ball, just like the admittedly tacky mirror ball trophy about which Tom Bergeron so cheekily winks and nods.



One of my favorite set of panels shows an homage to Gerald and Sarah Murphy's ballet sets done in the 1920s for the Ballet Russes in Paris when they were gifted expatriates muses, and artists—and when everybody was so young. The same 1995 issue includes typography that is anything but laughable.



There's a also a Rauschenberg issue, which may be my favorite.





The sheer lyricism of the Rauschenberg issue vies with the sly and hilarious Martin Parr edition, Everybody Dance Now (from my posts, you'd think that it's Martin Parr month).




Of course, there are better shots than mine on the Pentagram site, but I took these FPO photo/notes just for you (and Tommy Salami).

While I'm showing the love, I'll quote Martin Parr's statement at the end of Everybody Dance Now:

Photography is perhaps the most democratic form of human expression, second only to dance. Virtually everybody owns a camera, even if it is a camera phone, and people record their family and friends. But the world probably has more dancers than photographers. Dancing in its many guises is a worldwide phenomenon, no matter your wealth, class or age. If you can still physically get up onto the floor, that urge never dies. I am delighted to combine these two precious art forms into one photographic essay.

I totally agree with my hero, Martin Parr. The art forms of dance and photography are precious in the sense they are to be cherished. In this exhbition, both dance and design are never precious in the sense of being affected, cool, or overly mannered. Have fun! Everybody dance now!

How the big guys and dolls do it

Too bad you weren't able to attend AIGA event, "My Dog and Pony." Each of the five presenters gave the same pitch they presented to real clients—and then showed the outcome. All were brilliant. Karin Fong's pitch for "The Pink Panther" was funny and charming and oh! those titles!

Even though the images to the left were taken from afar—WAY afar—they show the basic point of we once discussed: Take an image or artifact and do something to it. Then, do something ELSE to it. The brilliant presenters of last night's event showed that the approach sure does work.

Okay, so my image on the left—of Michael Gericke's presentation of Pentagram's pitch to the Arizona Cardinals is impossible to read, but not to worry. Pentagram has fabulous shots of the campaign on its site. In what may be a trademark Pentagram approach (cf Michael Bierut's Saks Fifth Avenue logo ), the team took bits of the cardinal—beaks, wings, whatever, and used them throughout the stadium. Clever. Witty. Brilliant. Not surprisingly, there are huge numbers as wayfinders (cf Paula Scher's team at Bloomberg). It makes sense that such a company with such a deep bench as Pentagram would cross-pollinate and incorporate elements of other projects into new work. It's the approach, discipline, and style. I loved brilliant puns playing off the letters "AZ" in Arizona.

Radical Media's info-heavy and impressive work on 19 20 21 made up in data for what it lacked in entertainment. In fact, the very idea of the initiative is info not ento. The deep immersion in statistics was as sobering as it was enlightening. Given all those numbers, it made sense to use abstracted numbers as the logo. The sliced numbers were still legible. As you can (sort of) see from my photo, the bits are still (almost) readable even in my lame-o, standing room snaps taken with my tinycam. I'd include the link, but their site's a pain to use (writes she, whose site lacks an update let alone a search engine.)

One of my faves of the eve also featured the strategy of using bits, obscuring to make clear, acting steadfast knowing that the viewer would get it without an overstated and obvious approach. Drew Hodges of SpotCo showed a lot of initial SpotCo assaults (alas, my shots were too bad to post) on changing the earlier, iconic logo before they made the clear suggestion (and approved decision) to go with what already recognizably worked and zoom in, take apart, obscure, and repeat from there. In a strategic coup, Drew and his crew got the producers et al to eliminate billing. Look ma, no stars. Just the logo and a bit of key info. Standing ovation.

BTW, the new Galapagos Art Space on Main Street in Dumbo is gorgeous, giving one more reason the eve was a hall of famer (I promise in the future I'll delete corny sports metaphors).