Taxali Shows
by Steven Heller
Gary Taxali's most recent show, The Taxali 300, at Narwhal Art Projects in Toronto, opened on Jan 26 and will close Feb 28. So if you are above the lower 48, in the land of the Maple Leafs and frozen tundra, check out the retrospective of Taxali's witty comics, spots and illustrations....
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Tea Style
by Steven Heller
The fragile state of the fledgling Tea Party movement, which is riven with policy disagreements over how its revolt should be managed, appears to have one thing together - posters. For all its reckless rhetoric — Americans will be “boiled to death in the cauldron of the nanny state” — the posters have a certain primitive flair....
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Toyota's Logo v. Fella's Type
by Steven Heller
For a car company with such a pleasant logo, it's too bad the products are such safety hazards. But let's talk logo (it might be pleasanter). The current Toyota mark consists of three ovals. Or stated in the troubled company's own words, "the two perpendicular center ovals represent a relationship of mutual trust between the customer and Toyota." Hmmmmm....
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Patti Recalled
by Steven Heller
In Patti Smith's current memoir "Just Kids," about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe and her life during the late 60s and early 70s in New York's avant garde, she neglected one important fact. Well, it was important to me, in retrospect, though at the time I too was just a kid. Patti and I worked together at Rock Magazine, a second cousin to Rolling Stone. I was art director, she was a staff writer. I was learning about magazine design, she was trying to define herself....
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Viva Mariscal!
by Steven Heller
One of the most creatively versatile artists/filmmakers/designers in the Western world, Javier Mariscal, has a rich website. It features a wide range of comics, design, architecture and what he calls "art interventions." In 2009 Phaidon published a monograph, which is available in the U.S., but harder to find is his mammoth book of sketches....
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Dissent in Qatar
by Steven Heller
Tomorrow Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar opens the exhibition "The Design of Dissent" curated by Milton Glaser and Mirko Ilic. It will run from 3 February - 7 March. Qatar is a unique venue for this kind of exhibit, so hats are off to the organizers for taking the step....
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The Catcher: The Cover
by Steven Heller
Book cover designs are more than just protective, decorative, and promotional. Some are logos as memorably charged as Coke or IBM. Take the paperback cover for The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, who died last Thursday at 91 (unless, of course, its another ploy to retain his privacy). The simple yellow type against a blood red field says absolutely nothing about the plot yet everything about the book....
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The Best Movie Site Ever
by Steven Heller
Rick Prelinger is arguably the most ambitious film archivist on the planet. The Prelinger Archives is doubtless the most extensive collection of industrial, cautionary, education and amateur films around. In 2002 the personal archive was acquired by the Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, which holds around 4,000 on videotape. The best part is that all these films can be viewed online and downloaded mostly for free....
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Holocaust - 65 Years later
by Steven Heller
While much of the news for designers yesterday was taken up with the Apple iPad Tablet, the sixty-fifth anniversary of the Holocaust came and went. Throughout Europe many memorials marked this human stain (including the one above; a the Staro Sajmiste monument at the Sajmiste Nazi concentration camp in Belgrade, which Mirko Ilic recently helped raise consciousness about through an identity campaign)....
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My Favorite Kovacs
by Steven Heller
Ernie Kovacs (1919-1962) would have been a ripe 90 years old if he had not died in a car accident. He was a visionary in a burgeoning medium, TV (the internet of its day). I recall seeing his wonderfully primitive, decidedly genius The Ernie Kovacs Show on Tuesday nights in 1956 (when I was six), featuring such amazing characters as Percy Dovetonsils, Wolfgang von Sauerbraten, Matzoh Heppelwhite, French chef Pierre Ragout, and the simian Nairobi Trio....
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Great Moments in Art (Part I)
by Steven Heller
Leonardo Da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa in 1503, during the Italian Renaissance and, according to Vasari, "after he had lingered over it four years, left it unfinished…." Rick Meyerowitz began drawing Mona Gorilla in January 1971 and finished it a few days later. To date it is the quintessential example of simian expressionism of the modern era....
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Bradbury Thompson's USA
by Steven Heller
During World War II Bradbury Thompson, like many other designers, worked for the Office of War Information (OWI). Among his tasks was the design of U.S.A., a magazine aimed at Americans and allies (including the Arabic and French editions shown below), as well as the occasional enemy too. The U.S. government produced a lot of low and high-impact propaganda. U.S.A. fell somewhere in between, classically designed while vociferously propagating American values....
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