Michael Bierut: 30 Years/90 Notebooks at Esther Massry Gallery

By Sara Tack

It’s not often that a graphic design show appears in a gallery or a museum and even less often that one shows up in the Capital Region. That’s why it is pretty exciting to see a show of the magnitude of Michael Bierut: 30 Years/90 Notebooks get curated specifically for The College of Saint Rose’s Esther Massry Gallery in Albany.

Bierut, a partner in the renowned design consultancy Pentagram, has had a brilliant career, designing for a host of national and international clients. He is the author of 79 Short Essays on Design and founder of the popular online journal Design Observer. He’s a senior critic at Yale School of Art and frequent guest speaker at design conferences and organizations across the country. His work has won every design award there is to win, including the prestigious American Institute of Graphic Arts medal.

What distinguishes Bierut’s work from much of the design we see on a daily basis is that his pieces use clever, conceptual twists that create messages we have to think twice about. His ability to do this so poignantly is grounded in his knowledge of the subject at hand, his understanding of how to use modernist form to imply meaning, and a natural gift: intuitive wit.

Most of the pieces in the show are posters and most are in black and white. Sometimes the work has (what appears to be) such a simple concept you wonder why you hadn’t thought of it yourself. Yet the beauty comes from just how profound he makes “the simple.”

In one of the few multi-colored works - Obama Fifty State Strategy, 2008, a campaign poster for Barack Obama - every U.S. state’s name is re-presented and strung literally together without word spacing. Separated only by color, we read the play on words starting with Alobama and proceeding alphabetically through Wyobaming.

In the 7th Annual Book Fair to Help the Homeless, Bierut turns a black-and-white image of an open book upside down to create the roof of a house. At the bottom of the poster is a small, out-of-scale, solitary wooden chair. In a poster advertising the play The Well of Water, at the Parallax Theatre (one of many posters for the theatre in the show) we see a stark charcoal line drawing of a woman’s hair and upper torso. The rest of her face is created from stylized photographs. The eyes are hot and cold faucet knobs, her mouth the spout of the faucet where the water emerges. What is he saying about The Well of Water using a faucet metaphor to represent a woman's face? One would have to see the advertised play to find out.

There are quite a few stunning pieces in the show designed for the Architectural League of New York. Usually their purpose is to announce a lecture, or an event series. My favorite is Scale. This 36-by-48-inch horizontal has a solid black circle just under 36 inches in diameter anchored to the left edge of the poster. On the far lower right end of the circle is one word reversed out to white. The typography - all caps, san serif bold letters, not more than 1/4” in height - reads “SCALE.” The sheer literal contrast of scale focuses us on one of the most defining principles in art and architecture. This is extremely powerful.

Light Years, also for the Archi- tectural League, overlaps the letters of these two words laid directly over the other in varying translucencies. Without any literal illustration or photography, the layering of the letters on a solid black background visually suggests distance over time as we read the words “light years.”

Another set of posters for the Yale School of Architecture runs the gamut of Bierut’s thinking. Architecture and Psychoanalysis Symposium is both clever and funny. A modernist, 1960s-style psychiatrist’s couch is turned 90 degrees running vertically up the side of the poster. At a moment’s glance our minds transfer the image of the couch into an architectural structure/building.

Then we realize what we are looking at and can’t help but laugh at being let in on the visual and verbal play. Furthermore, we realize that, although the poster was installed vertically, it could also be presented horizontally (as shown above). It is more difficult to read the detailed text in this orientation, but that text now takes on the role of the architectural reference, suggesting a city skyline.

So what does the title 30 Years/90 Notebooks have to do with the show? There are two cabinets displaying many of Bierut’s black-and-white composition notebooks that he started using in 1982. He has accumulated 92 books in his 30-year career and can’t go anywhere without his most current notebook. They are used for everything from client meeting notes to thoughts on design, miscellaneous ideas, doodles, conceptual sketches, and working out his design process on any given commission. Many of the displayed pages allow viewers to make connections and see the thinking behind the work on the walls of the gallery.

Two-page spread from a Michael Bierut notebook

A commemorative poster was designed for the exhibit by Bierut himself and is available for sale at the gallery, signed or unsigned. Michael Bierut: 30 Years/90 Notebooks is on view through January 22, 2012.

Rating: Highly Recommended

Guest reviewer Sara Tack is principal artist at Smith and Jones and adjunct professor of visual communication & design in the Electronic Media Arts and Communication department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

What is Graphic Design

Graphic Style is an older term for the field of Visual Style. This term refers specifically to the use of graphic media (such as color, symbol, and kind) to communicate a style or expression.

Style is the art of expression evolves issue solving that uses centric approaches to fully grasp user needs (as nicely as home business, economic, environmental, social, and other requirements) to produce effective solutions that solve real complications.

Style is frequently utilised as a method to make real change inside a system or market. In other fields and contexts, Design could possibly only refer to Fashion Design or Interior Design. Yet, the similarities between all style disciplines shows that the bigger definition for Style operates at a higher level and across a number of media. Design is everywhere you look from fashion to automotive and even the food business.

Over the course of time style has been the driving force that continually produces change. Style is continuing evolution that is as natural as the air we breathe Style will normally be a thriving force in the way we live as lengthy as individuality exist.

The Design Method is an intricate one, there are numerous steps in completing a cohesive and stimulating design. When designing its very significant that you understand the user needs (as effectively as company customers) this is the 1st step and the most fundamental, with out this your shooting in the dark. Formulate ideas, make outlines or sketches this is consistently a terrific way to begin any job and it's in your finest interest to have numerous. Once you have decided on a style look at all aspects like color, image high quality and type these things can establish if your design will be helpful. Be careful of placement, some designs can be to busy and take away from what could have been a excellent design. Bear in mind, "less is more". And last but not least be confident in your work and know that you developed a fantastic piece of work.

Graphic Design - Give Your Book the Best Look

Differentiation. It is about being original breaking free from the competition leading, not following. Do you want to forge a path away from the crowd, away from the noise, and closer to your customer?

How Will You Be Diverse?

Along with the perfectly picked and placed words that make up the timeless writings that emerge as a cherished book-something we keep by our bed, travel with far and wide or relax with as we curl up in front of a cozy fire-a superior book layout is vital to an author. Specifically to self-published authors who don't have the talented staff of a key publishing home offering style selections.

The job of a graphic designer is to give your book visual life and interest that will add "character" (look and feel) and catch the eye of a passing patron and spark intrigue that will make them choose it up and open the first page, never wanting to set it down. There's an art to giving your carefully chosen words a look and feel that assists them portray hope, emotion or intrigue.

Book Layout

A slight size change, font style or placement on the page can make all the difference in bringing a powerful personality to your fascinating book. Paragraphs need to have to be the suitable length so they don't seem overbearing-not too lengthy, not too short-but cleverly balanced and readable to everyone not just elite readers. I've noticed some books so jumbled and disorganized it would make a man quiver at the mere thought of attempting to read them.

There are lots of ways a graphic designer can help you improve your book sales. There is of course advertising in the form of a flyer, poster, or a magazine ad. You could put together a media package or marketing and advertising kit for your book, which may well incorporate a CD, an ad, a book marker, a coupon for your next book and so on. You might will need invitations to your book signing certain to be in your near future. You could possibly marketplace yourself employing only your name, but a individual logo to brand your item is much much more helpful and expert seeking. You could possibly need to have organization cards and letterhead designed to enhance your branding image. Are you sending out a newsletter to your database? Let a designer develop your newsletter and send it to your customers "spam-free" by way of a permission-based e-mail program. Why not convert your printed book into an e-book you can sell on your web site? What? You don't have a Internet web page? Every writer requirements a web-site and I know of someone who can custom build 1 that ideal serves your wants. Jessica Dockter is the Graphic Designer who works in collaboration with the writers on Write On! Creative Writing Services to supply our clients a full range of services.

Graphic Design - Get the Message! at AIHA

Most of us have tried to figure out where you draw the line between fine art and commercial art. My own favorite answer to that slippery question is that it is entirely a matter of intent (not, as some would have it, a matter of quality).

This sentiment is mirrored by the opening quote of the wonderful exhibition Graphic Design - Get the Message! at the Albany Institute of History & Art (through June 12), which ponders that and more while making great use of the Institute's permanent collection and other local resources to present a broad swath of commercial design by talented artists over several centuries.

Organized into thematic sections (Foundations, Graphic Design and Commerce, Political and Social Messages, and The Creative Process), Get the Message! sprawls through four galleries and features seemingly countless original examples of printed matter in two and three dimensions, augmented by electronic, digital, and multi-media material - an appropriately dense barrage that captures so much of our overloaded everyday visual experience.

After an introductory room that touches on the range of themes with examples as intriguing and diverse as war propaganda posters and a powder-blue Tiffany box, the show delves into history with a large display of old-fashioned letterpress equipment and 19th-century broadsides that represent the birth of modern graphic style.

This room also holds a distracting installation of photographs and pulp bales illustrating the papermaking process as practiced today by key exhibition sponsor Mohawk Fine Papers. While it is a blessing to a struggling museum (is there any other kind these days?) to have such prominent corporate underwriting, I must say it's a shame to see it come at this sort of price.

The next, largest gallery puts out the really colorful stuff we readily think of as showcasing the classic elements of graphic design - illustration and typography - in the form of bright and clever posters from the past hundred or so years (examples shown at the top of this post, and above at left).

It could be argued that the 20th century, with its political causes, social unrest, and explosion of commercial advertising, was the golden age of graphic design, and this room shows why. Whether selling war bonds, popular entertainment, educational toys, or soap, the artists behind these designs knew how to get our attention and make a lasting impression.

I had the company of an old friend and longtime graphic designer on this visit, and it was a pleasure to watch how he viewed the work in this section - moving in close and often marveling at the fine-art techniques, such as charcoal drawing and oil painting, that were employed in the service of these pitches. He frequently commented with amazement at the elaborate lettering that these pre-computer artists routinely hand-painted - a nearly lost art today.

For me, it was the simplest designs that held up the best. One artist featured prominently throughout the exhibition is Woody Pirtle, an internationally-known designer active in the Hudson Valley, whose politically-charged posters use color, shape, type, and iconic images in effortless concert to illuminate, anger, or amuse (example shown above at right).

Pirtle is among several top creators - all with local connections - featured in the last section of the show (Creative Process). The others are illustrators Dahl Taylor and William Westwood; design firms Vicarious Visions and Spiral Design; and early 20th-century designers Will H. Low and Hajo Christoph. All are of the highest quality in the business and have found significant commercial success - who knew the Capital Region was such a hotbed of creative design?

The Creative Process section has the expected preparatory sketches and such, but it also shows elements of the commercial design world not typically seen outside its own confines - promotional pieces in expensively elaborate detail that design firms use to give clients an idea of what they can do. Here, Spiral Design is the mind-blower, and it's here that I think the line gets crossed back over into fine art - because, in this case, the client is the artist, and the intention is to show the artist's skill. It's some pretty amazing stuff, from all the participants, and an impressive capstone to the show's historical lead-in.

Hajo, as he was known, is also featured in a separate exhibition one floor up from Get the Message! that details his personal journey from Berlin to Castleton, where he forged a career designing witty and sophisticated packaging for many local manufacturers (example shown at the bottom of this post). There are abundant examples of Hajo's extraordinary work in both exhibitions, including delightful personal art in watercolor, oils, gouache, and other media.

By the way - here's the quote that starts the exhibition, from Paul Rand (world-famous designer of iconic logos for firms such as IBM, ABC and UPS):

Design is the method of putting form and content together.
Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition.
Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated.

Food for thought, no?

Rating: Highly Recommended

Note: Throughout the run of Graphic Design - Get the Message!, there has been a series of related lectures and events. The next two are coming soon - at 6 p.m. on Friday, May 6 (in conjunction with First Friday), illustrators Dahl Taylor and William Westwood will present; and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 8, Ellen Lupton, the author of Thinking with Type and other design guides, will address the topic How to Do Things with Typography: Introduction to an Art.

Further on, at 2 p.m. on May 22, graphic designer, typographer and calligrapher Paul Shaw will speak and sign his latest book, Helvetica and the New York Subway System; and at 6 p.m. on June 3, Laura Shore will speak on the topic The Truth About Paper.

All the events are free.

Graphic Design Within the Promotional Products Industry

Graphic style is a creative procedure that combines art and technologies to communicate tips. It is the procedure of communicating visually using typography and images to present information and facts and is applied in virtually every single organization or society. Graphic style is utilised whenever visual intricacy and creativity are applied to the presentation of text and imagery. It is also applied to layout and formatting of unlimited varieties of material to make the facts additional accessible and a lot more readily understandable. Graphic design is everywhere, touching every thing we do, every thing we see, everything we acquire: we see it on billboards and in Bibles, on taxi receipts and on web websites, on birth certificates and on gift certificates, on the folded directions inside jars of aspirin and on the thick pages of childrens' picture books. Essentially, on millions of man made objects and items that we see day in, day out.

Graphic design is not just about becoming fluent in some graphic software, but also about communication, solving visual troubles, and, of course, imagination. It is the delivery method for the message you deliver to your target market and is a supporting role, not a leading role. Graphic design is a noble occupation with a real purpose, but for that purpose to be realized, we require to see graphic style for what it in fact is, and have particular humility about it. It is the combination of shapes, colors, typefaces, images and words that trigger you to react or really feel some thing. Graphic style is the art of taking a concept and turning it into an aesthetically pleasing actual world incarnation. It is the inevitable flirtation that makes folks pause and take into consideration alternatives based on a fleeting flip by means of a magazine or package positioned in a store shelf.

Graphic design is becoming a huge gun in the small business arsenal. Despite the fact that just about each and every company uses graphic style, a lot of companies use graphic style as their main service and deliver these creative services to other companies. A growing niche that utilize graphic design inside their day to day business is the promotional products business. Firms inside this sector supply quite a few several sorts of home business gifts, such as personalised pencils, USB flash drives, custom printed mugs, branded biodegradable carrier bags and countless other items to other companies who are wanting to use promotional items to marketplace their business enterprise. The first stage of this process is graphic design. Every product has a printable region or engraving region and a designer will produce some artwork which might possibly include a provider logo, text, or illustration which will then be printed employing a certain printing method suitable for that item.

There are a lot of obtainable on the world wide web, some of which provide a vast quantity of data.

A Good Graphic Design Attracts Potential Buyers

colorful images to give so much influence on people. Colors, fancy fonts, pictures, and another part to create an attractive effect that people admire no matter the subject is that this particular image. These colorful images are possible through the use of graphic design. Therefore, the subject of logos, magazine covers, and advertising to name a few are attractive and can easily attract the attention of many people.

Graphic design is not merely a combination of symbols, text, images, and wrapped in fancy colors and styles. Its purpose is to talk with people. It is assumed that the message to people about certain things through the use of visual representations of those images. It's so amazing to know that not only in modern days, but during the first days in Europe, these types of graphics already begun.

It was the 19th century, when graphic design got involved as the design industry began to flourish. Famous people such as Henry Cole during these periods is argued that the importance of this type of industry works so well in his business. Moving to 20 century, more development of this industry was due to the movement called the Private Press.

Graphic design is used in various fields. It is used in education, advertising, and entertainment to name a few. Under the field of education, for example, this type of design is important in making students understand a particular subject carefully. Anatomy, geography, and even in mathematics, this design does not only reduce boredom on those topics, but also helps students have a clear picture of what they are studying.

in the business world on the other hand, graphic design also plays an important role in attracting potential customers. Colors and the entire look of a product affect many people's curiosity. The visual presentation is also working on other manuals such as the one you see on the airplane brochures. This makes the passengers understand clearly things-to-do and the board.

art art, typography, page layout, interface design, graphics, and chromatics are some important things that are associated with graphic design. All these elements work together for a successful outcome. In addition, not all items displayed on a computer screen will be the same after they are printed out. This is due to the ability of human eyes perceive things differently.

Color Moves at RPI's Shelnutt Gallery

I'm glad the exhibition Color Moves at RPI's Shelnutt Gallery continues through the end of March, which is not Black History Month, though it did begin on Feb. 1, which is. Yes, the five artists in the exhibition (Francelise Dawkins, Ayriel Hunt, Femi M. Johnson, George W. Simmons, and Stephen Tyson) are black - but they have a lot more in common, and a lot more to offer viewers, than their racial identity.

Before I get into the specific qualities of the works in the show, allow me to ponder the issue of segregation. The art world is largely liberal, but segregation can exist there as much as anywhere. And it doesn't necessarily have to do with race, nor is it necessarily bad. For example, we regularly segregate artists by medium - showing painters with painters, sculptors with sculptors and so on. There is also a tendency to separate older artists from younger ones, male from female, conceptual from representational, major from minor. These types of divisions often make sense and help the viewer understand the work within its context.

A lot of times, though, I think curators go too far to separate. While women artists were unfortunately ignored through most of history, does it make sense in 2011 to have a show just of women artists? Ethnicity is another tricky zone - we probably wouldn't balk at the idea of a show featuring Asian or Latino artists, and clearly it's considered good politics (especially in February!) to organize a show around the artists' blackness - but what would happen should someone mount an exhibition specifically restricted to the work of gay white men, or American Muslims? I'm just not sure I see the use in all that.

So I'm glad this show of five worthy artists has its month of March. The gallery has a tradition of showing ethnic artists' work, and that's a fine thing to do; it is a fairly non-traditional space upstairs in the Rensselaer Student Union, where the walls are clean and the lighting effective, though it also serves as a meeting room, so access can be limited and the furnishings do get in the way a bit. If you go, the best bet for parking is in the visitor lot next door, where meters can be fed.

This year's edition of Color Moves (it's an ongoing series) weaves common threads and themes among the group: colorful abstraction fairly dominates, collage is the medium of three of the artists, and there is a certain graphism throughout. Two of the artists are using non-rectangular shapes, and the materials are mostly outside of the mainstream (fabric, carbon paper, wood, acetate).

All this makes for a fresh and compatible array of artists who are nonetheless rather divergent in their approaches and (one would assume) intents. The oddest one out would be Hunt, who is a student at RPI whose work fits squarely in the mode of graphic design (one piece is shown at the bottom of this post), and has the clearest messages in it. Her deft, assured drawing style blunts the force of Hunt's confrontational subject matter, which seems to be suburban black youths' need to be more aware of history.

Also somewhat narrative are Johnson's painterly collages, made of torn paper fragments that articulate figures in a very loose way and use color whimsically. I especially like the most recent of his four pieces in the show, titled Night Train (another, titled Village Keeper is shown above at right).

Dawkins' and Tyson's works are intermingled on one wall, nearly competing with each other in terms of vivid color and rounded forms (one of Dawkins', titled Sanctuary/Still Waters is shown at the top of this post; one of Tyson's, titled Tempo, is shown above at left). Dawkins, a fabric collagist, wields a wild pair of scissors to make vibrant compositions that are as complex as they are playful. Two earlier pieces (both circular) are more muted, layered, and soft than the two newer ones, which are more direct. The larger of the two, which is her only rectangular piece in the show, is liberally peppered with images of fruits and birds.

Tyson, a Siena College professor, has a history of making busily patterned abstract paintings. His four pieces in this show, all dated 2009, are brightly painted, shaped planks and slabs of wood with stripes, color-field elements, soft geometry, and metallic gold. Their rhythms show jazz as a clear influence, but two of the titles (Asteck and Eltem) mystify.

Simmons appears to be the most prolific of the group. His 12 collaged drawings in the show include four from earlier periods (1996, 2004 and 2005), two from 2010, and six from 2011, and they remain consistent throughout. Still, though I've known Simmons and his work for 30 years, I am still hard pressed to describe or explain it.

A pair of "self-portraits" (one is shown above at left) are somewhat revealing of the artist's thoughts, while containing elements of the other works. Altogether, they are crudely assembled with bits of Scotch tape, yet elegantly ethereal. Simmons incorporates scraps of his own work in various media to make these pieces, which represent a truly personal vocabulary that only a dedicated and quirky artist could possess.

Rating: Recommended

Vignette at the Arts Center

Also in Troy (through Mar. 20) and not to be missed is a very thoughtfully curated exhibition of five artists at The Arts Center of the Capital Region titled Vignette. Joel Griffith, Ingrid Ludt, GG Roberts, Rebecca Shepard, and Ann Wolf are a rather eclectic bunch who have been brought together by the ex-Metroland critic Nadine Wasserman, who wrote this statement:

For much of art history, narrative art functioned as a way to tell a story or to represent a religious, historical, or allegorical event. With the advent of modernism, however, direct story telling was derided and the narrative form was transformed by abstraction and non-linearity. With postmodernism the narrative remained suspect and artists created multifaceted work that further fractured the notion of “grand” narratives. But artists have never stopped creating narrative work. Even abstract and non-representational art can be narrative and can contain coded references to political, social, and personal issues. This exhibition presents five artists each working with narrative structure but each bringing to it a unique approach. Taken together these artists present a variety of styles encompassing abstraction, surrealism, seriality, realism, and fiction.

In quick capsules: Roberts' three paintings in the show are exuberantly kitschy - I wish there were more of them here to see; Ludt offers 18 works, in a group of 10 slightly larger ones and eight slightly smaller ones - they are gestural, intuitional, oddly colored, light; Wolf uses gouache in monochromatic swaths of expert rendering to evoke fairytale landscapes; Shepard's pencil drawings subtly seduce the eye with sad little tales, while paired drawings and patterned-paper collages nearly steal the show; and Griffith's masterfully painted streets are a blend of Maxfield Parrish and Gregory Crewdson - first noticed at the 2010 Mohawk Hudson Regional, he is a force to be reckoned with (the image below is titled Scism Road, Trailer).