Just came across some awesome blackboard typography/design by Dana Tanamachi. Anyone who’s ever tried doing anything remotely creative can attest to the challenge of writing on vertical surfaces as apposed to conventional illustration and design which makes this all the more awesome. It’s one thing to crank this out on a computer, its something else to crank it out by hand.
Loving the lettering here. I also found a great video over on GRAPHIC FURY showing these guys putting together a complex piece for a bar in Paris.
Update: Turns out Dana’s got her own time lapses of her work going up you can check them out here.
Made this as part of a playlist I put together for my Dad this last Christmas.
The cover was just something I put together using Faith’s photography from a shoot she did in the New Forest with my friend Chris and his band. I’m trying to experiment more with type and print more these days when I’m not 9 to 5-ing. As part of this I’m starting an endeavour in printmaking that should take me through to the summer, 2012 is looking pretty exciting so far. Results to follow!
El Lissitzky was someone I heard about early on back at University who was a Russian Artist and Designer. He worked on a range of materials but the thing that stands out for me is his work in print, namely due to the unique style which draws on design schools like constructivism quite heavily. The work El Lissitzky did was also at a period when designers, in their presentation of work were crossing boundaries as artists, craftsfolk and even philosophers in their interpretation of texts and the ways they chose to present them. Throughout his life El Lissitzky held the belief that design could and should be used to motivate change and this was reflected in his work with the Communist party in Russia.
El Lissitzky himself started as a designer for Jewish childrens books and moved in to teaching within and working for the Soviet Government throughout his life. Even if his work today seems abstract and foreign to many his influence is remarkable in the field of contemporary graphic design. His work if anything is intellient, compelling and something that even today teaches us a massive amount the potentials and scope for design and the role of the designer.
I’ve recently felt challenged to start a series of posts on Christians who have served as both inspiration and as signposts to a deeper, simpler and raw form of faith. People who have never really earned major publicity but have quietly and consistently tried to mold their lives on the character of Christ and his teachings. I’m calling this series ‘Another World is Possible‘ based off the initiative started by Christian activist and author Shane Claiborne.
The first person I’m writing about is a poet called James K. Baxter who died in 1972. During his life, James was one of the first people who really experimented with Hippy Communes in New Zealand, being a founding member of the Ngāti Hau or Jerusalem commune. He was one of the first people in New Zealand who authentically took his identity and language increasingly from the Maori people who had before then lived alongside white settlers but seen little to no exchange since settling. Throughout James’s work he adopted Maori’s language into his poetry believing that the culture of New Zealand’s settler community’s cultural dominance resulted in an arrogant ethnocentrism that left that culture spiritually impoverished.
‘Ko te Maori te tuakna. Ko te Pakeha te teina …’ The Maori [sic] is indeed the elder brother and the Pakeha [sic] the younger brother. But the teina has refused to learn from the tuakana. He has sat sullenly among his machines and account books, and wondered why his soul was full of bitter dust – James K. Baxter via John Newton from his book ‘The Double Rainbow‘
This contrasts quite sharply with the recent speech given by David Cameron’s perception of Christianity, England and the Bible given his recent speech marking the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.
The other driving influence on James’s life was his Catholic faith, which developed through his life and drew him deeper in to a form of ascetism in the face of what he saw as the culture of individualism, selfishness, ‘spirtlessness and meanness’ in the wider non-Maori zeitgeist. Baxter’s experimentation with communes came out of drawing on Maori culture and the communes Baxter was involved in were places where individuals of Maori and Non-Maori heritage lived together. This is what makes Baxter somewhat unique amongst poets in that he was not comfortable in simply commenting on the social norms of his time but actively tried to change them, a prophet and a poet. He saw himself as a Catholic, a Christian humanist and someone aspiring to fully embrace the dual heritage of his homeland. He was a Catholic who through his work in the Jerusalem Commune (and its various offshoots) was also trying to repair the damage that colonial minded mission had wracked on first people communities where it encountered them.
Baxter through Jerusalem sought a form of utopian experiment, seeing that ‘white’ culture had failed the youth in the communities and created an environment that not only provided material shelter but acted as a political theater that signposted what he believed to be a move in positive change. The tension Baxter found with this however was the more popular Jerusalem was the more burden it placed on the community which could only tolerate so much. The Jerusalem commune continued after Baxter’s death in 1972 but did eventually disperse, instead creating a network of houses and places to crash that took the Jerusalem spirit back in to urban contexts with mission in mind.
The thing that makes Baxter stand out for me is the fact that his poetry, when you read it and what he achieved in life very much seemed to go actively hand in hand. There was a consistency in James K Baxter the poet, James K Baxter the activist and James K Baxter the Christian. When I first heard about James K Baxter it hit me at a time when I was busy reading, I was also busy talking, but I wasn’t doing much. He was someone who said and acted on what he believed in who united his faith in both tradition and a contemporary setting and fully embraced multiculturalism at the same time. Not even just embracing it but making it his own and communicating through it from a authentically grassroots perspective.
I think even today someone like Baxter would look at the spirit of our age, our zeitgeist and comment on its emptiness and overt individualism present in this our media saturated enviroment. The challenge, if he gave one, I think would be to rediscover the authentic, to not be scared of something that is different but at the same time to be willing to call aspects of our society and ourselves in to account and to then go and do something about it.
If you work in the creative industries or anything associated to that your probably no stranger to late nights. Whether its purely out of passion or something a little more formal you’ve had times when you’ve been well over your eyeballs when it comes to work. The trap exists that in being busy you end being more machine than (wo)man just by trying to get things done in a tried and tested way. The catch is though that by that point, if it keeps up, is that your well on your way to stagnation and finding yourself in a rut with whatever your doing. Thats not cool.
More Signal, less noise
Many folks I’ve talked to, and the thing I’ve found myself, is that when your working the trick is, at a basic level, simply learn to absorb more. If I’ve found myself working non-stop I try, when I’ve got a spare moment to surround myself with inspiration. The other side of this is cutting out the noise around you. Social media is a big killer and whilst your twitter feed might be awesome, it can really help just by saying ‘I’m killing it for the morning’. This allows you to focus yourself, work quicker and instead surround yourself with purposeful directed content. More meaning per mark and all that.
Have a library
I find sometimes when I’ve found something really interesting but don’t have time to read rather than dismissing it or instead reading it when you really don’t have time it really helps to have some place to store such things. That way when I do have the time, in the evening or even on the way home, I can focus on it. I tend to find Zootool being my weapon of choice when it comes to something like this.
Commit to learning
I’ve recently been making the most of my Treehouse account but even if you don’t have something like this theres no shortage of tutorials on subjects like the web, graphic design or illustration. Committing to doing a Treehouse badge or a tutorial once a week, even twice a month goes a long way to keeping your skills sharp and up to date.
Have a vision
The easiest thing is to get caught up on getting by. Knowing what you want is key to progression, getting asked ‘where do I see myself in 5 years?’ in a job interview is also a good indicator of employers trying to figure out whether or not you fit in to a company. An equally good question is where do you see where your current employer in five years, is there a vision? Where do you fit in? Having a grasp of the big picture will make the everyday seem more purposeful and more of a step on the way than just another day in the studio. It will also help you figure out the kind of work you want to do and the kind of people you want to do that with. This is the key to avoiding a rut I think.
I hope this helps!
