In Black and Gold: Jean Jullien

Jean Jullien’s sweet summer goblin cover for the Yale University Art Gallery 2009 Calendar!

Jean is a mega-talented London-based illustrator & designer who has a penchant for cuddly characters, costumes, and cut paper. His three-dimensional cover for Victionary’s 2008 Stereographics: Graphics in New Dimensions caught the eyes of the design world, and he’s since finished a number of projects and produced new exhibition work that explores an expanding galaxy of characters and his own playful visual language. Jullien gradated from Central Saint Martins just last year and is now studying at the Royal College of Art while continuing to produce a steady stream of colorful commerical work for clients like Print Magazine and The Guardian.

In Black and Gold: Non-Format

Non-Format’s stellar cover for the Yale University Art Gallery’s Summer 2009 Calendar!

This gem of a design sparkles with custom typography that Non-Format designed specifically for the YUAG cover. What’s wonderful is how the gentle abstraction they deployed to create the letterforms lends itself to the satisfying activity of decoding the expected series of words, yet the overall design can be appreciated on a purely formal level.

Non-Format is the international design super-team of Kjell Ekhorn and Jon Forss. Working together for nearly ten years, the pair have produced a steady stream of innovative design and illustration. Their list of clients is star-studded with names like Coca-Cola, Nike, M&CSaatchi, Graniph, the Tate Modern and EMI (among many others). They have art directed the independent music monthly The Wire and also Varoom: the journal of illustration and made images. In 2007, Die Gestalten Verlag published Non-Format Love Song, an artist monograph that features their award-winning work.

In Black and Gold: Steven Harrington

Steven Harrington’s Summer 2009 calendar cover for the Yale University Art Gallery!

Steven’s addition to the series features his adorable personal iconography in a collegiate still life, complete with yarn ornaments and anthropomorphic objects. Harrington is based out of Los Angeles (check out the behind-the-magic peek into his California home at Design*Sponge) and has produced a stunning array of graphic gems, stellar art, and awesome goods under his own name and as co-owner and director of the graphic design studio National Forest Design. With influences ranging from classic Time-Life Encyclopedias circa 1965-1972, to thrift stores, owls, and the Moody Blues, Harrington’s distinctive style merges hand-drawn nostalgia with illustrative and dimensional cut paper objects, creating a recognizable universe of playful characters, symbols, and starscapes. His work has been exhibited widely, in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Paris, Berlin, Milan, Tokyo, Montreal, and Melbourne.

In Black and Gold: Emigre

Summer is definitely here in the balmy Northeast, and that means it’s time to feature another set of Yale University Art Gallery Calendar Covers!

This cover for the Summer 2009 calendar is by digital typeface pioneers and respected graphic design publishing luminaries Emigre (Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko), and utilizes a typeface Emigre distributes (a shadowed Los Feliz by Christian Schwartz) against Puzzler type designed by Zuzana. Emigre is widely recognized as a hugely influential force in the field of digital typography and design, known both for designing or releasing many cutting-edge typefaces– early dot-matrix fonts, high-resolution typefaces, and vector-based designs– as well as for publishing Emigre magazine between 1984 and 2005. The magazine was a venue for radical digital experimentation, highlighting the potential of the studio’s innovative typeface design and establishing an early forum for a growing community of digital designers. The entire run of Emigre is now part of the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection.

In Black and Gold: Labour

Labour is a do-it-all creative office in Williamsburg headed by Ryan Dunn and Wyeth Hansen, long-time collaborators who lend their magic touch to just about every type of media: video, typography, illustration, identity work, music composition, and so on. Recently they focused their prodigious talents on creating this cutting-edge design for the Yale University Art Gallery Calendar Cover Series.

Ryan and Wyeth are also ADC Young Guns, part of a cohort of top under-30 creative professionals recognized for their visionary and highly personal approach to design, typography, and media. They recently sat down for an interview about their work. For more video goodness, check out their website, which is chock full of reels for clients ranging from VH1 to the Museum of Modern Art and AIGA. Hot stuff!

Conversation Starter

2008 postcard for the Yale University Art Gallery’s Parents’ Weekend schedule of events.

Ever So Memorable

 2008 Members’ Events postcard for the Yale University Art Gallery.

This postcard was featured as a winning entry in Print Magazine’s 2008 Regional Design Annual. The issue of the Annual was a very special one for us– we created the cover and the six spreads that introduced each regional section. It was quite an honor to work with the amazing staff at Print on this project, and we were thrilled with the chance to experiment with dimensional type in a way we’d only dreamed about, using the facilities at the Yale School of Art.

In Black and Gold: Hort

The leaves are starting to change colors and there’s a chill in the air. What’s one thing to look forward to with the turn of the seasons? Another set of awesome Yale University Art Gallery covers by some of the most creative and interesting designers and graphic artists around the world. This Fall, international design super-center Hort lent their tremendous talents to creating a unique still life that mirrors and subverts traditional Autumnal displays. It’s an excellent addition to the Art Gallery Calendar Cover series!

In Black and Gold: Damien Correll

All over the United States, millions of students are returning to school. The youth of America are settling down with their books and schedules, finding their way through the maze that is the new school year. Yes, Fall 2008 is definitely in the air, and what better marker than a new contribution by Damien Correll to the Yale University Art Gallery Calendar Cover series?

Damien does really amazing type work and illustration from his studio in Brooklyn. He’s a member of the creative powerhouse Rad Mountain, and Damien’s signature style has made an impact for clients ranging from Nike and Urban Outfitters, to awesome arts magazines like Swindle, Juxtapoz, and Faesthetic. His illustrations and type are complex and playful, fun and bright– and the design he created for this calendar cover is just a-MAZE-ing! We love it.

In Black and Gold: Todd St. John

Yes, summer may be winding down. But some design stands the test of time. Todd St. John’s handsome woodcut fold-out type for the Yale University Art Gallery Calendar Cover series certainly looks brilliantly cool and contemplative (and organic and fun!) no matter what the season. It’s a beautiful contribution to the series, which invites talented designers to render standard text for the Gallery’s seasonal calendar of events.

In Black and Gold: Parra

Parra’s recent cover for the Summer 2008 Yale University Art Gallery calendar cover series.

We are big fans of Parra and love his smooth lines whether they are black and gold or hot pink, orange and electric blue!

Celebration with Distinction

Here’s a postcard featuring some type play created for the Yale University Art Gallery. The event being promoted with this postcard was an end-of-the-year celebration for students involved at the Gallery, and their families. The play with angles and curves– which often occurs in type created for the Gallery– reference the Louis Kahn building in which part of the Gallery is housed.

In Black and Gold: Seymour Chwast

Summer 2008 has brought another onslaught of brilliant designs for the Yale University Art Gallery’s Calendar Cover Series. Three artists created designs for this season’s calendar, which we’ll be rolling out this week for your viewing pleasure!

Our first design is from Seymour Chwast, and features his current interest in intricate all-over patterning. Chwast founded Pushpin Studios in 1954, and together with co-founders Milton Glaser and Edward Sorel, went on to create some of the most sizzling graphics of the late twentieth century. Gluekit is a huge fan of the studio’s Push Pin Graphic, which paved the way for many of the studio and designer zines of today. Great stuff– and look out below!

In Black and Gold: Ryan Waller

Last Spring, Mr. Ryan Waller did a most excellent and spring-a-licious design for the Yale University Art Gallery’s Calendar Cover Series. As he does so well, Ryan brought a sense of humor and a fine eye for detail and fun to the party. 

Also be sure to check out Ryan’s shirts and totebags (Library and Museum), available from Part of it.

In Black and Gold: Karel Martens

Here’s another fantastic cover from the Yale University Art Gallery typographic calendar cover series! This one was created by Karel Martens, revered Dutch graphic designer and typographic master. Martens founded and currently supervises the Werkplaats Typografie (WT) program at the ArtEZ Institute of Art in the Netherlands; two monographs, Printed Matter (1996) and Counterprint (2004), have been published about his substantial contributions to the fields of art and design.

One of the wonderful things about the calendar series has been the opportunity to juxtapose generations of designers and various approaches to typography. The Gallery was honored by Martens’s Fall 2007 eye-opening contribution.

Let’s Talk About Art, Baby

Type work for the Yale University Art Gallery.

Fresh New Type for Members!

2008 Members’ Events postcard for the Yale University Art Gallery

Family Day

Happy little triangle families and bright blue dotted shadow paths! It’s Family Day (at the Yale University Art Gallery). Courtesy of our friend the potato print, in conjunction with a nice palette of paint and some fresh  brushes.

Wim Crouwel: International Man of Style

Last week Gluekit attended a very nice AIGA evening event at the New School in New York. After a quick jaunt uptown to take in the Kara Walker retrospective at the Whitney, and a narrow avoidance with some dodgy character blocking up the subway lines, Gluekit settled into cozy seats at the Tishman Auditorium and took in a conversation with two pioneers of modernism, Wim Crouwel and Massimo Vignelli, moderated by Alice Twemlow.  There’s a nicely detailed announcement of the talk here, and as usual AIGA did a fabulous job of organizing the event. It’s always sweet to attend a well-handled lecture, that starts on time, is handled deftly, and that does what it’s supposed to do. In this case, Twemlow scurried hither and thither across the careers of both men, teasing out commonalities and differences, and showing the wide swathe of each man’s design legacy. It was a great session, and for us, Wim totally rocked our sox. There’s something appealing about the application of a system of production that’s reliable, extensible and modular.

Favorite moment? When, after a review of Crouwell’s New Alphabet, Twemlow threw up the album cover for Joy Division’s Substance and noted, to gasps of realization from the audience, that the cover actually reads “Substamce.” It was a beautiful moment of collective realization.

Glukit likes grids, modernism, and mistakes.