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15 August, 2022

3×3 Magazine Profile of Illustrator Katherine Lam

Out now! My profile of illustrator Katherine Lam in Issue 30 of 3×3 Magazine. Here is an excerpt:

Theatrical lighting is a consistent motif in this work. Most of Katherine’s editorial illustrations are set in the late afternoon, early evening, or at some indeterminate time of night which results in heavy shadows for the late afternoon illustrations and predominantly inky backgrounds for the others. (Or as Katherine put it in a recent social media post, “Damn my images are dark af!”) Somber palettes allow Katherine to articulate space, create depth, and add drama with judicious hits of brighter colors. “I use light and shadow to make my environments feel surreal,” says Katherine. “I don’t see a point in making things realistic or grounded in reality because photography can achieve that quicker and better. Also, my subjects tend to be rather mundane and boring—usually just a person sitting or standing in front of a building or setting—so by lighting a scene in an unnatural but still believable way I can add some interest to my work.”

Although the ethos of film may be its crux, Katherine’s illustrations nonetheless harness the aesthetic cues of traditional media, including visible brushstrokes, roughened textures, and washes of modulated color. “It’s all digital, even the brushstrokes,” explains Katherine. “I don’t like the flatness of digital art so I put a lot of textures back into my work.” The result makes for a surprisingly good marriage between two starkly different aesthetic impulses: cinematography and painting. It is as though Katherine’s work is a digital amalgam of John Ford’s long shots, Citizen Kane’s high-intensity carbon arc lighting, and Edward Hopper’s painterly alienation.

Read the entire profile (as well as prior articles) under Design is Play Articles. [MF]

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14 November, 2017

CCA Angie Wang and Mark Fox Graphic Design Scholarship

A group photo from California College of the Arts’ latest annual scholarship dinner!

Kirk Johnson (to Angie’s right) is the recipient of our recently endowed Angie Wang and Mark Fox Graphic Design Scholarship.

Also with Angie is Monotype Award and Steve Renick Memorial Scholarship recipient Mark Buenefe (far left), and Steve Reoutt Memorial Scholarship recipient Rebecca Kao. (Missing from this photo is Monotype Award winner Jacqueline Lau and Mark.) Congratulations all!

(photo: Olivia Smartt Photography)

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7 September, 2017

Play Press: The Design of Dissent

(clockwise from top left) Trump 24K Gold-Plated, Republican Contract on America, howiloveya and Beware of God.

Milton Glaser and Mirko Ilić’s “Expanded Edition” of The Design of Dissent includes posters from Design is Play, BlackDog, and California College of the Arts!

We are honored that our 2016 poster Trump 24K Gold-Plated shares a spread with work from Barbara Kruger and Edel Rodriguez. Earlier BlackDog posters are also represented, including Republican Contract on America (1995), howiloveya (1998), and Beware of God (1992).

Student work from my CCA Graphic Design 1 classes includes posters by Dan Covert and Wishmini Perera. [MF]

See our Trump 24K Gold-Plated poster and others under Design is Play Studio Posters.

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7 February, 2017

Play Press: Typography 38

Both Trump 14K Gold-Plated and Trump 24K Gold-Plated were selected for inclusion in the 2017 Annual of the Type Directors Club, Typography 38. (It was designated a “Judge’s Choice” by juror Spencer Charles.) In addition to being exhibited in New York City, our posters and the other winning entries will tour cities in the United States, Canada, China, England, France, Germany, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

See other posters under Design is Play Studio Posters.

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1 February, 2017

CCA Angie Wang and Mark Fox Graphic Design Scholarship

Congratulations to Kirk Johnson, the first recipient of the recently endowed Angie Wang and Mark Fox Graphic Design Scholarship! (This was a five-year effort on our part.) Kirk embodies the quality of student at CCA that our scholarship was intended to support. We look forward to celebrating with future recipients!

(photo: Nikki Ritcher Photography)

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28 November, 2016

Symbols: A Lecture and Book Party at CCA, 11.21.2016

We had the pleasure of celebrating the publication of our book Symbols: A Handbook for Seeing with a lecture and book signing at California College of the Arts where we teach. It was a treat to see so many current and former students! Our friend and colleague Bob Aufuldish provided introductions, and Mac Warrick from ARCH Art & Drafting Supply was there to sell copies of the book—which we slowly signed. (Thank you Bob and Mac!)

Watch the lecture:

Symbols: Angie Wang + Mark Fox at CCA (24:50)

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8 June, 2015

Play Press: Becoming a Graphic and Digital Designer

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“Mark Fox: The Mark Maker,” an interview with Mark Fox in the Fifth Edition of Becoming a Graphic and Digital Designer by Steven Heller and Véronique Vienne, published by Wiley. Other featured designers and illustrators include Michael Bierut, Charles Spencer Anderson, Mirko Ilic, Steve Brodner, and CCA colleague Erik Adigard, among many others.

Not all of the original interview questions and answers are included in the book. The following excerpts may be of interest to students or those with a particular love of symbol design:

SH: How do you know when it is right?

When the idea is smart or original; when the forms are beautiful or well-crafted; when I like looking at it. When possible, I strive to create trademarks that don’t simply identify, but that pull the eye and hold it; that reward repeated viewings.

French designer Philippe Starck has said that “The first rule of design is to bring happiness.” Although Starck was speaking of his own work for Jean Paul Gaultier, I nevertheless think of this quote when I design. How do I know when it is right? When it brings me happiness.

A few of the marks that others have designed that I believe are “right” and that make me happy: Allianz Versicherungs (Karl Schulpig, 1923); Piet Zwart’s personal mark, 1928; Eveready Battery (unknown, c. 1930’s); Borzoi Books (Paul Rand, 1945); Railex (Woody Pirtle, 1984); Lone Star Donuts (Rex Peteet, 1985).

SH: Marks are not supposed to be too complicated, why not?

From a purely pragmatic perspective, simple marks are more easily reproducible in a variety of media and contexts. The demands of cheap offset printing on inferior substrates (such as newsprint) have been supplanted by the demands of the screen and a 32 x 32 pixel space. Although the primary medium for display may have changed, the underlying formal problem remains unchanged.

As I tell my students, the trick is to create a mark that is simultaneously simple but distinctive; that reproduces well in one color at less than half an inch, but that nonetheless pulls one’s eye and engages one’s mind. If one can solve this problem, one can use the mark anywhere.

SH: Did anyone, like Saul Bass, influence what and how you do what you do?

Saul Bass designed some striking posters and film sequences, but he was never one of my influences.

In the context of trademarks, my first significant influence was Michael Schwab. I became familiar with Michael’s work from my mom’s issues of “Communication Arts” which she subscribed to in the 1970’s. (My mom Eunice worked as a typesetter in a print shop when I was in high school.) Michael is a master of simplified (silhouetted) forms which he uses to design his distinctive posters and trademarks. I had the good fortune to work with Michael when I first moved to San Francisco in 1985, and his bold, stripped-down approach continues to resonate with me nearly thirty years later. (Michael, it should be noted, owes some of his success to two earlier designers who implicitly understood the power of the silhouette: Ludwig Hohlwein and Lucian Bernhard.)

Although I didn’t find a copy until perhaps 1986, Leslie Cabarga published the first of his A Treasury of German Trademarks in 1982 and it was a revelation: I felt like I suddenly gained the gift of sight. Karl Schulpig! My god. And Wilhelm Deffke of Wilhelmwerk: between 1915 and 1919 this German studio pioneered a reductivist approach to trademark design that proved to be decades ahead of its time, at least when compared with American trends. Wilhelmwerk’s forms are simple, compact, and unapologetically black. (Look up Deffke’s symbol for Eisenhand to see what I mean.) In the essay “A Mentor” reprinted in his 1993 book Design, Form and Chaos, Paul Rand cites both Karl Schulpig and Wilhelm Deffke as important influences, as well as others whose work I would eventually discover, among them: F.H. Ehmcke, O.H.W. Hadank, Max Körner, Fortunato Depero, and Hans Schleger (a.k.a. Zéro).

I believe that the best trademarks have a timeless quality, and so I am not embarrassed to admit that the designers whose work inspires me the most were at their prime nearly 100 years ago. My work and approach are rooted in a tradition of craft; the challenge, of course, is to harness this tradition while nonetheless creating work that has currency.

Download the interview as a PDF.

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4 May, 2015

Play Press: Communication Arts

plog_4_MAY_2015 Communication Arts May/June 2015 Cover

We are thrilled to be featured in Communication Arts’ May/June issue. The profile of Design is Play is written by Jessica Carew Kraft and includes a range of our work, including collaborations with former Credo Creative Director Steve Lyons and Los Angeles illustrator Greg Clarke.

We especially like the summary of the article on CA’s Table of Contents page: “A master of bold identity marks and a refined typography connoisseur marry talents in a dynamic San Francisco design partnership.” The marriage is metaphorical, of course, but it is romantic nonetheless.

Thank you to Patrick and Jean Coyne for this honor, and to Jessica for the article!

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18 August, 2014

Design is Play Archive

Justin Holbrook’s 2008 recontextualization of the classic fairytale Hansel and Gretel

Our original (non-responsive) Design is Play website is now accessible at designisplay/archive. This older site includes work from many of our former CCA students featured in projects from Angie’s Type 1 class and Mark’s Graphic Design 1 class. Student work can be found in the Classroom section of the site.

Pictured above are two spreads from Justin Holbrook’s 2008 recontextualization of the classic fairytale Hansel and Gretel.

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21 April, 2014

Play Press: Design School Wisdom

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We are pleased to have some of our “wisdom” anthologized in this new offering from Chronicle Books which is edited by Brooke Johnson and Jennifer Tolo Pierce. Angie recalls what she learned from her first graphic design instructor at CCA, Steve Reoutt; Mark offers some simple advice about hierarchy. You can read our comments (as well as others we shared with Brooke) in one of our earlier plog posts from 4 March, 2013.

The views of many of our colleagues from CCA are represented in Design School Wisdom, including Bob Aufuldish, Leslie Becker, Rachel Berger, Dennis Crowe, Melanie Doherty, Eric Heiman, Emily McVarish, and Michael Vanderbyl. (Co-editor Brooke Johnson has taught at CCA as well.)

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14 April, 2014

René Knip at CCA, 4.10.2014

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René at his Saturday workshop with CCA students, “The Architectural Letter.”

In town for the TYPO conference, we had the pleasure of bringing Dutch designer and typographer René Knip to California College of the Arts to give a lecture to CCA’s graphic design students and faculty. I had the honor of introducing René prior to his lecture; what follows are excerpts from my remarks:

René has a fierce love of typographic forms, and this love is most often expressed in a material—and spatial—context. In a 2011 interview, René said: “I use letters like a photographer does a camera: I use them to illustrate emotions.”

These emotions are evoked by a typography that is liberated from the page and screen and made manifest in the physical world. It joyfully inhabits this world, interacting with it: René’s letters move, cast shadows, get wet, and age. Whether formed of water cut steel, milled aluminum, sand-blasted stone, or ceramic tile, René consistently creates typography with a monumental presence that is nonetheless idiosyncratic and personal. His is a typography with a point of view.

René Knip studied graphic design at the Academy of Visual Arts St. Joost, Breda, where he worked under type designer Chris Brand, perhaps best known for the face Albertina. On graduation, Knip worked for three years as the assistant designer to Anthon Beeke. In 1992 he started his own studio, Atelier René Knip, or A.R.K.

In 2012 René launched the type foundry arktype.nl with Janno Hahn. Together they have released 25 typefaces specifically designed for use in architectural lettering and environmental graphics.

In an age in which graphic design is increasingly virtual and temporal, I take great pleasure in the work of a designer that is so concrete—and literally so. [MF]

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9 September, 2013

CCA Graphic Design Program Avatar

Not that CCA’s Graphic Design Program needed a Facebook avatar, but, what the hell. Here is Mark’s original inking for the surprisingly energetic skull, as well as CCA alumna Nami Kurita displaying the die-cut sticker version of the design on her iPhone. Design or Die!

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11 March, 2013

Angie at Play

Angie Wang’s photographs (1:25)
Amsterdam, Paris, and St. Petersburg, 2004–2007.

Beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look. —John Cage

Prior to a trip to Paris in 2004, Mark asked me to return with responses to the following prompts:
The best visual contrast;
The most beautiful piece of type;
The most lush color combination;
The most memorable bite (flavor);
A fifth sensation of note.

These images are the result of what has become an ongoing exercise in my paying attention. Whether with photographs, sketches, or journal entries, I’ve learned to document my travels in an active way because it heightens my awareness of what I see and experience.

Mark and I incorporated a version of this exercise into our 2007 summer study abroad class in Amsterdam. As we stated in our syllabus, “The act of seeing is made more acute by the act of recording.” [AW]

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4 March, 2013

Design School Wisdom

Our friend and colleague Brooke Johnson from Chronicle Books in San Francisco is working on a new title with Jennifer Tolo Pierce called Design School Wisdom, a compilation of quotes from teachers and students. Brooke asked us to submit some quotes for possible inclusion in the book which we share below.

(left) Jeff Wasserman outside his studio in Santa Monica, 2009. (right) Mark Fox photographed by Michael Schwab for one of Michael’s posters, 1986.

(left) Jeff Wasserman outside his studio in Santa Monica, 2009. (right) Mark Fox photographed by Michael Schwab for one of Michael’s posters, 1986.

Being self-taught as a designer, I didn’t attend design school. I did, however, work at a few jobs during and after college that exposed me to some workplace wisdom.

One of my jobs in college—around 1982—was to work for Wasserman Silk Screen Co. in Santa Monica, California. Jeff Wasserman set up the original screen printing shop at Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles, and has printed for a number of well-known artists, including Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Robert Rauschenberg, Claus Oldenberg, Frank Stella, and Billy Al Bengston, among others. His work is extremely precise, and he is a master at what he does. Nonetheless, one of the maxims Jeff often uttered to me was, “Don’t make a religious experience out of it.”

A few years later, in 1985, I worked for the designer and illustrator Michael Schwab in San Francisco who is especially well-regarded for his poster work. Michael has always been successful—or so it seemed to me!—and his oft-repeated advice usually followed negotiations with clients. He would say, “There’s always more time and more money.”

This is my twentieth year teaching courses in graphic design at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. I give my students no end of advice, I’m sure, but the one question I continually ask them that seems worth sharing is this: “Where does your eye go?” If you know where the eye goes when you look at work, and why, then you understand true hierarchy—regardless of the design intention. If you remain unaware of hierarchy, of what the eye sees and in what order, your work will remain indistinct and forgettable. [MF]

(left) Michael Manwaring photographed by Christopher Manwaring. (right) Angie at the RE:DESIGN / Creative Directors Conference in Palm Springs, 2011. The title of our presentation was “Get Back: Working Analog in a Digital World.”

(left) Michael Manwaring photographed by Christopher Manwaring. (right) Angie at the RE:DESIGN / Creative Directors Conference in Palm Springs, 2011. The title of our presentation was “Get Back: Working Analog in a Digital World.”

If you have to ask the question, you already know the answer. —Michael Manwaring

Michael Manwaring was my Graphic Design 2 instructor at the California College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco. Michael’s pedagogic model seemed to be based on questioning—he deliberately responded to our questions with more questions. While this resulted in a dialogue of evaluation, it didn’t necessary yield a definitive answer—at least not immediately.

Needless to say it was maddening at the time. Ultimately, though, I learned from Michael how to actively—and critically—distill my ideas and formulate my opinions.

Work hard—the rest will come in time. —Steve Reoutt

I entered the CCAC graphic design program in 1993 and had the good fortune of having Steve Reoutt as one of my first instructors. For Steve, the discipline of working steadily and making progress every day was more important than the “success” of our final work. Steve made us sketch in large pads of newsprint every day, whether we felt like it or not. At the end of every assignment he would take the time to meet with us individually to go through our newsprint pad.

Final crits were led by students: we would put our work up and the students would choose which pieces to critique. More often than not my work would be the last to be chosen for discussion—or sometimes, not at all—leaving Steve to monologue about my project. He always managed to tease out some positive aspect (like the thoughtfulness of my approach) despite the awkward final form.

During one of his reviews of my sketch pad he looked at me and said, “You’re a good problem solver and you work hard. I know form-making doesn’t come easily for you, but no one has it all. Work hard, and the rest will come in time.”

His faith—and the rigor of his approach—had a profound impact on me as a student. It encouraged me to be patient and it allowed me to grow as a designer at my own pace. I have been teaching Typography 1 in the graphic design program at CCA for seven years now and, like Steve, I collect and review my students’ process sketches at the end of every assignment. [AW]

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30 July, 2012

Play Press: Graphis New Talent 2012

GD1posterFinal

We are always thrilled when our students’ work from CCA is honored by inclusion in an international competition. The recent Graphis New Talent annual features the work of four students from Mark’s “Graphic Design 1: Foundation” class: Amy Compeau, Kelly Kusumoto, Vincent Romero, and May Wong.

One of the winning projects is pictured above: May Wong’s poster for an exhibition of Richard Avedon’s work. According to May, the aesthetic of her poster is “inspired by Avedon’s minimalist black and white portraits. The lens from a Rolleiflex camera becomes a representation of his incisive eye for photography and how he captures his subject’s personality from a different perspective.” We must note that May shot her own photography for this poster, one of the parameters of the assignment.

CCA colleagues Bob Aufuldish and Alysha Naples also had student work selected for publication, and we congratulate them and their students for this honor.

See more examples of student poster design under Design is Play Classroom Posters.

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14 November, 2011

Play at RE:DESIGN / Creative Directors, 11.07.2011 (part 2)

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“There is ecstasy in paying attention.” —Anne Lamott

Some of the interrelated themes we explored at the RE:DESIGN / Creative Directors conference earlier this month were notions of detail, craft, and tempo. In both our studio practice as well as in our classes at California College of the Arts, we strive to create and foster work that is the result of disciplined focus. Angie’s class, in particular, stresses attention to typographic detail.

In the act of reading, all of us are accustomed to seeing letters (and words) as discrete units of meaning; as a result, we are unaccustomed to paying attention to the nuanced details of individual letterforms. (And for good reason! Paying attention to these details impedes the process of reading.) Angie’s second assignment requires her students to create abstract compositions with the dissected forms and counterforms of letter anatomy. The nature of the assignment leads her students to focus on the very details of letterform design that are typically overlooked. These small, revelatory moments of seeing—fulfillments of Josef Albers’ teaching dictum “I want the eyes to open”—are essential to the development of any competent designer.

The images above show Jeff Lin at work and a finished composition by Constance Smith, two students in Angie’s Fall, 2011 class. See more examples of abstract typographic compositions under Design is Play Classroom Letters.

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1 January, 2011

Man Ee Wong: As It Is Written: Project 304,805

poster_manee

For my Fall, 2010 Graphic Design 1 class at CCA, student Man Ee Wong designed this museum exhibit poster based on a show at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. As It Is Written: Project 304,805 is an exhibition featuring a specially trained scribe who writes the entire text of the Torah over the course of one year. The completed Torah is in the form of a scroll, and is comprised of 62 connected sheets on which are written 10,416 lines of text and 304,805 individual letters.

To design her poster Man Ee photographed a Torah at Congregation B’nai Emunah in San Francisco. (Thank you, Rabbi Melamut!) Man Ee is especially interested in the scroll’s physical seams, what might be thought of as the document’s “connective tissue.” As a result, her photograph is cropped to highlight a seam which bisects the poster on the right. Using a negative of the photographic image adds drama and challenges our preconceptions about how a Torah should be presented. In brief, she makes the Torah “new.”

Concurrent with her efforts in my class, Man Ee worked with Angie in Typography 1 and it is clear to me that the finished poster is a synthesis of Man Ee’s learning experiences in both classes. Man Ee recreates Theo Van Doesburg’s experimental alphabet of 1919 for the exhibition text and sets it in a justified block to echo the Torah’s justified columns of text. Van Doesburg’s letterforms provide a contrasting voice to the Hebrew: geometric versus organic; modern versus ancient; minimal versus complex. The placement of the colorful text block, bridging one of the Torah’s seams, suggests both reinforcement—a strengthening of tradition—as well as continuity. The Torah will live as long as it is read, and written. [MF]

See more examples of student poster design under Design is Play Classroom Posters.

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12 July, 2010

CCA Steve Reoutt Memorial Scholarship

plog_12.07.10

We had the pleasure of knowing and working with Steve Reoutt as his colleagues in the Graphic Design program at California College of the Arts for many years. (Steve was Angie’s first Graphic Design instructor at CCA in 1993.) Steve taught at the college for 41 years and retired in 2008, shortly before his death.

We have been working to permanently endow a scholarship in Steve Reoutt’s name and are thrilled to report that we have met our initial $25,000 goal. We are also proud to note that community support for this scholarship is broad: over 80 faculty members, alumni, family, and friends have contributed so far. As a result, the Steve Reoutt Scholarship will provide financial support to talented graphic design students in perpetuity.

Our commitment is ongoing, however, as the more funds we raise, the greater the number of students we can assist. If you knew Steve or attended the Graphic Design program at CCA, please consider joining us in this effort. (Photo by David Asari.)

Contribute to the CCA Steve Reoutt Scholarship.

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14 June, 2010

Fox at Landor, 06.03.2010

plog_14.06.10

Courtney Reeser, Managing Director of Landor Associates in San Francisco, invited Mark to exhibit and speak about his work “at Landor.” The exhibit encompassed work from Design is Play and BlackDog, and included logos, identity systems, posters, book covers, prints from Mark’s Erotikon series and, for the first time, seven of Mark’s personal sketchbooks. Mark had the honor of being introduced by his friend and colleague Michael Schwab. (Photos by Michael Friel.)

Watch excerpts of Mark Fox’s conversation with Courtney Reeser:

Fox at Landor 1 (2:09)
On Michael Schwab, clubbing baby seals, and perfection as the default.

Fox at Landor 2 (1:49)
On the “filter” of the computer and the homogenization of design.

Fox at Landor 3 (3:37)
On teaching Graphic Design 1 and hand-inking.

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