Design is Play

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3×3 Magazine Profile of Illustrator Jason Holley

Issue 32 of 3×3, the Magazine of Contemporary Illustration is out and I was honored to interview and write the ICON profile of illustrator Jason Holley. Here is my opening paragraph:

“Mutate, evolve, destroy, rebuild, repeat.” This mantra, from an Instagram post about a drawing class he teaches at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, encapsulates Jason Holley’s approach to image-making. “I have never found anything particularly appealing about perfection,” he says. “In fact, I think I have a hefty amount of distrust for the whole concept.” Like the illustrative equivalent of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Jason’s paintings can appear to be coming into being while simultaneously falling apart. It is as if each painting, regardless of its subject matter, surreptitiously alludes to the cycle of life. When I ask about the recurring themes of disintegration and decay in his work, Jason pivots. “It’s more than a visual theme—its physical reality, and it’s happening right now to all of us together at the same time. And I think it’s kind of beautiful.”

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

Image courtesy of Jason Holley.

Play Press: BlackDog and Design is Play Posters Acquired by the Deutsche Plakat Museum, Museum Folkwang, Essen

The Deutsche Plakat Museum, Museum Folkwang, Essen recently accessioned a whopping forty-nine of my posters. This includes not only work from BlackDog and Design is Play—co-designed with Angie—but also the first poster I ever designed while still in college at UCLA in 1984.

Three photos from the Museum Folkwang show some of the posters as they are being unpacked: 1) “Moloch (Capitalism Consuming His Children)” is from 1997; 2) “Tolerance” was designed by Angie and me (with lettering by John Stevens) in 2008; 3) “Republican Contract on America” is from 1995.

Nearly all of the posters were designed as self-initiated projects or pro bono. I am honored and humbled that my work over the last forty years continues to resonate. [MF]

Play Press: BlackDog and Design is Play Posters Acquired by the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich

On its way to the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich—along with seventeen other posters from BlackDog and Design is Play.

This poster advertised the services of my design studio BlackDog when I was represented by Jan Collier. (It originally ran as a full-page ad in the publication Single Image in 1994.) Working with the theme “A horse of a different color,” the design was inspired by the equine on an ancient Roman coin.

I based my BlackDog masthead on the lettering on a 1930s A&P Coffee tin. The full typeface I eventually developed—named Propaganda—was available as photolettering from Andresen Typographics in San Francisco, California.

The Kurt Schwitters quote—“All that the artist spits is art”—is included in the poster’s fine print.

Play Press: “What Would You Say? Activist Graphics from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art”

“What Would You Say? Activist Graphics from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art” opened March 26 at the Vincent Price Art Museum at East LA College after runs in Lancaster, Riverside, and Northridge. The exhibit was curated by Staci Steinberger, Curator of Decorative Arts and Design at LACMA.

I am thrilled to have my screen printed poster “Tricky Ollie” included in the exhibit, as well as the original version of the poster I faxed to the Charles Robb campaign in 1994.

Other designers in the show include friends Kimberly Cross with her Another Poster for Peace project, Steve Lyons, David Lance Goines, and Michael Mabry. Rupert García, Shepard Fairey, Emory Douglas, and Wes Wilson are also featured.

See more of my AgitProp posters on BlackDog. [MF]