Design is Play

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.

Play Press: Typography Sketchbooks

Design is Play - Typography Sketchbooks Heller

We are pleased to be among the designers whose work is featured in Steven Heller’slatest book published by Princeton Architectural Press. Co-authored with Lita Talarico,Typography Sketchbooks reproduces the private sketchbook pages and working drawings of more than ninety of the world’s leading designers and typographers, including our CCA colleagues Bob Aufuldish of Aufuldish & Warinner, and Rod Cavazos of PsyOps.

Erratum department: Angie’s typographic explorations of the Design is Play identity are included in Typography Sketchbooks as well, but she is unfortunately not credited. The iterations of play generated by slicing up xeroxed copies of 15th century blackletters are hers…

Play at RE:DESIGN / Creative Directors, 11.07.2011

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We have been invited to speak at the RE:DESIGN / Creative Directors Conference in Palm Springs this November. The conference will open with a keynote conversation with Paula Scher; other presenters include a number of our friends and colleagues from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. The topic of our conversation will be “Get Back: Working Analog in a Digital World.” Don’t forget to bring pens and paper!

Play Press: Communication Arts 2011 Design Annual

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Following a win in Communication Art’s Typography Annual earlier this year, our Anson Mills Packaging System is currently featured in CA’s 52nd Design Annual. Of the 4,291 competition entries, 174 were selected for publication by the jury. (That’s 4% of the entries for those of you who don’t want to do the math!)

We are currently working on Anson Mills’ site redesign. Look for the launch sometime in 2012.

Play at the Pasadena Museum of California Art

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Curator Amos Klausner charged twenty-six designers with re-imagining one letter from the alphabet, using the illegibility and deconstructive nature of graffiti as their starting point. (We chose the letter A.) The ensuing exhibition, Getting Upper, will open at the Pasadena Museum of California Art on May 15, 2011.

Our lowercase letter a is derived from Albrecht Dürer’s schema for blackletter construction published in 1538. Dürer’s line drawing breaks down the letter into component parts to reveal its design. We subvert this intent by reversing the diagram, flipping the negative spaces to positive ones. The resulting segments are then printed in a palette of modulated colors that further fragment (and deconstruct) the constructed letter. Our poster layout utilizes Jan Tschichold’s non-arbitrary page proportioning system to suggest a book page with the image area as the text block.

Each of the twenty-six letters will be published as a screen printed poster by Bloom Screen Printing Co. and made available for sale at the museum and online.

See more examples of our poster designs under Design is Play Studio Posters.

Play Press: TDC Typography 30

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Our hand-lettered identity for One Catering is featured in the 30th Annual of The Type Directors Club. Drawing from the flavors of eight distinct restaurants, One Catering is the E pluribus unum of Charlotte, North Carolina. Different numeral ones are grafted together to form an identity that is both singular—one—and diverse.