Design is Play

Play Press: El Pípila Nominated for James Beard Award

El Pípila has just been nominated for a James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant Design! Congratulations to Neal Schwartz et al!

Our updated tagline for El Pípila—“Guardians of Guanajuatan Cuisine”—is expressed in our design of the restaurant’s environmental graphics. We envisioned the restaurant as a metaphoric garden filled with flowers and butterflies: a gathering place for sustenance and community. This garden of Guanajuatan culture and cuisine is protected by guardians of the night: dogs beneath stars, and scorpions. Larger dogs serve as guardians of the day.

See the full spectrum of our work for El Pípila under Design is Play Studio Systems.

Photography: Bruce Damonte

El Pípila Branding and Environmental Graphics

Last May, our CCA colleague Neal Schwartz invited us to collaborate with his office to develop an identity for El Pípila—a women-owned, family-run restaurant specializing in the cuisine of Guanajuato, Mexico.

Working with Schwartz and Architecture, we provided full pro bono design services to brand El Pípila. Our work includes brand positioning and design of the trademark, wordmark, environmental graphics, and interior and exterior signage.

El Pípila opened its doors today! Special thanks to Schwartz and Architecture and La Cocina.

See the full spectrum of our work for El Pípila under Design is Play Studio Systems.

Photography: Bruce Damonte

Play Press: Fox and Wang Off Duty

One of six assemblage paintings from the series “Unhelpful Instructions”

“Off-Duty” is a modest show of our work that includes assemblage paintings and limited-edition prints—work that we make in our off-hours, when we don’t have to be clear—or helpful.

On exhibit at The Bench Gallery from January 6 to February 16.

See all six assemblage paintings from the series “Unhelpful Instructions” under Design is Play Studio Systems.

Play Press: Fox Interviewed in The Drum

“It is extremely difficult for large, multinational corporations to credibly exemplify craft because their very structure and reason for being are generally in opposition to it. Just because a product or process is deemed ‘bespoke’ or ‘artisanal’ in a strategy document doesn’t mean that it is. Caveat emptor.”

From “Craft in action: the case for graphic designers to start with analog methods,” an interview with Allyson Marrs via The Drum in which I discuss the role of craft in design.

Download and read full interview. [MF]

Play Press: “Protest! Resistance Posters” exhibition, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich

We are thrilled to have four of our posters—Trump (Moloch), OBOMBA, Trump 24K Gold-Plated, and Kinder, Gentler, Carpet Bombing—included in the exhibit “Protest! Resistance Posters” which opens tonight at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich.

From the museum’s publicity: “Globalization, women’s rights, Trump: the poster has established itself as an effective medium for political struggle. 50 years after 1968, the onset of a worldwide rebellion, this exhibition presents around 300 international protest posters.

“The designs dismantle rulers, denounce injustice, or lend utopia a face. They are instances of visual memory, appeal to the necessity of resistance today, and prove the topicality and universality of the depicted themes. The exhibition showcases the work of socially engaged designers and illuminates various strategies of protest.”

Helix Identity

A new identity we recently designed for the not-quite-public Helix RE.

The X-like form of the trademark references both a double-helix and the idea of a specific location on a map. (Or a specific node—or data set—within a database or network.)

Play Press: “Hope to Nope” exhibition, Design Museum, London

Photograph courtesy of Benjamin Westoby and the Design Museum.

Our Trump 24K Gold-Plated poster was acquired by the Design Museum, London on September 7, 2017 and is to appear in their new exhibition—“Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics 2008–18”—which opens this week.

From the Design Museum publicity: “Graphic design in the form of internet memes, posters and protest placards is being used by the marginalised and powerful alike to shape political messages like never before.

“From the global financial crash and the Arab Spring, to ISIS, Brexit and Trump, this exhibition explores the numerous ways graphic messages have challenged, altered and influenced key political moments.”

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

Play Press: Works on Paper Acquired by the Letterform Archive, Part 2

San Francisco’s Letterform Archive recently acquired a range of printed ephemera from the Design is Play and BlackDog archives. Stationery systems include those designed for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) Architecture + Design Forum (1998); California College of the Arts (CCA) (2003); Design is Play (2008); and BlackDog (2008).

The most recently designed acquisition is the 6th Amendment poster we designed for the “We the People” exhibit held at The Cooper Union (2017); the oldest is Mark’s “End Pollution: Bomb the Pentagon” poster (1991). The body of work encompasses a range of printing processes on a wide variety of substrates, including offset lithography, engraving, letterpress, blind embossing, foil stamping, and screen printing.

One of the acquisitions is a full deck of playing cards we foil stamped to announce the launch of our original website in 2011. (The cards were used for a mailing based on the idea of “play.”) Card backs are overprinted with an LCD grid to suggest infinite possibilities: depending on which portions of the grid are “lit,” any letter or number can be constructed. The LCD grid as a programmable system is an apt analogy for our studio as well as the web.

Card fronts are overprinted with a “window” which reframes the original design, forcing the viewer to reconsider the familiar schema. Like the LCD grid, the window suggests a larger idea: a screen with an infinite number of views. Foil stamping by Oscar Printing, San Francisco; photography © Mark Serr.

Play Press: TDC Typography 38, Judges Choice

We are proud to have our Trump 24K Gold-Plated poster designated a “Judge’s Choice” by juror Spencer Charles. Below are his comments from Typography 38, the Annual of the Type Directors Club:

“The judging for this competition took place the weekend after the U.S. presidential inauguration, the same weekend the nation was dealing with the fallout from the immigration ban that had just been enacted. Because of this context, and because of the thoughtful execution of this poster, it provoked a conversation unlike any other entry in the competition. Additionally, it demonstrated that typography can (and should) extend beyond formal and aesthetic considerations and can very powerfully communicate the spirit of its content, even if that purpose is to agitate and make a political statement.”

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

Play Press: “We the People” poster exhibition, The Cooper Union, NYC

We are one of ten U.S. design studios invited to interpret an amendment from the Bill of Rights. We were randomly assigned the Sixth Amendment—the right to a fair trial.

Organized by ThoughtMatter, Mirko Ilić, and The Constitutional Sources Project (ConSource), the exhibit is open to the public September 18-23 at The Cooper Union, NYC.

See our poster and others under Design is Play Studio Posters.

Handwriting: Mathieu Lommen
Photography: Mark Serr
Sculpture: One of two cast-concrete “Urns of Justice” at the U.S. Courthouse in Lafayette, Louisiana, by artist Diana Moore.
(Source image from the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.)

 

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.

Play at Frog, 2.28.2017

At the invitation of our former student Constance Smith, we had the honor of speaking about our studio practice and the writing of our new book Symbols at Frog Design in San Francisco. Our friends from ARCH were again on hand to sell copies of Symbols, and we followed the lecture with a book signing.

Founded in 1969 in Germany, Frog is a global design consultancy with offices in New York, Munich, Milan, Amsterdam, London, Shanghai, and Sydney.

Play Press: Trump 24K Gold-Plated Acquired by Two European Museums

We are thrilled that our anti-Trump poster was acquired by both the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in February. These are the fourth and fifth European museums to add Trump 24K Gold-Plated to their design collections.

Still no word from any of the American curators we sent the poster to…

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