ITAP - David Osbaldestin - Design Heroes: SO ME

David Osbaldestin gave a great talk talking about the links between fine art and design and he spoke of over 10 of his design heroes. The first designer he spoke about was the one he focused on more. 

SO ME, real name Bertrand Lagros de Langeron, a french designer and animator who is also the art director for Ed Banger Records. Bertand is a self confessed part animal, he says that has best ideas come when hungover or on the road "so partying abroad is perfect" for him he told Surface to Air in a 2012 interview. Although from a Graphic Design background he spends most time in film making now, having made music videos for Kanye West, Kid Cudi, Justice, DJ Mehdi and MGMT. He also directs music videos and recently directed the music video for the 'Duck Sauce' song, "Barbra Streisand".



SO ME's video for the french electro duo Justice, friends of so me, incorporates hand drawn type that has links to Vernacular Typography (Lettering in the urban environment) the verity of type design is impressive and the composition on some of the T-shirts with more text is great. Here are some examples of Vernacular Type that remind me of SO ME's work.

(these 4 images are taken from http://vernaculartypography.com/)

I had a go at one of my own type designs using my initials. And in the process I learnt that it's not as easy as it looks to get it exactly right. I'm not very happy with this rushed attempt and I think I would have to do more by hand with pen and paper rather than simply using illustrator.

This video was a huge success and possibly landed him the job to do Kanye West's "Good Life" video after SO ME got his attention by creating this spoof cover of the artwork of the song that beat Kanye at the EMA awards when Kanye stormed the stage declaring that his video cost $1,000,000.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/collective/dnaimages/gallery/2/edbanger/2.jpg

These kind of bold acts are those that get you noticed and get you recognition along side good work. We can learn from SO ME here, his ability to respond so quickly to an event like this is great.

ITAP - Colette Jeffreys - Design Heroes: Otto Neurath

Colette gave us a very broad and extensive talk about the subkect of Information Design, talking about a broad number of people however I am going to talk about one of those names. Otto Neurath, one could say that he is the founder of information design, he certainly is the founder of the Isotype System and undoubtedly one of the key figures in the history of information design. 

Otto Neurath, born in Austria in 1882, died in England in 1945 sadly seeing non of his work come to completion. His work was continued on after he died by Marie Neurath, his 2nd wife who later died in the 1980's having completed and published Otto's work and herself written many children's books using the Isotype system.

What is the Isotype System? 
It is the International System Of TYpographic Picture Education. It's the idea of communication without words. It's a global language using symbols and pictures to speak and communicate with people. Let's take a look at some of his work. I'm going to jump straign into a very specific example of Neurath's work, I get the sense that it has a style but it's done completely for information purposes. It's as if the style isn't as important as the actual fact, figures, processes, stats etc.

http://www.humantific.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/image_04-450x600.jpg

http://www.humantific.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/image_02-450x600.jpg

Here Otto is displaying information about the production of plastics and their properties, sounds like a boring science lesson to me but when you look at it it's strangely inviting and you find yourself wanting to learn wanting to see what the plastics are made from. I think this is for a few reasons.

1 - Curiosity. You want to see what symbols have been used to represent each element. This hooks you in

2 - Simplicity. It's designed in such a simple way that you don't feel bombarded with scientific nonsense, it's clear and concise, so you're not put off.

3 - Use of shape and colour. Your eye follows the process through cleaver use of arrows and shapes that flow into each other and through cleaver use of colour that again makes it simple to follow.

I had a go at creating my own in the same style. It requires a lot of skill to use the right kind of symbols. Hence a near lifetime spent working on such symbols.

This is my reworded version of Psalm 23 for South Bank Baptist Church. I quite like doing the typographic stuff, I guess it's not really 'proper' typography but I mean I'm using type, right?

Colour scheme opinions are welcome, as well as general opinions for that matter. :)

i don't have time to maintain my regrets

This song changed something in me. The way John Mark McMillan phrases his relationship with God and his experiences of God's love. So one summer evening 2 years ago I decided to create this, due to my slow laptop I was up until about 4am doing so, but hey. Hope you like it.