The 62nd Berlin International Film Festival, or Berlinale, wrapped this week following a program of over 400 films, many of them premieres. Each year the Berlinale also presents the Retrospective, a showcase of historical film that runs alongside the main festival and is curated in cooperation with the Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen. This year the Museum asked Justus Oehler and his team in Pentagram’s Berlin office to create the graphics for the Retrospective. Oehler previously designed the identity for the Museum in 2006 and has since created numerous posters and campaigns for the institution and its exhibitions.
The Retrospective is always dedicated to an important but lesser-known director or period of film history and helps bring German and international film back to the big screen, often in restored prints. Titled Die Traumfabrik (The Red Dream Factory), the Retrospective program of the 2012 Berlinale has rediscovered the legendary German-Russian film studio Mezhrabpom-Film and its German branch, Prometheus, which operated from 1922 to 1936. The graphics designed by Oehler make use of an iconic black-and-white still of the Soviet movie Okraina (directed by Boris Barnet in 1933), combined with large, distinctive typography inspired by the Museum für Film und Fernsehen identity.
The Red Dream Factory program will travel to the Museum of Modern Art in New York this April in a new partnership between the Berlinale Retrospective and MoMA.
Continue reading “New Work: Berlinale Retrospective”
Justus Oehler’s award-winning poster for The Haiti Poster Project, created in response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, is one of the works featured in Es geht um die Welt (It’s About the World), a major exhibition that opens this Sunday at the Kunstmuseum Dieselkraftwerk Cottbus in Germany. Showcasing works by over 100 designers from around the world, the exhibition presents posters about nature and the environment, looking at humanity’s influence on the natural world, and vice versa. The show remains on view through 15 April.
Oehler’s poster was previously selected as Judge’s Choice in TDC57 and received a Red Dot Award.
Harry Pearce and his team have created the identity for David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture currently on show at the Royal Academy of Arts. This is the first major exhibition in the UK to showcase David Hockney’s landscape work. The show takes over the full suite of main galleries and features more than 150 works, mostly created within the last decade, and with the Academy’s galleries in mind.
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“Is drawing dead?” A provocative question, but you are probably reading this at your computer, and perhaps the only pencil at hand is the one you chew on for comfort. Since the Renaissance, drawing has been the architect’s primary tool of expression and investigation. Now the use of digital technologies like parametric modeling and computational design have changed the way architects define and depict space. This February the Yale School of Architecture will host “Is Drawing Dead?,” a symposium that considers the present and future role of drawing in the architectural profession.
Pentagram’s Michael Bierut and Yve Ludwig have designed a poster for the event using the simple design parameters of the series of posters we’ve designed for Yale since 1998: black, white and type. Here, a broken pencil takes the form of a “Y.” And yes, the poster was originally conceived with a hand-drawn sketch.
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This week filmmakers, studio executives and film fans will make their annual pilgrimage to Park City, Utah, for the Sundance Film Festival, the largest independent film festival in the United States and one of the premier showcases for film in the world. Established in 1978, the festival is produced by the non-profit Sundance Institute, founded by the actor and director Robert Redford to discover and support independent film and artists. Noteworthy recent films like “Marcy Martha May Marlene,” “Like Crazy,” “Being Elmo” and “Another Earth” were all honored with awards at last year’s festival, and Sundance has been instrumental in launching the careers of directors like Steven Soderbergh, Darren Aronofsky and Quentin Tarantino. This year’s 10-day festival runs from January 19 through 29 in Park City and nearby Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.
Pentagram’s Paula Scher and her team created the bold graphic identity for this year’s festival, organized around the theme “Look Again.” Each year Sundance invites filmmakers to alter perceptions with their films, and Redford and the marketing team at Sundance developed the “Look Again” tagline after being inspired by a quote by Henry Miller: “One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of seeing things.” The theme captures the mission of Sundance and the spirit of independent film.
Continue reading “New Work: Sundance Film Festival”
Angus Hyland has designed a limited edition series of four different posters to be given away at his talk for The Typographic Circle on 19 January at JWT in Knightsbridge.
The posters illustrate the talk title, “Symbol, Mark and a Typeface.” The evening will be divided into two parts, the first based around Hyland’s book Symbol, which analyses enduring trademarks, and the second on his ten-year collaboration with Cass Art, the iconic art materials retailer.
Lithography was kindly provided by Gavin Martin Colournet and Zen Pure White paper supplied by GF Smith.
Continue reading “New Work: ‘Symbol, Mark and a Typeface’ posters”
Harry Pearce was invited to contribute to a book and app by Art Tails, a group of professional artists and creators related to the community of Tōhoku, the region of Japan hardest hit by the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. As well as contributing several pieces of his work he also created this poster specifically for the project as an acknowledgement of the inspiration of two of his heroes, Hamada and Yanagi. With his contribution he sent the following thoughts:
I am so honoured to have been asked to contribute to your beautiful publication. As well as sending you three of my favourite pieces of work, I really wanted to create something particular for this publication. It’s my way of a little thank you for your collective inspiration.
The Japanese and eastern aesthetic has been a major influence on my career and life. For a very long time the vision and insights of Shoji Hamada and Soetsu Yanagi have been a particular inspiration to me.
They taught me where to look for feeling and truth, in myself and my work. Many of your great artists and designers are so knowing in the truest sense. As an acknowledgement to you all I have taken a beautiful quote from Hamada, “Beauty is not in the head or in the heart, but in the abdomen,” and created this poster in his and your honour.
No matter the hardships your beautiful country is suffering, your spirit and vision will endure.
—Harry Pearce
Project Team: Harry Pearce, partner-in-charge and designer, Sean Chilvers, designer.
Pentagram’s Paula Scher and Michael Schnepf had the treat of designing this year’s poster for New York City’s annual Pumpkin Festival, featuring our new identity for NYC Parks.
For the past three decades, Pentagram’s Michael Bierut has kept a numbered series of notebooks—plain composition books, filled with rough sketches, notes taken in client meetings, doodles and design ideas—that cumulatively provide a record of his working life. These books are a focus of 30 Years 90 Notebooks, a new exhibition at the Esther Massry Gallery at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York. The exhibition juxtaposes original sketches with finished work, giving viewers insight into Bierut’s design process. Over 40 posters are on view, including works for the Yale School of Architecture, The Architectural League of New York, AIGA and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Bierut, with designer Hamish Smyth, has designed a special poster for the exhibition that pictures the covers of 88 existing notebooks (two were lost over the years). Signed copies of the poster will be available for purchase at the gallery during the show’s run. 30 Years 90 Notebooks remains on view through January 22, 2012.
Project Team: Michael Bierut, partner-in-charge and designer; Tracey Cameron, exhibition design and curation; Hamish Smyth, poster design.
Quick Link: Paula Scher’s Posters That Celebrate the Joy of Type
