Doughy Goodness

(cross-posted at OK Great)
doughmanRacePoster-FINAL
Gear up Durhamites, The DOUGHMAN is coming on May 29, 2010.

For those of you that don’t know about the DOUGHMAN, it’s probably the coolest event you’ll ever hear about.  It’s the world’s premiere team-relay-quadrathalon-slash-eating-contest and it’s coming back to Durham for the third year after a ridiculously successful 2009 race which was featured on Man vs. Food.  This local tour-de-gastronomic-force will feature some of our favorite Durham delights like Hog Heaven, Local Yogurt, Dain’s, LocoPops, and more.  Each leg of the relay journey involves casually enjoying wolfing a meal at one of these fine establishments and then heading off on an athletic event (running, biking, ‘water activity’) and then meeting the whole team for a final dessert course and sprint to the finish line.

The DOUGHMAN is also a charity event, and has raised over $12,000 for the Durham Inner City Gardeners (DIG) through sponsorship and donations over the last two years.  This  year, SeeSaw Studio will also be a beneficiary of the event.

This year I had the honor of being the creative director for the group and thus creating all the deliverables for the event.  After reworking their logo, Michelle Fereck (my volunteer helper) and I tackled the race poster (above, click to embiggify).  More good design will be on the horizon as well as we continue to develop materials for the event.  I’m really psyched to be working with them and hope that my sponsorship of the event will get me some good exposure around Durham.  Plus it’s a fun event and a great cause, so why not lend the help?

If you are interested in participating, rally up a team of three of your pals, head over to www.doughman.org starting on March 1, and sign up your team.  And start training!

And if you’re not into the whole athletic side of things, but want to get involved with the whole eating delicious local food side of things, the DOUGHMAN will also be hosting their second annual Local Foods Banquet at Durham Central Park Pavilion on the Saturday evening following the race – more deets about that will be coming soon on their website.

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Olympic Posters and the Glorious Man

Posters from Antwerp, 1920; Paris, 1924; Helsinki, 1940

Posters from Antwerp, 1920; Paris, 1924; Helsinki, 1940

Posters from Tokyo, 1964; Mexico, 1968, and Pictograms from Munich, 1972

Posters from Tokyo, 1964; Mexico, 1968, and Pictograms from Munich, 1972

It’s Olympic season, and for a design nerd like me, that means looking at this year’s posters and graphics and seeing how they stack up to the greats.  It’s the designers’ conventional wisdom that work like Kamekura’s 1964 Tokyo posters, Aicher’s 1972 Munich Pictograms, and Wyman’s pop-art-infused 1968 Mexico emblem are among the most celebrated, but sometimes conventional wisdom is meant to be challenged.  And that’s precisely what David Ross did last week on the Colbert Report.  Ross is certainly no slouch when it comes to art; he’s curated for the SFMOMA and the Whitney, among others.  But his contention on the Colbert Report last week got me thinking a bit more curatorially (is that a word?) about what the point of the Olympic posters is supposed to be.  It’s worth a full watch, but Ross’ general point was that starting around the mid-60’s Olympic posters pivoted sharply from the Greek-inspired archetypal Glorious Man to more of a corporatized logo depiction, devoid entirely of strength, perseverance, and pride that had for so long been the classical depiction of the Games.  And to the detriment of the Olympics, according to Ross.  He believes that the loss of the Glorious Man and the depiction of his Glorious Ass Kicking of Power and Glory makes the more modern Olympic poster a failure.

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I thoroughly disagree.  Let me first say that I absolutely love the Olympics.  I can easily dominate a 5-hour women’s hockey and curling broadcast, no problem.  I think it’s great.  But I don’t think it’s great because there is some Glorious Man that is displaying his dominance.  And I don’t think it’s great because it’s about seeing the USA kick some every-other-country-ass.  I think the Olympics is more about the finesse and subtlety these days than about brute strength.  It’s more about the sub-plot and the micro-stories than about the overall medal count.  These athletes have proven that they are the perfect example of their sport, indeed the perfect example of humans ability to do said sport, and that’s the beauty of it.  The fact that not even 1/10th of a second can be the difference between a gold medal and a missed spot on the podium in downhill skiing, where that difference represents mere inches over the course of a 1.something mile course is the beauty.  The fact that the best men and women of any particular sport are progressing that sport steadily and incrementally across the globe (see: 720s, 1080s, double-corked McTwist 1260s) is the beauty.

And that in and of itself is a whole lot harder to portray effectively as a poster or an iconic design than the Glorious Man.  And that’s why I actually do agree with the designers’ conventional wisdom from above.  The Games are meant to be branded indefinitely, as a point in time where athletes competed at the top of their sport and perfection (for that particular time) was, ideally, achieved.  So the posters and imagery should reflect that.  Simple, minimal, indefinitely memorable design is the equivalent I believe to what the athletes themselves are striving for.  A simplest solution to a difficult problem in that time.  Whether it’s the tightest and cleanest triple lutz or the tightest and cleanest logo, designers of the Olympics and the athletes themselves are all pushing for perfection.

I do think that the more recent campaigns have been less successful.  Many of the more recent imagery has been mashed into androgynous, hyper-politically correct sprites or cartoons that lose all meaning or perhaps try too hard and end up falling short (see Albertville, 1992, Nagano, 1998, or, dear god, that awful thing from Atlanta, 1996).  This year, I’m happy to see that the individual sports posters are actually quite nice.  Vancouver has added a little bit of character and life back into the individual sport posters, although I just can’t really get behind the logo itself.  They had to go and add that little smiley in there didn’t they.

All that said, Stephen Colbert’s poster by Shepherd Fairey is hilariously perfect in its own Glorious way.

GO USA!  DEFEAT THE WORLD!

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Sunday precedes Monday, idiot.

So, thanks to some eagle-eyed Flickr users, I realized that my 2010 calendar was a day ahead of itself.  Or behind, or something – either way, the dates were wrong.  This was fixed a while ago and anyone that was sent a poster recently got the proper dates.  Anyone who got the wrong dates has been notified and had a new one mailed.

Thanks for supporting me and it’s not to late to buy one for yourself!

In totally unrelated news, I’ve been seriously slacking on the posting front here since I’ve started writing for OK Great.  I do hope my dozen of followers will forgive me – more content will be coming.  I usually write at OK Great on Thursdays, so you can find me there nerding out over math or cool posters or cool posters that have math or other geeky-designy stuff there.

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2010 Calendar Is Available!

Picture 137

I swear I finished it before 2010.

So what started out as a fun personal project last year is now officially a yearly tradition.  I am very happy with the way my quarterly calendar for the new decade has turned out.  This past year I think was a definitive year for me in how I look at and evaluate design, with a heavy and hearty emphasis on typography.  It was the year that I had that moment that all budding designers have (or at least I assume they have), when they realize that what being a designer is all about is understanding type.  I certainly cannot claim however, that I now fully understand type, only that what will no doubt be a lifelong obsession has begun in earnest at some point in the last twelve months.

So with that in mind, I decided to do my calendar this year with a focus on type.  I spent some time doing some research on typographers that had inspired me over the course 2009: Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, Si Scott, Jessica Hische, Herb Lubalin, Non-Format, and of course anything that comes out of John Boardley’s keyboard.  Then I sat down with my sketchbook for a while and wrote and drew and tried to come up with some bases for each of my four posters.

For the first poster, January through March, I was heavily inspired by the work of Si Scott and Nicolas Alexander and wanted to at least provide one piece of the four that was based on hand-drawn type.  Although I used Gotham for the backbone of this piece, the overall design was done with a set of microns over a long night and a couple glasses of scotch.

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For the second quarter, I wanted to do a piece that was reminiscent of a ye olde style woodtype poster.  Lots of Clarendon fonts and hand distressing were cast alongside the most ridiculous little story/event I could dream up that somehow included the words April, May, and June.  I think this poster, which I have framed in my living room, also had a lot to do with where I was going with this piece.

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Next up was a piece which actually is rooted in a piece of art that I think I probably did in 6th grade.  I remember doing ‘pop art’ pieces where we would meticulously draw horizontal lines until they hit little shapes and follow around the shape until the other side and then continue to the far side of the piece.  Instead of circles and squares, it’s Gotham again.  I know that makes no sense, but it was 6th grade.

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Finally, the October through December piece reaches back to my mathematical roots.  I tried to create letters that followed simple geometric formulas – circles, half circles, lines, 45 degree angles – and then use that type not only as the focus of the piece, but also as a textural background as well.

Picture 141Picture 145

So with the start of a new year, and the release of this year’s calendar, I’ve also opened my own store, which you can access here or by clicking the newfangly link over there on the top right of the sidebar.  The calendar is now on sale!  So if you are so inclined, feel free to mosey on over to the shop and grab yourself a copy.  They are a totally affordable $35 for four posters!  Or if you prefer, you can pick up one at a time at $10 a pop.

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Happy New Year

2010 Thanks to everyone who has stopped by this year!  More great stuff to come in 2010, including this years’ calendar, which I’m putting the finishing touches on and will have up in the next few days.  There are a few sneak peeks of the calendar progress on my flickr.

If you haven’t yet, feel free to subscribe here.

And you really should follow me on twitter too, here.

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Speck on a Speck on a Speck

I remember as a kid going to the IMAX to see Cosmic Voyage, probably around when I was 12 or so.  I don’t remember a lot about that time, but I very clearly remember watching that scene where the camera progressively zooms outward from the Earth and Morgan Freeman guides us through a trip through the galaxy to the far reaches of the universe.  That whole speck on a speck thing really stuck with me.

Not too long ago, I saw another video, Powers of 10 (below), produced by The Office of Charles and Ray Eames for IBM.  Although I can’t say I like the narration more than Morgan Freeman (who I love), for some reason this one has a very appealing aesthetic which brought me back to those feelings I had as a kid at the Science Center so many years ago.

So I was really excited today to stumble upon a modern version of the same essential video produced recently by the American Museum of Natural History for a new exhibit: Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe. The movie is called The Known Universe; it’s the same theory as Powers of 10 – start out on Earth and then gradually move outward through space and time until you reach the end of the known universe, the afterglow of the Big Bang (I love that – the afterglow).  Except for one big difference: this video is meticulously produced to reflect precise scientifically-accurate measurements and research and also benefits from modern production quality as well.  It’s essentially a map.  I also would mention that the soundscape is a touch more pleasing than Powers of 10.  It also includes other tidbits not originally in Powers of 10 or Cosmic Voyage like the haze of artificial satellites surrounding Earth and the order and structure of the outer limits of the universe.  Volume up, HD, full screen, play:

(via David Airey via Kottke)

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Okay, What?

Screen shot 2009-12-15 at 9.46.27 AM

Big news in the blog-o-sphere today.  I’ll be joining OK Great as a contributor!!

I’m really really excited to be joining this team of art, design & culture warriors.  I’m going to be a correspondent with a local (Durham) twist in addition to the general goodness you know and love over at OKG.

So, I’m sure my army of readers (all dozen of you) are wondering what will happen to this fair blog.  Well rest easy, because I’m going to continue to write here as well, however the focus may change a bit.  Nebulous Thoughts will continue to be an outpost for more long-form critiques and insights into the more academic side of the design world, and will also focus more on my own work and process.  OK Great will continue to do what it does best, which is to serve up daily doses of amazingly talented people and the work that they do.

So before you leave, subscribe to Nebulous Thoughts here, and follow me on Twitter here, then head over to OK Great and say hello there!  My first post over there should be up by the end of the week.

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Monday Awesome: Xmas + Guitar Hero

Two things which I’m not entirely familiar with, being a Jew with no Game Consoles.  But this is amazing.  Read more about it here.

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Curation Culture & Moving the Zeitgeist à la Frank Chimero, et al.

Ok, so if you don’t know who Frank Chimero is yet, you obviously are new at this internet thing.  But Frank has updated his site a bit with some new work and a new blog for his really insightful writings, one of which really caught my eye the other day.

Chimero writes about Curation Culture (which I think he may have coined as a term) as a rebuttal to John-Kyle Mohr’s critique of the current state of content on the internet.  Mohr writes that since the turn of the 20th century, there has been an inescapable and ever-forward-pushing move towards more automation, more replication, and less original work that is certainly evident in the plethora of web-publishing platforms that are pervasive today (ie. Twitter, tumblr, etc.).  Chimero counters that although Mohr’s point is true (and likely due to the fact that work is hard), it’s not always for the worse.  Certainly, in many cases, there isn’t much to be gained by a repost of someone else’s thoughtful work, with the exception of the superficial exposure it gets you – which by the way, as Chimero notes, is a helluva lot easier than actually making something yourself.  It is through thoughtful curation of those inspirational nuggets we find as we troll the tubes that actually adds something to the zeitgeist of the design-o-sphere.

I think there is something to be said about a ‘pure admiration’ post, not only from the perspective of the author, but also for the audience.  Obviously, by taking the time to admire someone’s work and finding out a bit about them and doing a little bit of a write-up about their work and what you like about it, you are inherently consuming and absorbing more of the that person’s work than you would be by just perusing their website or nodding and stroking your wizardly beard as you flash by a cool poster on ffffound on your way to the inevitable booby shots.  And from the perspective of the audience, you are adding context maybe not to the work itself (although ideally, you would), but to your own personality as an author on the web.  Yes, if you post a picture and say “Here lies the work of Mr. XYZenstein.  It is totally wicked,” you really aren’t providing anything useful.  But by making some comments on the work and allowing yourself to speak the language of constructive critique, you are providing your readers with personality and insight into what makes you tick and what your eye sees.  Then when they come back later and see the next poster you created, they have a context, given what you’ve written about previously with regard to who inspires you/your work.

That said, I can’t deny the affect the internet and these thoughtful ‘admiration posts’ have had on me over my nascent design career.  After all, I did a tribute design to some of those that have inspired me and plan on doing another one this year.  Not a replication, but an interpretation through my own lens.

The big However:  I have no patience for blogs that are endlessly boring catalogs of other peoples work without any context.  These easy-to-spot blogs feature posts like “25 Dark website designs – Spooky!” and “1001 Jumping Hipsters with flashy lights!”  or “200 business cards made out of water-jet cut 1/4″ Steel!  ROCK!”  and “Logos that start with the letter J” (sorry I could go on forever).  These posts provide nothing to the zeitgeist except to perpetuate trends which most likely need to die hard.  Instead of spending an hour finding all those dark website designs, how about pick one and tell me why its successful, or unsuccessful, or how the content drives the form.  Or pick two and explain how these two very different websites can both successfully employ a similar design theme, etc. etc. etc.

Frank makes the point that

[m]ost people will never make anything. Because making something is work. Optional work, at that. Design, art, writing, whatever: it’s work, and work is hard. You have to organize your ideas and sweat on the page until something good shows up. I think what has happened is that these newer tools that promote sharing allow audiences to feel like they’re making something through curation.

To which I would add that curation is hard work too!  And maybe thats why there’s isn’t much of it around either.

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That time of the year again

Last year, around this time, with freelance work abating for a bit, I gave myself a personal project to keep me busy.  It was a good time to take a break, look back on the year, see my progress as a designer and evaluate some of the inspiration that it took to get me there.  2008 for me was all about explosive color, dynamic compositions, and heavily layered intricate grunginess.  And it was reflected in the artists that I followed regularly and drew upon for passive inspiration.  For me, working on personal projects is a symbiotic combination of something that simultaneously forces me to push my boundaries while at the same time driving me crazy.  It may be that sometimes my ideas are not so much final products, but something more nebulous like “what would happen if I took this element and performed this task in this particular iterative way?”  (That may need some elaboration – future post-worthy…)

So I decided that my project for the end of 2008 was to produce a piece (or, as it turned out, a series) that both addressed where I had come over the course of the year via a personal take on some of those artists’ work as well as a modest attempt to give something back to community out there.  The project took the shape of a 2009 quarterly calendar, where each of the four pieces had a few simple constraints and were each inspired by a designer who had struck me over the previous year.

For the first piece, which would represent the months of January, February and March, I imposed a guideline of using only circles and cool colors and created a piece that was inspired by some of the work by Fabio Sasso of the ubiquitous design blog/tutorial site Abduzeedo.  His site provided me not only with a constant source of (albeit sometimes a bit trendy) inspirational design, but perhaps more importantly, many of the techniques used to get there.

Picture 106

The second piece was a big bite to swallow and took many times longer to complete than any of the other four, and was inspired by the work of Guilherme Marconi.  Again, I constrained myself this time to squares and cubes and a spring-like color palette for the months of April, May and June.

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The third piece was inspired by the mighty (he always says that) James White, a.k.a. Signalnoise, using hot summer colors and limiting my forms to James’ iconic hatched lines.

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Finally, the last piece, inspired by some of the work of Pablo Alfieri, involved the use of triangles or lines that would convey triangles in a dark purplish crazy monolithic future space scene… or something like that.

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I printed the series on 11″x17″ Epson Enhanced Matte paper and gave them away to family and friends for the holidays last year.

So here we are again, less than six weeks until the end of the first decade of the second millenia (whoa…) and I’ve decided that due to the personal satisfaction and great feedback I’ve gotten on last years’ calendar, that I should probably try to make this a regular project.  So this weekend, I started to flesh out “Calendar MMX” or whatever the hell it’s called, with an emphasis this time on typography.  Looking back on this year, I’ve become far more infatuated with type and lettering than most other aspects of graphic design – whether its the type-as-illustration work of Si Scott, Jessica Hische or Seb Lester or the type-as-sculptural element work of 19th century and modern printmakers, type has really made its mark on me this year.

So stay tuned for MMX (check out some sneak peeks on my flickr stream) and hopefully I can finish it by the end of the year!

If anyone is interested in a copy of the 2009 version, contact me.  I am hoping to have the 2010 version up for sale as well.

Posted in Design, Inspiration, Personal Work | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment
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    I’m Michael Faber, a freelance graphic designer in Durham, North Carolina with an interest in print design, branding, typography, photography, dogs, cooking, letterpress, and a bunch of other goodness. I love talking design so if you have a project in mind or just want to chat about the relative merits of postmodernist typography or traditional Southern cuisine (I’m a Western NC barbeque guy - please don’t hold it against me), feel free to contact me.

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