The talented Marian Bantjes will give an insightful talk on Monday, November 1st here in NYC about her career, her design and most importantly her beautiful typography. Paula Scher will introduce her and at the end of the event you can pick up Bantjes' new book called I Wonder. Tickets are still available.
The AIGA here in NYC is having a great retrospective of Milton Glaser's work. Check it out from October 1 until November 24th. The show explores how Glaser design ideas interact with one another over a period of time and how this ideas can come together to form totally new and interesting ideas. For those of you who can't make it, you can download the show brochure and see what it is all about.
SPD is having George Lois talk on Tuesday, March 30th at FIT to discuss his famous Esquire covers and his new book from Assouline. I've seen George Lois speak and I have to say, "DON'T MISS IT!!" He gives an amazing and inspiring (though curse-word filled) talk. Wanna see one of the original Mad Men? Then don't miss George Lois.
The rock-star design duo, The Heads of State, give a talk for AIGA NY on April 1st at Museum of Art and Design. They'll discuss how they have collaborative together over the years to create witty and graphically sharp illustrations, posters, identities and books. Trust us, you'll be disappointed if you miss it. 
The 20/10 Vision show at the gallery hanahou gathers together new, inspiring artwork from 40 various NYC artists exhibiting what their positive visions will be for the upcoming decade. The opening will be this Thursday, January 21st from 7-9pm and it will run through February 19th. For the opening, a bunch of artists will be on-hand creating an awesome collaborative live drawing which will later be auctioned off.
Twenty percent of all the proceeds from the sale of the artwork and 100% of the proceeds of the sale of the collaborative mural will be donated toward Haitian disaster relief. RSVP at info@galleryhanahou.com.
Emigre just released Emigre No. 70: The Look Back Issue – Celebrating 25 Years in Graphic Design. The book lovingly traces the history of the magazine from its start in the late 1980s through today. The 512-page book covers all 69 issues of Emigre magazine showing off how it influenced and reflected the trends in the design community. Rudy VanderLans designed the book and it has interviews with The Designers Republic, Rick Valicenti, Vaughan Oliver, Ed Fella and much, much more. It is a must have for every designer whether you are a seasoned veteran designer who designed through the 80s or a fresh-faced design student just starting out.
Coinciding along with the release of the book, there will be a show at Gallery 16 in San Francisco showing off various spreads from the magazine, press sheets and promotional posters so check it out from December 18, 2009 - January 30, 2010.
Art & Copy is now showing in Kansas City, Atlanta, Irvine, Milwaukee and Brunswick, ME.
This is the last week for all of you in NYC to catch the great retrospective of Milton Glaser's design work at the Visual Arts Gallery. The show highlights 100 pieces from the past 50 years of that Glaser produced especially for School of the Visual Arts. The show ends this Saturday, Sept. 26th so run down on your lunch hour or cruise by on Saturday for one last look.
SEYMOUR: THE OBSESSIVE IMAGES OF SEYMOUR CHWAST part I from AIGA/NY on Vimeo.
Gallery hanahou has a great interview with Berlin-based illustrator Tina Berning in anticipation for her upcoming show "The Passengers". If interested, you can RSVP to for the opening of the show on Thursday, September 10th, 2009, 6-9pm or come see Berning speak on Saturday, September 12th, at 2pm. "The Passengers" runs from September 11th to October 9th, 2009. 
[1. Craig Malmrose, 2. See y’all in LA for TypeCon 2010!, 3. Drive And Walk, 4. Unfinished work, 5. Fat Matt's Rib shack, 6. Practicing my ABC's, 7. Pointing out the obvious, 8. lucid optic lab stencil screen print, 9. mskin8.1]
TypeCon 2009 has passed but it will take you the better part of a year to go through all the 5000+ photos in the TypeCon 2009 pool. If that won't get you psyched for the 2010 TypeCon, then nothing will.
For those of your looking to do something awesome on Tuesday, June 16, go check out the book release for Seymour Chwast. Steven Heller and Chwast will peruse Chwast's new respective book that looks at his 50+ years of illustrations, animations, comics and his years at Push-pin Studios. If you go, be sure to pick up one of the books to take home and treasure. RSVP through the AIGA/NY website.
The Society for Type Afficianados (SOTA) is hosting TypeCon in Atlanta this year from July 14 through the 19th. Registration for the event will be open soon and more information about the events and speakers will be available soon. We'll keep you posted as more information becomes available. In the meantime, you can block out the time on your calendar and start bugging your boss to pay for the trip.
For those of you in NYC, the AIGA NYC brings you witty, out-spoken designer/illustrator James Victore in his "HOW TO STAY HARD: AN EVENING WITH JAMES VICTORE" on Tuesday, March 26th. He'll talk about everything from client work to personal work to balancing that work with his family. To be part of this can't miss night, please go to the AIGA and reserve a space today.
At the beginning of February, I attended an engaging, funny AIGA talk given by Paul Sahre where he lead us through the mistakes and uncertainties in his illustrative design career. I learned a ton and wished that I could share it with all of you and today, I found out I can. The AIGA has begun to release podcasts of various talks. At 95 minutes, it is a big long, but there are some great chunks of knowledge and advice scattered throughout.
The Type Directors Club hosts a great event on Thursday, April 23rd where Nancy Harris Rouemy explores the inspiration and the story behind many of her great typographic explorations for The New York Times Magazine and The Lives They Lived Issues. Don't forget to RSVP.
[The winning motion graphics short for the Digital Design Tournament here in NYC by our good friend Jake Guttormssom.]]
Our good friend Jake Guttormssom!!! YAY!! Jake participated here in NYC this past weekend and WON the motion graphics section of the tournament. We blogged about this contest back in January and we are excited to know one of the winners. Now we are going to let Jake tell his in his own words what happened and how he went about creating his masterpiece.
"Hi, My name is Jake Guttormsson. I just won the Motion Design Competition at the 2009 Cut & Paste Digital Design Tournament In New York City.
It was a live, one day event for 2d Designers, 3d Modelers, and Motion Designers at Webster Hall on Saturday, March 21st. Cut & Paste is a multi-city Tournament holding events in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Boston, New York, Toronto, Chicago, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Barcelona, Milan, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Sydney. It will culminate in the 2009 Global Championship to be held June 20th at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York.
My portion of the contest began with the orientation a week before the tourney. We all met at the Cut & Paste offices in beautiful central Williamsburg, Brooklyn. There we received some training on the Wacom Cintiq 21UX pen tablet monitors (Wacom is a major sponsor of the event, and we each got on of these touch screen monitors to work on for game day.) We then went through the ground rules, we were able to bring 4 prepared assets to the competition (psd's, video clips, 3d models, etc.) as well as any number of royalty free audio clips. No animation could be done before the day of the contest. We have 8 hours to create and render an animation no longer than 15 seconds.
The next day we got our theme which was "The History of Music." A few things I tried to keep in my mind while I was making it: 1) This was going on in front of a live audience; 2)they've been drinking; 3) they've been there for 2 hours already, while they're watching the other competitions, they've been listening to a Dj. I tried to keep my idea simple and easy to read, my audio minimal, the animation fast paced and punchy. And most importantly, it had to be funny. I also tried to design it so it could be built in layers, meaning I could outline the basic premiss, then go back adding more and more embellishments until I ran out of time. This way if it took longer than I anticipated, I would at least have something to show, with a beginning middle and end."
Check out Jake's award winning short above and get ready to cheer him on in the worldwide tournament in June.
[Ed Interlock by Ed Benguiat for House Industries]
For those of you in NYC who are craving a good type talk should swing by the Type Director's Club next Thursday, March 26th at 6pm and check out a talk with Ed Benguiat. He will take you on a journey through his career as a by type designer and logotype guru. The TDC promises you'll be blown away and says that his talk "was undoubtedly the most exciting one held at Typo Berlin 2008." You won't want to miss this.
As a designer in today's economy is it best to know as many skills as possible. As a print designer who jumped to web design, I know it can be difficult to learn the ins-an-outs of a new medium. For those of you in NYC, the AIGA wants to help. On March 30, 31 and April 1 from 6-8pm, the AIGA will offer a FREE seminar called Moving from Print to Web. The seminar plans to cover the basics from workflow to software to programming language.
