The Friday 5ive Project

150 years and counting

I was in London during the week and managed to catch a great exhibition, ‘Poster Art 150 – London Underground’s Greatest Designs’ which showcased 150 of the greatest Underground posters ever produced. The London Transport Museum chose a 150 posters from the Museum’s archive of 3,300 posters from each decade from the last 100 years. Some of the poster design is of the highest order from artists like Man Ray, Edward McKnight Kauffer, Charles Pear and Maxwell Ashby Armfield and many more. One of my favourite artists was Charles Burton he has a few posters on exhibit, one of the best being his Cycle and Motor Cycle show poster which showcases his talent for economy of design aligned with simple typography that is so effective when compared to the over designed posters you often see in transport situations today.

Alchemist

I came across Ian Ruhter’s photography and just had to include here. A photographer who grew up with severe dyslexia and found photography offered him an outlet to communicate and found he was quite good at it. Where he enjoyed the process earlier in his working life with the introduction of digital photography he found that the hands on approach was getting lost and with it his enthusiasm. So he took a step back and decided to approach it from a different perspective and where with digital everyone has a camera similar to everyone else’s he decided to build a camera, a big camera, one housed in an old delivery van. Then the image is imposed on a metal plate (wet plate technology developed in the 1850′s) using chemicals that must not dry before the image is taken. The final images are stunning with a lot of detail and flaws from where the chemicals haven’t covered the image evenly and so it has a hand crafted quality that can take hours to set up and may not work every time due humidity and environmental variables. But Ian has found the love in the process again and in a quote from the video below he say’s “It’s about doing what you love. If you’ve been searching your whole life for something you love and you found it. What would you be willing to sacrifice.” Ian has sacrificed and put everything he can into his photography and it shows. He’s videos are also worth a look to see the journeys and people involved in his photography. The opening of the video below reminded me of a Breaking Bad episode, I thought he might be just cooking up some meth, but stick with it.

Jessica Hische

Jessica’s who describe herself as a letterer, illustrator, and crazy cat lady creates some of the best lettering and illustrative work I’ve come across. You can see her passion for detail and how she confessed to annoying her classmates back in college with more work than assignments called for. But if working harder than everyone else gets results like this, then it’s easy to be forgiven. In a section within her site called thoughts, she speaks of originality and how everyone should look for there own voice in there work that is there’s alone and hers surely sings with an ear of true originality.

 Matthew Ferguson

These great disc sleeves designed by the graphic designer Matthew Ferguson were created for a 10 disc Blu-ray limited collection showcasing Marvels – Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Ferguson distills each film down to its most iconic elements for the  sleeve art for each of the Blu-ray discs held within a steel replica briefcase as seen in the Avengers Assemble movie. These sleeves show that it isn’t always what you add, but what you take away that gives you the essence of the original subject matter.

Sagaki Keita

Japanese artist Sagaki Keita creates composite pen and ink illustrations using seemly thousands upon thousands of doodles. Characters that would make you chuckle if seen in a singular situation in the margin of a notebook join thousands of such characters to make a illustration of such complexity it astounds at a distance, but as you get closer it just blows your mind with the detail involved. Where one artist may take away as much as possible to give meaning to his work, Sagaki adds and adds until there is meaning within meaning, doodles relating to the country of origin and doodles that are just doodles until he creates his overall piece.