n my book jacket hall of fame, there is a special place for Rodrigo Corral. He is simply a genius. The meager sampling above does not begin to represent his rotating range of palettes and output. Like I’ve mentioned before, when I come across a really nice book cover I usually take a wild guess as to who could have designed it. Although I can spot a John Gall or Barbara deWilde cover a mile away, I will never be able to spot a Rodrigo Corral cover. Just the other day I found a small chap book on philosophy with a simple design: a solid green block with a thin white border and white serif letters. It was minimal perfection and I was curious who designed it. I flipped to the back flap and yep, Rodrigo Corral.

His ability to produce stunning results in a variety of styles and techniques is clearly evident in his work for author Chuck Palahniuk. I don’t know if it’s Chuck or his publishers, but who ever it is they really let Mr. Corral go to town. From the gold ink on the cover of Survivor to the use of Jacob Magraw-Mickelson’s illustration for Rant, these are some of the most adventurous and beautiful covers out there. And better yet, they have meaning.

Although I love well designed book covers, I take a special interest in the ones that actually portray aspects of the novel itself. Particularly those aspects that become clear only after reading the book. For me this is the mark of a great dust jacket designer.

We’re all familiar with his cover for A Million Little Pieces which is brilliant, but the cover for My Friend Leonard is what kills me the most. It’s probably my second favorite book cover of all time (and definitely one of my favorite books). It’s a perfect example of a cover that means more to the reader once read. A cover that starts as a simple but lovely design and ends up being so much more.  You don’t just think of the book when you look at it, you actually see Leonard.  And for that, Rodrigo Corral will always have that special place in my dust jacket hall of fame.

ne of the very first rules a new designer learns is to keep your ego out of your work. It’s good advice because the ego stands at the dividing line between art and graphic communication — a line every good designer surely knows the location of.

Good designers know that graphic design is really graphic communication and that if you’re not communicating the client’s message, you’re communicating your own, or worse, nothing at all. I believe all this in its practical application, but I’ve also spent a lot of time taming the artist in me when approaching a project.

I love knowing the rules of a craft. It’s so much better breaking them after you fully understand them, but I’ve never considered breaking the cardinal rule of graphic design: actually utilizing the ego. That is until I came across the work of Marian Bantjes through the Stefan Sagmeister series Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far.

Her work seemed so alive that I had to know more about her. I was very happy to find this video from TED in which she describes her feelings and thoughts on breaking rule number one and subsequently deciding to re-label herself a graphic artist.

I’m used to TED talks enlightening and inspiring me, particularly when they related directly to my fields of study or even better, directly to design. But this one was different. Marian Bantjes was speaking to a part of me I wasn’t aware existed, and suddenly, I found solutions to several mental road blocks I’d run into while working on design projects.

I’m paraphrasing here, but she said something like, “I started making design that satisfied both my ego and the client” or something to that effect and although I don’t feel personally I have any sort of ego problem (unless you consider all art to be ego based), the subtext of her statement spoke to me.

Mixing that with something I heard Scott Thomas say about the need for transparency in design, I’ve found a new mental palette of creative tools to work with when approaching a project. Mainly, the freedom to entertain a few of those “if I had carte blanche and and endless budget” ideas and see if any of them could actually scale down to usable solutions to problems laid out within the initial project brief. And why not pay attention to and analyze your artistic desires during a project? There may be completely usable material there, generated instinctively by your own inner egomaniac-artist.

f you have any books or records from the mid 80s through the 90s, chances are you probably have one with a Carin Goldberg cover. After starting her own company Carin Goldberg Design in 1982, she was responsible for hundreds of book covers and went on to become a favorite for 80s album cover design. After expanding into the areas of identity and brand consultation, she has gone on to work with AIGA, design the Annual of the Type Directors Club and even consulted for Martha Stewart — all the while producing amazing design work for herself and her projects.

In the late 80s and early 90s, Goldberg brought typographic experiments, nouveau elements and collage to the forefront of dust jacket design, which was no small feat as the various marketing departments of the various major publishing houses were still quite gun shy about experimenting with book covers. Nevertheless, her work changed the landscape of jacket design and set the stage for the adventurous covers we see today.

Design finally won the favor of marketing after several successful runs of redesigned older titles. Publishers and marketers had finally seen the light and they let their designers go to town. You can see from the samples above that Goldberg took full advantage of the new climate and dove in head first producing some of the boldest covers yet released. Her dust jacket for Wasted Beauty must have had the marketing department sweating bullets. I can just see the memos now: “Jack, we can’t use this. You can’t even read anything because the text is wrapped around the entire jacket. Steve, relax. She’s an award winning designer, and besides, you’re just going to piss off the art department. Let them learn the hard way if it bombs.” It didn’t bomb, obviously. Great design rarely does.

e were drafted to Dribbble last month, and promptly forgot about it until a week ago. Since then, we’ve posted several previews of new things we’ve been working on and have also connected with a wonderful group of designers. There’s still a grip of new work to be added to our portfolio, but for now, Dribbble (and Behance) are the best places to stay updated with what we’re doing.

I’m sure a lot of you are wondering if we have Dribbble invites. The answer is no; but once we do, we might just make an announcement for draftees. :)

eally digging this poster (designed by Paul Wilson) for the film The American, which is directed by Anton Corbijn and stars George Clooney. This is interesting, because Corbijn’s career consists mostly of directing music videos and even designing album covers, so I’m curious to see how this film will turn out, though I suspect it will be wonderful. The trailer hints at some gorgeous cinematography and a seductive story about romance and assassins.

From IMDB:

Alone among assassins, Jack is a master craftsman. When a job in Sweden ends more harshly than expected for this American abroad, he vows to his contact Larry that his next assignment will be his last. Jack reports to the Italian countryside, where he holes up in a small town and relishes being away from death for a spell. The assignment, as specified by a Belgian woman, Mathilde, is in the offing as a weapon is constructed. Surprising himself, Jack seeks out the friendship of local priest Father Benedetto and pursues romance with local woman Clara. But by stepping out of the shadows, Jack may be tempting fate.

Yatta and Moscow, two polyptychs

Stalin in Front of Mirror

Friends

Hitler Cutting His Toenails

K&M Early Art Exhibition, Moscow 1967

Souls Project, NY

Ecollaboration with Beavers

Bayonne, NJ

Tina as a Tail of Ouroborosos

Germany's Most Unwanted Painting

raphic designers interested in sociopolitical art who are unfamiliar with Komar & Melamid should really take a look at their extensive website. From their early days as semi-anarchist artists in Moscow to selling Andy Warhol’s soul in New York, K&M were masters of manipulating perception in order to offer a third opinion on whatever subject fascinated the art community at the time.

Taking a nod from dada, they freely invented new ’schools’ of art like Nostalgic Socialist Realism based on different schools with obviously contrasting agendas — the results of such experiments becoming a prime motivation behind their work.

The 90s found K&M collaborating with with both animals through their Ecollaboration project, and humans through their People’s Choice project — in which they created artwork based on the results of a multiple country survey asking for the most wanted and least wanted aspects in art.

The pair seem to have disbanded around 2005-6 for unknown reasons, but Vitaly Komar has continued to produce material, much of which looks back to their early highly conceptual paintings which are as fresh and relevant as they were they day they were created. K&M’s work definitely asks more questions than provides answers, and that is a very important aspect of art. An aspect that designers and artists might want to remember before we forget we can use.

random pages from the raw shark texts

xperimental type as a medium has never gotten old. From expressive Russian posters to the Dada movement, or even going further back to Lewis Carroll, we have a rich history of manipulating the written word to achieve new ways of communication. Although most of our contemporary examples exist within art communities and design circles, the concept has nevertheless found its way into more than a few mainstream formats.

Here are three examples of experimental text in novels that recently caught my eye. I’ll be straight up with you here, I haven’t read any of these books (although I’ve started the Raw Shark texts), but as you take a look at their interiors, I’m sure you’ll see why I want to.

House of Leaves is a horror story of sorts, seemingly about a house that is larger on the inside than on the outside. I just love the insane amount of text manipulation and design here. One really cool aspect for example, is throughout the book, the word house is printed in blue. The type ranges from simple romans to old school typewriter faces, with plenty of handwritten and illustrated letters throughout.

What can be said about David Mamet that hasn’t already been said? Playwright, author, screenwriter and director. However, Wilson comes right out of left field for any fan of his typical work. Taking place in the not-too-distant future, the internet crashes and humanity has lost its memory, leaving only downloaded material from which to reconstruct their history.

I’ve included Wilson in this post because of its excessive use of footnotes which take on a life of their own, sometimes taking up entire pages.

I’ve saved the best for last. Where House of Leaves uses the experimental format exclusively, The Raw Shark Texts is the most free of extravagance and uses only a minimal count of text and type experiments, and as far as I can tell, only appear within the specific and significant actions that take place in the book. The plot – plot used loosely here, revolves around an amnesiac searching for his past while on the run from a ‘conceptual fish’ that feeds on human memories. It’s quite interesting so far with well-deserved comparisons to the cerebral styles of Haruki Murakami and Paul Auster.

my holocaust by tova reich

my holocaust close up

my holocaust spine

my holocaust back cover

just love this cover. From the beautiful type to the illustrations to the entire concept, Roberto de Vicq de Cumpitch has created yet another perfect dust jacket. Straight away, the viewer is instantly aware of the irony between the images and title which clearly indicates you’re in for some dark humor.

My Holocaust and its plot revolving around a holocaust memorial museum is quite dark indeed, having little to nothing to do with the actual holocaust outside of its money-making potential. To this end, the confusingly cute dust jacket works perfectly in illustrating the novel’s blatant lack of actual horror usually associated with anything holocaust related.

This cover is a perfect example of what all great dust jacket designers have in common — the ability to really capture the spirit of the book itself.  The success of this cover is no surprise as Roberto has been designing and working in the book industry for some time now, working in roles ranging from illustrator to author. He is currently works as a creative at Harper Collins and continues to design and publish beautiful books, usually featuring his obvious love of type. His children’s book Bembo’s Zoo is illustrated entirely using the typeface Bembo, for example.

Although some of his dust jacket work falls outside my personal interest, I know this is just a taste and style issue. All his work passes the tests in both the art and marketing departments — the yin and yang of the industry. He is obviously a dope designer and his mastery of multiple graphic playing fields ranging from minimalism to elaborate fold outs (see his portfolio) easily places him in my dust jacket hall of fame.

just received this really amazing print from the Davier Interactive studio titled Schmooze n’ Booze, a bi-monthly gathering in collaboration with the Fresno Advertising Federation for like-minded creatives to connect, shoot the shit, mingle and network to their hearts content.

What I really love about this print is its nostalgic appeal. Like something straight out of a classic 1960s children’s root beer ad. I seriously have a soft spot in my heart for this illustrative style. I especially love the choice of colors, and to top it off, the subtle Davier Interactive icon on the bottle. Very nice touch fellas.

Additionally, I spoke with my buddy Sebastian, (one of the designers and developers from Davier), about the possibility of them creating a t-shirt out of this design. I sincerely hope they do. This would make a killer shirt. I’d definitely sport it.

Be sure to check out more work from the Davier Interactive studio via Behance. They’ve got a great portfolio worth perusing.

e had almost forgotten about Veaux until they emailed with sad news about closing down yesterday — it wasn’t a big surprise, especially since it took us a couple minutes to remember that we actually had an account with them.

From the CEO/Founder:

I really want to thank everyone who has made veaux so much fun. Without the artists and the people who believed in this project and website it wouldn’t have gone as far as it did. With that said I have decided to close down veaux because of maintenance demands and the desire for a quality website became too costly.

Unfortunately, Veaux never seemed to gain as much traction as Behance or even Coroflot, but we still appreciate that it sought to provide a platform for the creative community to share their works. Ten minutes after the sad email, Behance came to Veaux with an opportunity to create an alliance so artists wouldn’t have to lose their accounts. This news made us happy; also, kudos to Behance for stepping in. More information about this development will come next week along with a link to the new Veaux/Behance site.