Published on Friday, January 27th, 2012 by Peter Giffen

Applied Arts friend and advertising legend Gary Prouk, of Sebastian Consultancy, provides links that will help you kill time, avoid work and find inspiration and entertainment.

What if . . .: Here Peter Stults reimagines familiar movies in posters, as if they came from another time and place. He explains: “A while back a friend of mine forwarded me a site, where artist Sean Hartter made posters of films that, title wise, we were familiar with, but there was a slight difference; they were remade as if they belonged to a different era or a different genre. The name of the movie was there, but the actors were different, the style was different, and I loved the concept. So I went forward with this theme: What if movies we were all familiar with were made in a different slice of time? Who would be in it? Who would direct it? So here we are …”

Swissted: This ongoing project by New York graphic designer Mike Joyce draws  from his love of punk rock and Swiss modernism. Although these two movements have nothing to do with each another, Joyce has redesigned vintage punk, hardcore and indie rock show flyers into international typographic style posters. Each design is set in Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk Medium, all lowercase. The posters are for sale.

Things Apple is Worth More Than: With Apple sales surging on the strength of  iPads and iPhones, it’s surprising what the company is worth more than. For example, it is bigger than the United States coffee industry, two entire Apollo space programs, the cost of the U.S. Civil War, 10 times the value of the entire NFL, and the list goes on.

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Published on Thursday, January 26th, 2012 by Peter Giffen

Toronto-based digital creative agency Kolody, in partnership with Teletoon Canada, has created a new game play experience that is first ever to allow players to place multiple iOS devices side-by-side and play co-operatively as if using one screen.

Roller Johnny is based on the popular Johnny Test animated franchise. In the game, kids can choose to play as hero Johnny Test or his dog Dukey to sandwich baddies and slingshot each other around the colourful roller derby world. Multiple people can play the game together through an innovative feature that harnesses Bluetooth to allow users to pair mobile devices and combine screen real estate, making Roller Johnny the first iOS gaming experience with co-operative screen play, individual leaderboards and timed play.

The first version of the game, playable on iPhone became available in the iTunes store in December, but an update is in development that will let users play together using WiFi to access content including games and video, on multiple paired idevices.

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Published on Thursday, January 26th, 2012 by Peter Giffen

First we had dogs barking the Star Wars theme for VW, and now we have them woofing “Happy Birthday,” as part of an overhaul of a canine social networking site. Founded in 2007 by Alexandre Roche and his father, Geoffrey Roche (of Lowe Roche fame), the Dogbook Facebook app apparently has 3.5 million users worldwide and has been featured on ABC World News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the BBC. The duo has also launched popular sister sites Catbook, Horsebook and My Babybook.

The all-new design offers dog lovers a 300 per cent larger profile picture, bigger news feed photos, a new My Life Story section, a Dog Years Calculator, a customizable My Favorites section, which are all part of the new Dogbook “Dogline” features. Also included in the update are a Happy Birthday Video feature, and a faster high-definition photo uploader.

Five months in the making, the redesign is launching with a three-month site takeover by automaker Subaru that integrates seamlessly into Dogbook’s new look and feel. The takeover, part of the brand’s long-running Dog tested. Dog approved. campaign, includes a branded email intro to the revamped site, two web videos and a free dog bandana give away.

“This is how to do advertising on social networks. Don’t do ads, do involvers. Don’t be interruptive, do relevant creative. Subaru and Carmichael Lynch get this way better than most,” says Geoffrey Roche in a press release. “We can really embed advertisers into the user-experience from page to page to deliver the kind of results that are so often promised but rarely delivered upon.”

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Published on Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 by Peter Giffen

Apparently Vancouver designer Greg Durrell is making a film about Burton Kramer, the veteran Toronto artist, educator and designer, famous for the identities he did for clients such as the CBC, the Royal Ontario Museum and North American Life. Last year, Durell edited and designed the 186-page Burton Kramer Identities, a book devoted to Kramer’s impressive 50-year career. If the clip from the film, due to be completed this spring, is any gauge, the production will capture the 80-year-old design icon’s outspoken persona.

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Published on Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 by Peter Giffen

This “One Minute Portfolio Visit” video comes from Trevor Jansen, a Vancouver photographer who shoots “people from every walk of life – celebrities and politicians, musicians and Olympians, CEOs and factory workers –  for various publications around the world.” Jansen also runs a local culture blog, Vancouver Versus Vancouver.

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Published on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 by Peter Giffen

On Sunday, February 5, at 7 p.m., a fundraiser will be held for Heather Morton, at the Gladstone Hotel, in Toronto. Morton is a well-known art buyer and photographer consultant, who last November was diagnosed with fibromatosis, a rare “non-malignant sarcoma which grows aggressively and is hard to resolve.” Faced with two years of chemotherapy, she has drastically cut back on her workload.

Friends of Heather Morton have organized this fundraiser to help deal with her financial shortfall. Admission is $10 and there will be a silent auction of prints donated by many top-level photographers.

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Published on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 by Peter Giffen

Toronto illustrator Gary Alphonso created a cover for the Harlequin paperback edition of Hazards of the Game by Norma Tadlock Johnson. “The art director wanted a very graphic feel to the cover where type would be a major element,” explains an Alphonso blog post. “They decided to place the text within the shape of the sand trap since the story takes place on a golf course.  Another requirement of the illustration was to include some of the clues to the mystery: the pink golf ball, the discarded putter and the Siamese cat.

“The challenge was to design the illustration with the type from the early rough stages as opposed to creating the illustration and having the designer apply type after the fact. Here are two versions to show the importance of type – an early draft [above] and the tweaked type that became the cover [below].”

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Published on Monday, January 23rd, 2012 by Peter Giffen

Happy Creative Services, of Bangalore, India, created this subtle print campaign for Flipkart.com, the country’s fastest-growing e-commerce portal. The idea is that when Flipkart’s goods are delivered for a good price, in a speedy fashion to a customer’s door, you have one happy customer (and door).

[Nod to the Inspiration Room]

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Published on Monday, January 23rd, 2012 by Peter Giffen

Toronto illustrator Barbara Reid will receive The Order of Ontario on  Thursday. The internationally acclaimed children’s author and illustrator has sold more than 1.5 million books worldwide. In addition to writing and illustrating award-winning children’s books, Reid tours, speaks, donates, promotes and conducts workshops for the cause of children’s literature.

From Reid’s website: “At the Ontario College of Art and Design my focus was illustration, and it was for a class assignment that I first experimented with plasticine to make a dimensional picture. The project was a surprise success – everybody laughed! When I entered another plasticine picture in a calendar contest I was embarrassed to find out that one of the judges was the famous painter and Group of Seven member A.J. Casson. To my surprise and relief, he laughed! I won the contest. After that, I decided to take having fun more seriously, and include plasticine artwork in my portfolio. I graduated from OCAD in 1980 and began work as a freelance illustrator.

“After working for a variety of clients, I was thrilled to illustrate my first picture book in plasticine. The New Baby Calf, by Edith Newlin Chase, was shortlisted for the Canada Council Prize for Illustration. More than 20 books later, other awards include the UNICEF Ezra Jack Keats Award, The Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Award, the Mr. Christie’s Book award, and the Elizabeth Cleaver Award. The Party, which I wrote and illustrated, won the Governor General’s Award for Illustration; Fox Walked Alone was named to the IBBY International Honour List and was a Blue Spruce Award selection. Most recently, I received Amelia Frances Howard Gibbon Award for Perfect Snow. My books have been published in Canada, the U.S.A., Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Holland, Finland, Norway, China, Germany, Brazil, Korea and Thailand.”

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Published on Friday, January 20th, 2012 by Peter Giffen

Theo Dimson, c. 1987

This is how I remember Theo Dimson, an elegant and accomplished  designer, known especially for his posters. I was waiting for him for lunch at a suburban Toronto restaurant, in the 1990s, with business types in suits sitting all around, chowing on the catch of the day. Theo walked in and all conversation stopped and all eyes followed as he walked to my table. Theo was dressed in black leather, black hat, his fingers and ears heavy with silver jewelry. A man of unique personal style, he was oblivious, or pretended to be, to all the attention focused on  him throughout the meal. The men in business uniform would have related better to Theo’s conversation, often about his beloved Buffalo Bills football team.

This memory sprang to mind with the sad news from Nicole – one of his daughters and a fine designer herself – that Theo had died on Wednesday, from complications from pneumonia. Nicole writes: “Although he was not responsive during his final days, he was peaceful, comfortable, and in no pain. My sisters Lisa, Emily and I were with him during this time and he seemed aware and comforted by our presence. Throughout the night, we took turns reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby to him, and finished just a few hours before he passed.

2008

Science & Art, Tsinghua University, Beijing China

Joey, TWP Theatre

Salome, TWP Theatre

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