Design

“On the first Sunday of 1969 Robert Barry went to Central Park with four capsules of radioactive material in his pocket. He had ordered them from a scientific supply catalog, choosing an isotope of his namesake, barium-133, the only one of twenty-two known isotopes of the element that does not dangerously decay within seconds or minutes. He walked to the Great Lawn behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art and, in two locations there, inconspicuously buried the capsules. He then snapped a quick photograph at each of the sites, leaving behind what he called 0.5 Microcurie Radiation Installation.

With a half-life of slightly more than ten years, the barium isotopes continue to decay. So unless they have been unearthed, they are emitting a faint but charged bit of energy, like an invisible signal from a dying star, unbeknownst to the ballplayers, dog walkers, and picknickers on the grass above.” *

* Peter Eleey, “Thursday,” in The Quick and the Dead, exh. cat. (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2009), 31.

In conjunction with the exhibition Text/Messages, the Walker and mnartists.org hosted Multiples Mall, an artist book fair for the Twin Cities (hopefully to become an annual event). We thought it was a good occasion to actually collaborate with each other and so after batting around a number of ideas, we settled on something resembling a labor of love: four pamphlets dedicated to four people who for some reason or another had failed to be heard, or had been overshadowed, or had been unsuccessful in their ambitions, but had nonetheless given us inspiration. Michael Chang: the youngest male tennis player to ever win a Grand Slam championship, never to win again. Michael Collins: the third, relatively unknown astronaut of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission. Anaïs Nin: an obscure literary figure for most of her life, only later receiving widespread attention. And Levi Eshkol, the progressive prime minister of Israel who delivered a passionate but disastrously stuttered radio address and then died shortly thereafter. The four pamphlets were bound together (see rotating covers above) and were also distributed individually to coffee shops (see below).

Our title was derived from the following passage from Lewis Hyde’s The Gift, which describes a difference between labor and work, in the context of one’s gifts and passing them on. It is printed on the back of the bound copies:

For more about The Gift from a designer’s perspective, see Rob Giampietro’s excellent article for Dot Dot Dot, and his reflections for the most recent issue of Idea magazine.

front covers of individual pamphlets

back covers of individual pamphlets

selected spreads

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And here are some photos from the fair:

Multiples Mall

Members of Hardland Heartland at their booth

Sam Hoolihan showing off his books

Erik Brandt of Geotypografika

Mylinh’s flickr performance:

Given the Walker’s dive into new media (this blog being a case in point) it may surprise some readers that the venerable Walker library is only searchable though an old-fashioned card catalog system. In a hallway between the library and the archives live three or four hulking pieces of furniture, which hold thousands of cards, records for each book.

These somewhat esoteric index cards, punched with one hole at the bottom edge, and housed one after another in long, narrow drawers, formed the inspiration for the exhibition graphics of Text/Messages: Books by Artists, on view now in the Medtronic Gallery.

Making a direct link to its origin — the library and the permanent collection–generated the visual identity of the exhibition and the related event mailer. Through several discussions between the designer and the co-curator of the exhibition — librarian Rosemary Furtak — a call number for the exhibition was created,

N
7433.4
. W353
A4
2008

The typeface Monospace Century Schoolbook is used to capture the look and feel of the original cards, which are still produced with a typewriter. The manila paper stock further emphasizes this relationship.
The call number became an essential element in the visual identity for the exhibition, as well as the color of the paper stock which is used on the gallery walls and title graphics.

Eventually, a limited edition publication listing the the appropriate Dewey Decimal call number for each book in the exhibition will be available in the library (shelved under our new custom call number), allowing the show to be recreated by visitors to the library. Embedded in the design system is a mechanism that essentially returns the art objects back to their origin as books in the library, keeping the exhibition alive forever!

This catalogue documents the Walker Art Center’s exhibition The Last Picture Show, which surveys artists’ alternative uses of photography from the 1960s to the early 1980s. During this time artists were redefining their relationship to the camera and to the media through explorations that were often published in art magazines and self-published journals of the time. Taking its cue from these types of publications, the book’s extensive essays are reproduced with alternating sections of artists’ work. The book is a compendium of essays, artists’ writings from the period, and images bound together as to resemble a bound library periodical. Signaling the proliferation of images many of the artists reference in their works, the edition has six different covers. Each image is simply a page taken from the artists section and tipped-on to the cover. Each represents a different range of the work in the exhibition.

Here is a small sampling of brochures from the Regis Dialogues and Film Retrospectives, curated by the Film/Video department at the Walker since 1990. The brochures had a variety of formats before 1995, when P. Scott Makela and Santiago Piedrafita created the current template.  We have several of these loose templates for recurring projects (like this) — specifying a size, a few folding variations, or sometimes a certain type of ink — and it’s nice to see how a format can play out over 14 years and through numerous designers. Who needs a graphic identity when you have METALLIC INKS?

Haile Gerima: Assertions of Resistance (1995, P. Scott Makela & Santiago Piedrafita); Stan Brakhage: The Art of Seeing (1999, Daniel Eatock); The Great Ecstasy of the Filmmaker Herzog (1999, Erin Mulcahy); John Waters: Shock Value (2000, Sean Deyoe); Léos Carax: L’amour Fou (Crazy Love) (2000, Santiago Piedrafita); Agnès Varda (2001, Jodie Gatlin); Tales of the City: Hanif Kureishi’s Rough Guide to London (2001, Linda Byrne); Gus Van Sant: On the Road Again (2003, Alex DeArmond); Guy Maddin: Pages from a Filmmakers Diary (2004, Chad Kloepfer); Alexander Payne: Sideways Glance at America (2005, Matthew Rezac); Ang Lee with James Schamus: East Meets Western (2005, Chad Kloepfer); Isabella Rossellini: Illuminated (2006, Emmet Byrne); Béla Tarr: Mysterious Harmonies (2007, Emmet Byrne); Miloš Forman: Cinema of Resistance (2008, Chad Kloepfer)

For the complete list of Regis Dialogues, which is incredible, see here.

And here are two more early retrospectives, before the current format was created:

The Films of John Cassavetes (1989, Glen Suokko); Wim Wenders: In the Course of Time (1991, Mark Nelson)

We’re going to be posting selections from the Walker design archives in the coming months, starting here with one of my favorites: the exhibition catalogue for Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962–1972. This book is from way back in 2001 and was designed by Linda Byrne. Below is a description of the project, followed by images of the book and related marketing materials.

………

This catalogue documents an exhibition that examines the work of 14 Italian artists who explored a wide range of common materials to create extraordinary works. The term “arte povera,” literally “poor art,” has led to the use of cardboard and other “cheap” materials for other books on the subject. The challenge was to avoid this pattern, which we did by looking to the spirit of Italian design in the 1960s and its inventive use of materials. Drawing inspiration from the ten-year period bracketed by the exhibition, the book deploys a range of graphic devices without mimicking specific historical styles. The tactile nature of the artists works is referenced, for example, in the range of papers used throughout the book; each delineating a different section (essays, timeline, artworks, backmatter). The materiality of the book was enhanced by using several different papers to define particular sections and by flush trimming the book and not using a dust jacket. Large horizontal images were turned on edge to save space, which in turn enhanced the physicality of the book by shifting its orientation. Devices such as a shifting red bar that overprints the text and moves through the essays and timeline and the oversized endnotes numbers are details that enhance the graphic image of the book.

—

The 1999 Design Insights Lecture Series poster for the Walker Art Center (co-presented by AIGA Minnesota) is simply the most thorough and exhaustively produced poster I have seen in my day. Thus the poster is a deserving addition to our Flat Files collection.

With the informational side of the poster designed by Daniel Eatock and Andrew Blauvelt and its opposite side including an intensive drawing by Conny Purtill, this poster appears to have required the full attention and the contributions of the entire Walker design and editorial staffs. With such a well-crafted and carefully considered poster as proof, their efforts are hard not to appreciate.

Intended to act as a regional and informational “guide” for the out-of-town lecturers, the shear information overload (which could be considered a theme of Eatock’s work) of the poster references the overwhelming nature of traveling to a large city and being presented with a disproportionate number of resources about the city. Conny Purtill’s mosaic pencil drawing of an airplane in flight (best viewed from a distance) also compliments the informational side of the poster in regards to the reference of traveling as well as in its obsessive nature, its relation to “making” and in the attention to detail.

The amount of content showcased on this poster is more on par—in terms of the research, structural and editorial work required—with a small book. To give you an idea of the extent and depth to which this poster extends to, here is a sampling of what is included:

– Full lecturer biographies (with footnotes)

– A detailed description of the selection process and the meetings that were held to discuss the lecturers

– A short history of the AIGA

– A 21 paragraph description of AIGA’s Standards of Professional Practice

– Information about AIGA memberships, conferences, competitions, initiatives and much more

– The Walker Art Center’s Mission Statement

– A history of the Walker Art Center

– A list a practical information about the Walker (such as information on admission, gallery hours and how to contact the Walker)

– A complete column detailing the types of Walker memberships available

– An comprehensive collection of regional information including travel information, parking, airport, taxi and bus information, information about weather conditions and safe winter driving, as well as a listing of hotel accommodations, restaurants and clubs

– A description of the Walker Auditorium, its rules and an inventory of each lecturers audio-visual technical needs

– A column of 27 informative footnotes

– A glossary containing 15 entries from sources including the Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary and Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary

– A large listing event and design credits as well as a printer credit which specifies the press used, the paper size, the inks used, the folded size, the folding machine used and the number of posters printed.

(more…)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Fig. 1: Insights 2008, designed by Ryan Nelson and Vance Wellenstein; Fig. 2: Insights 2007, designed by Jayme Yen; Fig. 3: Insights 2006, designed by Scott Ponik Fig. 4: Insights 2005, designed by Chad Kloepfer; Fig. 5: Insights 2005, designed by Emmet Byrne and Silas Munro; Fig. 6: Insights 2003, designed by Kyle Blue, photography by Chad Kloepfer; Fig. 7: Summer Design Series 2004, designed by Alex DeArmond Fig. 8: Summer Design Series 2002, designed by Linda Byrne and Alex DeArmond

These two posters, recently found deep within one of our flat file drawers, demonstrate an unusual application of the Walker commissioned typeface designed by Matthew Carter.

These intriguing posters were somewhat of a mystery until recently when we discovered (with some investigative help from a former member of the Walker studio) that each poster was designed by a Japanese designer in collaboration with Carter for use in an exhibition of Carter’s work. Titled, Matthew Carter’s Type Game: A New Identity of the Walker Art Center, this exhibition took place in 1997 at the Morisawa Typography Space in Tokyo, Japan.

Design: Yutaka Satoh

Design: Kouga Hirano