Graphic design

Unitec ready to host International design event

More than one hundred representatives from the world’s top art and design schools and institutions will descend on Unitec in November for the Cumulus Aotearoa workshop (they're updating their website with more information soon).

Well known designer David Trubridge and Maori Master Carver Lyonel Grant have been anounced as the key note speakers for the two day event on November 9 and 10. A handful of other well known designers and practitioners will be running workshops around New Zealand’s design influences.

Cumulus Aotearoa has attracted a who’s who of of art and design schools and institutions from around the world including the Royal College of Art in England, Domus Academy in France, and the Art Center College of Design in USA.

The conference is a lead up to the 38 Degrees South Cumulus Conference in Melbourne two days later.

Head of Department, David Hawkins, says hosting Cumulus Aotearoa is a significant achievement for his department and will attract a lot of interest from those heading down under.

“This is a stunning opportunity to showcase Unitec and New Zealand's art, design and culture, to an influential group of art and design educators from around the world,” says Hawkins.

He says many of the delegates will be interested in finding out where New Zealand’s art and design influences come from.

Cumulus Aotearoa will be based around Unitec's Te Noho Kotahitanga Marae, and will involve contributions from art and design practitioners from New Zealand with a strong focus upon sustainability and story-telling in a range of cultural contexts.

But it won’t be all work and play for the 100 representatives expected to attend the conference.

Apart from participating in workshops and discussions, they will get to experience New Zealand’s unique culture through a traditional Pacific Island style umu and other ethnic delicacies.

They will also be able to explore the design elements of Unitec’s new marae which has been constructed through traditional Maori methods.

Cumulus is the International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media and groups together the world's leading providers of art and design education.

Membership is by invitation only and Unitec is one of only two providers in New Zealand who are members, the other being Victoria University.

Download the flyer (3.1mb) or register on the website.

Graphic Design, Referenced is a visual and informational guide to the most commonly referenced terms, historical moments, landmark projects, and influential practitioners in the field of graphic design. With more than 2,000 design projects illustrating more than 400 entries, it provides an intense overview of the varied elements that make up the graphic design profession through a unique set of chapters:

Olympic posters proposal for London 2012 by Alan Clarke. "My thinking behind these posters was to convey the movement and energy of the games, in a simple abstract way."

A series of articles on transparency featuring beautiful information graphics by a range of designers including; Jacob Magraw-Mickelson, Atleykins, KissMeImPolish , Timko and Klick , Fogelson-Lubliner, RobDiIeso

How creative can you get with fonts and typography? Here is a short list of interesting illustrations made of text and different fonts.

1st of May 1926 the  New Zealand Railways Magazine was launched and published each month until June 1940. Several serialised features from the New Zealand Railways Magazine were republished as booklets. These included James Cowan’s guide to Maori railway station names and, as seen here, his surveys of the historical and scenic delights on the main trunk lines of the North and South islands. Via NZ History.

www.endemicworld.com offers New Zealand design in an accessible, fast, reliable and secure online environment. They have progressively built a virtual community around their website through a blog and the chatterati newsletter. Customers and designers are supporting by spreading the word about New Zealand design and endemicworld.com.

Why? A desire to make New Zealand design accessible worldwide and help designers build their businesses and brands. Future plans? Sign-up to the chatterati newsletter to be the first to know or get the blog feed. Are you a New Zealand designer? Read the become a supplier page and get in touch. endemicworld.com was designed by Studio Alexander.

Great article from the Creative Review about one of the most original design companies of the modern era. As a company name, the Designers Republic was a masterstroke. This mysterious entity sounded big and well organised and it had the air of being an outfit with a purpose and a plan. There was nothing modest or retiring about such a moniker and 1986, the year they started, was a good time for a designer to make this kind of statement.

Back then, mainstream design groups tended to have prosaic, ad agency type names such as Smith & Milton, Lewis Moberly and The Partners. Designers calling themselves Assorted Images, Rocking Russian or 23 Envelope invariably worked for the music business, their handles as weird and unlikely as the rock groups their cover art represented.

The Designers Republic went a step further, the very name a declaration that in this territory design was the administra­tion, the ruling party, the occupying power. Wherever or whatever this republic might be, it sounded like a bolt-hole for people whose one true purpose and satisfaction was design.

Finding out that tDR were based in Sheffield only thickened the mystery. They had no plans to leave the city, they said, and they stuck to their guns. People still asked them about this long after it had ceased to be an issue, but in the late 1980s there were few designers with national reputations operating outside the capital. Attracted by Sheffield’s thriving music scene and bands such as Cabaret Voltaire and the Human League, Ian Anderson had left London in the early 1980s to study philosophy at Sheffield University. He liked the pub and club culture, made friends and put down roots. Read more. 

Also see this other Creative Review article: The Designers Republic Remembered.

Shepard Fairey’s Obama poster has won the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year 2009 award.

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In the wake of the Pihema Cameron and Bruce Emery case, graffiti has cemented itself back into the mainstream psyche - re-igniting public outrage and prompting radical law reform. Graffiti writers are beginning to understand that documenting and presenting the history of the movement is in their hands. Bringing meaning, valid critique and context to the work is vital. Askew is one such artist advocating this approach. He combines a host of todays available technology and ‘Real World’ design to realise and document his work.

Why ideas are king for telling stories – Simon  Shaw
Looking forward with image creation and new crayon technology. Illustration in NZ - how we use illustration in a country with a very young and fragile illustrative history.

Let’s Change the Flag – Paul Newfield
Paul Newfield and a group of his colleagues at Morrison & Co are aiming to reignite the debate about New Zealand’s flag.  Back in 2004 Lloyd Morrison, the founder of Morrison & Co and Infratil, launched a campaign to change the flag. The campaign failed - mainly because we underestimated the huge effort required to communicate the aims, objectives and benefits of the campaign to the masses. Four years later the underlying issues haven’t changed. New Zealanders are still not emotionally connected to their flag, and are still dissatisfied with its design and with what it represents.  We believe that choosing a new flag is an important step in defining our identity and aspirations as a nation.  We’d like to challenge New Zealand’s design community to play an active role in the process.