Cincinnati’s annual Books on the Banks festival has been happily heralded by John Maggard for four years and counting. Timelessly capturing Cincinnati’s retro roots, Maggard takes a new spin on an old favorite. Unveiled this Wednesday, Maggard takes us a few decades back with his beautiful illustration of a classic city street.
Check out the article here.
This Spot Illustration by Mikey Burton for the June/July Issue of ReadyMade magazine was used in the “Place Setting” feature about Tucson, AZ. The client was thrilled with Mikey’s face-paced turnaround and original expression of the city’s colorful character.
Illustrator John Maggard walks us into the steel heart of the creative designer.
Is “infographics” still a legit term? I’m not sure, since a lot of my reading of late has been occupied with books like “The New Catechism of the Steam Engine”, and my inner engineer is loving every minute of it. Ever see those late-night or early morning black & white films of white-hot slabs of steel crashing through giant rollers while fountains of sparks fly under a busy, dramatic industrial-documentary soundtrack? The mill engine pictured was one of hundreds that used to drive those mill stands, running like fine Swiss watches for years at a time – all polished brass and rhythmic rods and valves, decades before the Sci-Fi mags illustrated giant flying spaceships with “new” electric dynamos as powerplants of the future.
This is a still frame from a longer animation I made for a friend in Youngstown Ohio whose specialty is saving, refurbishing and displaying giant steel industry artifacts – no small feat when dealing with items where the smallest part weighs a couple hundred pounds. He’s reassembled the engine across town at his museum but wanted it shown in its original setting, working under steam, and an animation of the machine seemed like a natural solution.
The animation was seen by a client with a similar desire to show a piece of industrial Americana at work. But this time it was important to show the inner workings of not only the steam engine but also the machinery it operated .They needed a visual of it intact and in place, an image impossible to see from the outside alone.
The second and third stills show a small piece of the next project – a speed governor device – that is at once a thing of sculptural beauty (to some of us, anyway) and emblematic of a past industrial age. These installations had a design and aesthetic that was incidental to their main function, but powerful in its own right.
Sections of the full animations are here:
Flickr Videoand here:
Flickr VideoI’ve always believed in the phrase, “To each their own.” But my small town is about to replace its traffic signals and attendant tangles of wire, poles, transformers and guy wires, with newer and sleeker metal stanchions. Allegedly for the purpose of beautification of the intersection…it somehow won’t have the same interesting silhouette at twilight.
As a creative collaborator hired gun, Von Glitschka does a lot of collaborative exploratory work for agencies and design firms. Denver based Barnhart called to create a new brand character for a pitch they were developing for their client Tommy Knocker Brewery.
A character development like this represents an entire company and a product line, so the process can become detailed and extensive. But jumping over hurdles is Von’s specialty, and the final outcome is a striking illustration that will be the foundation of the brand’s overall development.
This six foot long illustration was printed digitally on glass tables for this years Facebook Developer’s conference. SHA artist Mikey Burton kept with the theme of the conference, “Roll up your sleeves and get it done.” in his illustration. He created a piece of art littered with exactly what it takes to get any job, literally or figuratively, done: tools.
Grain Edit interview series lead to Philadelphia: City of Brotherly Love, home of founding father Ben Franklin and the Liberty Bell, and illustrator designer Tim Gough. A man who emerges from the cheese steak littered streets of Philly to do one thing: rid the world of dull illustrations.
http://grainedit.com/2009/04/08/tim-gough-interview/
Von Glitschka has a knack for taking a client’s idea and turning it into creative profit. Author Mordy Golding asked Von to provide him with a cover for his latest book, “Real World Illustrator”. Always eager to take on a challenge, Von created a cover that demonstrates and showcases new features in a software application, while remaining fun and attention grabbing
Tim Gough joins the SHA family from Philadelphia, bringing both brotherly love and a passion for silk-screen conceptual art. Tim melds images of spies and monstrous creatures with bursts of color and densely clustered patterns, creating dynamically rich works that are equally inspired by mid-century graphics and the screen-printing process itself.
Tim has been working a designer/art director for various agencies and design firms for the past 8 years, but in 2007 he left the agency life behind to pursue illustration and art full time. His work can be be found in books, magazines, newspapers, and other ephemera nationwide and abroad. Tim also publishes a limited edition zine called “Cut and Paste” – a regular consortium of his various drawings and ideas – and frequently shows his illustrations and screen-prints in galleries and shows.
So far Tim has worked with The New York Times, Business Week, The Progressive, The Philadelphia Weekly, Nylon Magazine, Bust Magazine, Fast Company, Burton Snowboards, Poketo, Leo Burnett, Warner Bros. Records, and Urban Outfitters. And who knows? If you’ve got a need for some visually arresting, conceptually interesting and rough-textured art, your name could be next on that list.
An Ohio native, Mikey Burton proudly describes his design aesthetic as “Midwesterny” and draws much of his inspiration from artifacts found throughout the hardworking, blue collar Rust Belt: old type-specimen sheets, arcane equipment manuals, ancient textbooks, you name it. “I’m fascinated with how past designers had to come up with ideas and solve problems using limited resources,” Mikey says. “For instance, figuring out how two colors can work harder than four. It helps me get to better solutions myself.”
Mike worked hard and got to a BS/MA in Visual Communication Design from Kent State University, in addition to helping found Little Jacket Design. Since then he has worked with Wilco, The Sundance Channel, MTV2, Facebook, Spoon and Wired magazine, among others, and received awards from Communication Arts, Print, HOW, CMYK, Logo Lounge and recently Print’s New Visual Artist. Mikey now lives in sunny Philadelphia, where he enjoys the myriad culinary delights of his adopted hometown, and continues to nurture his lifelong obsession with bears, which are “so cute and lovable,” despite being “probably the most dangerous animals ever.”
Art Supports Healing, Activates Hope and Promotes Thriving
“Health and wellness” are two key aspects in most everyone’s life. They also happen to be two key markets in today’s communication industry. So while the conventional model finds pharmacies pushing the pills, insurance companies offering protection and hospitals and doctors providing knowledge, the question remains: Is that really what it takes to get people well?
Just as I was wondering this, my good friend Jose Said Osio invited me to a conference titled, “Healing Journeys.” He said, “This will open your eyes to the value of illustration in this new Health 2.0 – a value understood by few agencies or design groups,” adding, “let alone healthcare providers.”
It was an amazing experience. Attendees were cancer patients, family members, doctors and nurses, and there was a presentation by amazing board-certified medical oncologists alongside caring nurses and psychotherapists. It really addressed the idea of “healing the whole person” – physically, psychologically, socially and spiritually.
So where does art come in? What are our creative opportunities here? Well, plenty. Patients don’t stay in hospitals as long as they used to, and art may be part of the reason why. It’s been proven to accelerate the healing process and quicken turnaround. And that’s good for everybody.
Doctors like Jeremy Geffen, author of “The Seven Levels of Healing” and “The Journey Though Cancer”, and Bellruth Naparstek, creator and founder of “Health Journey,” emphasize the body’s physiology changes as we go from worry to relaxation, from fear to inspiration – and that the shift can be triggered through the use of art. Art, they say, physically alters the brain by accessing a different brain wave pattern. This, in turn, affects the autonomic nervous system, hormonal balance and neurotransmitters. Eventually (ideally), art affects every cell in the body and reshapes our physiology into a more healing environment. Pretty neat. Arching your eyebrows? Read this:
How Art Heals (Scientifically Speaking)
Need help making the case to your clients? Keep reading:
Value Points To Consider And Harp On
The art of healing is all about building a more effective doctor-patient relationship. With illustration – a tool that can lift patient and staff morale while cultivating feelings of love, gratitude, protection and support – the arts create safer, more supportive and functional environments. And that goes whether you’re in a holistic wellness center or an old-school healthcare facility.
The science is there. Art has the power to heal and help. Will you use it as directed?
Scott Hull Associates artists share how an infinite variety of feelings can come out of 26 measly characters.
I love typography work because it can allow me to play a little more than my editorial-style illustration. I get to think about what the words mean, the emotion that it needs to portray, and go from there – trying different things until the perfect idea emerges.
-Penelope Dullaghan
Drawing your own type steps your work up a whole other notch. It puts you in complete control of the vibe that your type gives off. You are free to take it wherever you want and you don’t have to rely on the same toolbox that every other designer uses.
-Tim Gough
Type has always been my passion. When I was a senior in high school, I used to steal my older sister’s type specimen catalogs (she was a graphic design student) and use it to draw posters mimicking the endless styles of type. Our local Kroger store even had me painting their front windows and mirrors in the meat department with ad specials and holiday messages. When I went to college, I was introduced to the craft of typesetting and ligature design, so when I graduated as a designer, I treated type in a more formal, classic Bauhaus style.
-Lisa Ballard
What the illustrative lettering artist brings to the table is the recognition of type as art. Once upon a time, all letterforms were created by people who could draw. So rather than assembling and contorting computer generated fonts, as the modern designer does, we approach the lettering design with type’s history in our DNA and the drawing ability to create a unique piece of lettering art.
-Mark Riedy
