Nose: Six degrees of separation.

Right, intro: This post is my response to another brief for uni. Everyone should be familiar with the concept of Six Degrees of Separation. The idea of this is to form links from designer to designer, starting with Antoine + Manuel and ending with Emigre.

Antoine + Manuel

Antoine Audiau and Manuel Warosz are two French designers, who have been working together since 1993. Antoine is the colourist, while Manuel designs the layouts. They are based in Paris. Together they create extremely illustrative work, often using vivid colours. They seem to fill the role of the designer-illustrator, by each specializing in one of these disciplines.

They use many different kinds of media and techniques, including ink blots, line drawings, paint, screen printing and paper sculpture. They seem eager to create juxtapositions within their work – colourful type over monochrome imagery, fluid illustrated areas surrounding geometric shapes, typefaces with hand-drawn type – all of which serve as a constant reminder that the work is created by two individuals. This duality ensures that their work is legible and looks professional enough for discerning clients, but without alienating the more trendy side of their audience.

These techniques are frequently used to create very unique typographical pieces, which end up on invitations, posters and brochures for various events, including the Christian Lacroix show (2009) and the Uzès Danse festival (2010).

Stefan Sagmeister

This guy links to Antoine and Manuel quite obviously through his use of creative typographic solutions, although Sagmeister’s work tends to be more tangible, large-scale sculpture, later documented and placed in context.

Stefan Sagmeister is one of the most famous, or infamous (see below) graphic designers around. He was born in Austria in 1962, and now lives and works in New York. He has long-standing professional relationships with the likes of musicians David Byrne and Lou Reed, and AIGA.

Sagmeister is a very experimental designer, who isn’t afraid of shocking his audience. In order to try to ‘visualise the pain that seems to accompany most of [his] design projects’ for an AIGA lecture he was giving, he had his intern cut the information needed into his skin with a knife, which was then photographed.

In 1987, Sagmeister won a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. It was here that his work began to show aspects of (quite dry) humour. When a friend visiting from Austria let slip that he was afraid that New York girls wouldn’t notice him, Sagmeister took it upon himself to create a poster containing a picture of his friend under the words "Dear Girls! Please be nice to Reini", and put it up around his neighbourhood. When asked to design business cards that would cost no more than $1 each, Sagmeister printed the cards on dollar bills - genius!

Paul Rand

Like Stefan Sagmeister, Paul Rand was educated at the Pratt Institute in New York, from 1929 to 1932, although it appears he was less than satisfied with his time spent there, later stating that he “had literally learned nothing at Pratt; or whatever little I learned, I learned by doing myself”).

After a successful start to his career in advertising, Rand turned to the creation of corporate identity.

“He almost singlehandedly convinced business that design was an effective tool. [. . .] Anyone designing in the 1950s and 1960s owed much to Rand, who largely made it possible for us to work. He, more than anyone else, made the profession reputable. We went from being commercial artists to being graphic designers largely on his merits.”

- Louis Danziger, 1996

Rand’s legacy continues not only in the way businesses use logos to build and maintain reputation and status, but also in the continued use of his own logo designs. These include IBM (which he created the current version of in 1972!), NeXT, ABC, and the only recently changed UPS logo.

In response to those who would call his work simplistic, he is famously quoted as having said; “Ideas do not need to be esoteric to be original or exciting”, a statement that I wholeheartedly agree with.

John Maeda

John Maeda was a software engineering student when the work of Paul Rand turned his attention to the design world. He’s someone I’ve been interested in for a while now, as a designer and a kind of technological .. spiritual .. guide? A priest of sorts for the digital media flock, trying to remind us that no matter how fast and efficient we make our tools, we are still human - and can only move at human pace. Maeda strives to bring us the idea of Simplicity in the digital age.

Not only is he is a successful graphic designer and visual artist, but also a computer genius, who was around in the very early stages of digital art. He was a scientist at the MIT Media Lab, who then became President of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2008. A selection of Maeda’s simple but charming interactive devices can be found at http://www.maedastudio.com/index.php, my favourites being the ‘lifecounter’, the ‘orbit calendar’ and the ‘illustrandom’ program – an early insight by Maeda into the ability digital media has to be dynamic, rather than sitting static on the screen, as if it were a printed object. I find it exciting that he designed this program himself, rather than using an existing piece of software – creating your own creative tools is a concept I’m very interested in.

Han Hoogerbrugge

Han Hoogerbrugge is best known for his animated shorts, most of which feature a black and white image of himself as the main character (or characters). The thing that strikes me about the vast majority of his work is its simplicity (excluding the interactive music clip ‘Flow’, although this is largely made up of simple animations seen elsewhere on his website).

His work is presented in online collections, namely ‘Modern Living / Neurotica’, ‘Spin’, ‘Hotel’ and ‘Nails’. Each collection features a number of interactive elements, found by hovering over areas of the screen, clicking, or combinations of the two. Generally there is creepy ambient noise reminiscent of industrial or barren environments. Themes occur throughout the pieces, including explosions, distortions of the characters’ heads, and religious symbols such as crosses and angels’ wings.

My favourite animations are ‘number 22 – Parade’ from Nails:

http://nails.hoogerbrugge.com/

and ‘number 69 – Headache’ from Modern Living / Neurotica:

http://ml.hoogerbrugge.com/.

An important aspect of Hoogerbrugge’s work is that most of it is available online, allowing the viewer to browse the collections at their leisure (especially the 89-strong collection of shorts in Modern Living / Neurotica), but also interact and play with the pieces. This online access links me (rather tenuously) to my final subject…

Emigre

Emigre is a type foundry based in Northern California. It was set up by Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko in 1984, and was one of the first type foundries to focus on digital type, and to sell their typefaces online (there’s that link to Hoogerbrugge, for those who didn’t see it, shining out like a flannel). Emigre experimented heavily at the beginning of digital typography, creating many typefaces with digital printing in mind. It now holds license to more than 300 original typeface designs.

For 21 years (1984 to 2005), Emigre also published a magazine. The magazine focused on many genres over its lifetime, but centred on graphic design and typography, while showing off Emigre's fonts brilliantly. The magazine appeared in a variety of formats, including a tabloid sized fanzine, pocket books filled with design criticism, and cardboard folders featuring music CDs.

Emigre are credited in Paul Felton’s Type Heresy as ‘fallen angels’ of typography – those who know the rules of typography, and how to break them in a way that works. Their most popular typefaces are currently Mrs Eaves (and the sans version) - Licko’s take on Baskerville, and Vista Sans.