Luke Tonge

Human After All is a new East London agency founded by The Church of London directors Danny Miller, Rob Longworth, Paul Willoughby and Alex Capes. Responsible for some excellent work including Google’s Think Quarterly and adidas’ Olympic 2012 Metro campaign, they are perhaps best known for influential indie film magazine Little White Lies and youth culture mag Huck.

To celebrate 85 awesome issues they’re producing Curious Iconic Craft – a 100-page limited-edition book on the creative processes and principles behind the two award-winning magazines. They’ll be sharing everything they’ve learned during a decade of designing for print, exploring the creative processes and principles behind the design of the magazines.

As with most Kickstarter projects there are all the usual exciting rewards you’d expect and at the time of writing they’re just over half way with 11 days left to go. Magazine lovers, get involved!

You can find out a bit more about the birth of Human After All here.

And Our Smoke Returns Home

A short film by Director, Andrew Gallo — Director at Sea Chant, in Portland, OR

Photographs by Carissa Gallo

Charming and at times macabre work by Dutch illustrator Max Grünfeld, who’s currently residing in Hamburg.

Our pals at MoreSleep, the Berlin based creative venture, have launched a brand new portfolio site packed with some high-profile projects. Check it out!

Some lovely design and art direction from Joseph Burrin, currently design director at W&K Amsterdam.

CONTAINER is a new publication about the nature and culture of objects, published and produced by ARTOMATIC and manufactured in the UK. Each issue comprises a collection of original physical items, each created exclusively and specifically for each edition by a number of contributors. The objects are gathered together in a container, which is itself specific to the individual edition. Subsequent editions will have different themes and different contributors.

Tim Milne is the brains behind the operation and explains his thinking:

Magazines have long fascinated me and there’s no shortage of publications capable of identifying and attracting the most obscure audiences. Yet, the fluid notion of a magazine—changing content, different contributors—seems at odds with the restrictive fixed format of a printed book. While various attempts have been made to deviate from this—notably Aspen, Visionnaire, Gasbook, The Thing Quarterley and fashion titles like Centrefold—the vast majority conform rigidly to bound pages.

The original meaning of the word magazine means storehouse—a place to keep things in. So, it seems—to me—obvious that a collection of three dimensional objects, varying in size, shape, format, materials and construction might be a better—or at least different—way of expressing the fluid nature and model of a published magazine.

The first edition, CONTAINER #1: Hot&Cold features objects from the following contributors:

Accept & Proceed | James Bridle | Daniel Eatock | Malcolm Garrett | David Hieatt | Leila Johnston | Mother | Rebecca and Mike | Nic Roope & Violetta Boxill | John V Willshire

CONTAINER #1:Hot&Cold will be produced as a limited edition of 200 and will be available to buy exclusively here from 2 July 2013. Understandably it will not be a pocket money purchase (think 3 figures) even so Issue 1 is expected to sell out quite quickly – but anyone who registers on the site will get first dibs when they go on sale.

We’ve teamed up with Freunde von Freunden to bring you an exclusive look into the lives of creatives from around the world. Starting off with Fons Hickmann, who founded Fons Hickmann m23 in 2001 in Berlin with Bjoern Wolf.

Their work focuses on the design of complex communication systems and is working mainly in the cultural field, ranking among today’s most awarded design studios. The studio lends its expertise to everything related to events, communication and visual identity.

Here’s short excerpt from the interview…

Which clients are your favourite?

I really appreciate clients from the cultural and social sector. Semperoper, theatre festivals, music labels, Amnesty International… it is a great gain to work with cultured people who respect and understand what we do. It was a hard road to be where we are now, to be able to choose for whom we want to work for. But the work was worth it and continues to be. Working with equally respected clients means that both sides will profit, be feared, and will learn from each other. For me it is very important to work with people I like. This is a good idea: never work with assholes.

Can you tell us about your journey as a designer that turned you into what you are today?

I don’t consider myself as a designer. I also studied philosophy which still influences me today. During my studies I mainly did artistic work, even though I couldn’t truly handle the etiquette of art and design.

I did my diploma under a painter, Dieter Glasmacher. This man put an immense amount of life into his teaching. He showed me the true importance of passion in work and that one should be willing to burn for it. At the end the medium of expression didn’t matter – I still don’t know how to paint. However, the work needed to express an idea. Something you feel or something that shows a bridge between heart and brain. I underwent this journey until I understood that design was best for my expression. It was so beautiful to realise that people understood what I did. The idea that design is not something hermetical but should communicate with words and prove its relevance.

Of yours, Uwe Loesch also influenced me greatly, under whom I studied in Wupperal. Still to this day he is one of the smartest designer celebrities that I know. That’s how I became a designer.

Do you have a favourite piece of furniture or object in your flat?

I really like my action figurines. The salamander figures come from the shoe store of my parents. As a child I used to play with them in the shop windows. My books are also really important to me, both literature and novels. Books change over the years, they live! Even the stories of a book alter, the content always changes. Just like Heraclitus said, one couldn’t step twice into the same river; for the other waters are ever flowing on to you.

Check out the full interview at Freunde von Freunden.

Through yesterday’s twitter debate on design choices for iOS7, Apple still managed to impress with the new Mac Pro and this little gem of an animation.

Spotted on Collate

Ariel Di Lisio, aka Negro™ is a graphic designer from Argentina, specialising on the craft of typography, logos, and print. His work is a fine mix between fresh and modern, always thinking about the functionality and the range of possibilities for the types he creates, showing a great love for shape and geometry. There is nothing he enjoys more than to create his own types, for both personal and commercial projects. He takes deep pleasure in the process, from making decisions about the concept and mood, through the production stage, and then seeing them on their final output.

Hello Ariel, can you tell me a little about Negro™?

Negro™ has been around for approximately 10 years. At first it had a traditional agency format with several people but eventually I decided to work by myself. This allowed me to get back to something that has always been a big itch, which is typography. I needed more time to work in a precise way in the treatment, design and development of fonts.

Today Negro™ divides its time working on design and typography. It specialises in developing Corporate Identity and Typography. Of course typography conforms an important part of my design work; practically all projects are made with my fonts. Negro™ seeks to provide quality design with a high degree of simplicity. I believe in the simple ways of saying things through design, in the right choice of typography, in a tailored colour palette for a project, and a careful respect for white space.

What are you passionate about?

Design and Typography are my main passions. When I speak of passion I’m talking about working on it for hours and hours without ever getting tired. Sometimes I feel lucky to be working for something that really excites me, it is a privilege. Also I love hanging out with friends, playing soccer, going out to eat and see shows.

I know you travel a lot, what do you like about the design culture in Argentina and the other countries you have visited?

I have traveled for work to Chile, Venezuela, México and the United States, also many other countries as tourist. Currently I’m in Buenos Aires, where I live. I like the design culture in Argentina, there is a lot going on all the time: design events, festivals, conferences, etc. It is good to have this kind of events where young designers can learn from the experience of professionals. I think these events are very helpful for the design environment and I like to connect with designer friends and talk about our realities. Besides, I admire many of them.

Do you think your work has an Argentinian personality?

It is a recurring question when it comes to defining the design of a country or region by all the people working there. It’s actually a little complex to define this, I think my work doesn’t represent Argentinian design. I’m not sure why, but it doesn’t conform to a number of variables that are present in other design work that I think better represents the Argentinian personality. If I go back to others’ opinions, for many years I have been told that my work is more european than latino. Perhaps this is because of it’s simplicity, the typographic work, the subtlety in the shape and the space.

What kind of projects do you prefer doing?

For a long time I have been lucky to have clients that come to me, because they know my work and they are looking for that. For this reason it has been easy for me. Not that it allows me to relax, but rather the opposite, I am very demanding and always want to give the maximum. I take projects where I can work from scratch, starting by the logo, all the way through printed pieces, website, etc. I like Corporate Identity because I can create a graphic universe.
Continuously I try to generate personal projects, this allows me to take a break from commercial projects and is a great way to promote my work. Beyond this, it gives me great pleasure to work on my own projects. Think, design, develop and produce.

What are your next steps?

To keep growing and designing, always trying to be a different choice and provide quality design. Also to grow as a typography designer and publish more fonts. I love travelling and giving workshops and conferences, it allows me to tell my stories on being a designer for the past 20 years, and also to meet people, I want to keep doing that too.

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Thanks for the interview Ariel!

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Don’t forget to check out his Tumblr.

Sad that we didn’t make it to OFFF Barcelona again this year. Especially after watching this year’s amazing Main Titles by From Form. Next year we’ll do our best to cover the event for you and get some new interviews filmed!