Plus, a gorgeous identity for the San Francisco Art Book Fair and a print and VR project exploring the Partition of India. For more along these lines (and so many others) you can follow along all day, every day on Instagram @AIGAeyeondesign, Facebook, and Twitter @AIGAeyeondesign.
N16 9ES: Three Years of Dronica, designed by tøniø
Often the best art is found in unexpected places. Such is the case with experimental sound-art festival Dronica, which for the past three years has been hosted in The Old Church, an Elizabethan building located in Stoke Newington, north east London. The festival focuses on experimental music and visual and performative arts, with a particular focus on the independent acts of the London art scene.
A new publication has just been released, titled N16 9ES, which celebrates the festival’s short but powerful history through a self-produced photo-booklet and CD compilation of the music that the event has given a platform to. Designed by tøniø and using some beautiful photographs by Matteo Favero alongside text from artist and journalist Ilia Rogatchevski, the book is described by Dronica founder Nicola Serra as “a token of love that we dedicate to all of the artists who supported our efforts, to the crew that helped us with immense enthusiasm sacrificing their time and energy, and last but not least, to the public that nurtures and stimulates our research.”
Studio Dumbar is working on a vast and ambitious project for DEMO – Design in Motion Festival, which will see it take over all 80 screens normally used for advertising in Amsterdam Central Station for 24 hours on November 7, 2019. The screens will show motion work from designers all around the world.
This is the first exhibition to showcase motion design on such a vast scale, according to Studio Dumbar, which has collaborated with the Netherlands’ Exterion Media on the project. The pieces on show will range from those by established graphic design studios and motion designers to emerging talent. Among those listed so far are a ton of Eye on Design faves including Anna Kulachek, Mirko Borsche, Jonathan Castro, Ines Cox, Hort, Nejc Prah, Hassan Rahim, The Rodina, Studio Feixen, Zach Lieberman, and many more, as well as institutions including Royal Academy of Arts The Hague, Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam, Design Academy Eindhoven, and Emily Carr University Vancouver.
An open call has also been launched for new and unknown talent to be brought into the spotlight, which you can apply to until the closing date of July 31, 2019.
Studio Dumbar is working with art academies to encourage students to experiment with motion; and talks about motion design will be organized in Lil’ Amsterdam in the IJ-passage in Amsterdam Central Station.
Design studio MacFadden & Thorpe has recently created the identity for the San Francisco Art Book Fair, which will take place from July 19-21. “This is the first year the organizers have had an outside design studio do the graphics and we’re really happy with how they came out,” says studio co-founder Brett McFadden. “Fun, colorful, weird.” The logo itself is based on the idea of a “sloppy stack of books sitting on the floor,” he adds. As well as creating posters and promo images to be used on social, he’s designing the rest of the fair’s collateral, event signage and merch such as some lovely baseball caps and tote bags. We’re really into the ’60s-ish vibes of the whole thing; and the mixture of strict grids and a bit of loopiness.
New Releases from the Saul Bass Archive
At the end of last year, we spoke with the man behind the online archive devoted to Saul Bass’ work as part of the Film/Art Gallery site. The Saul Bass archive launched with a selection of silkscreen prints, and over the coming months and years we were told new pieces across the designer’s 60-year career will be added online, including publications and other ephemera alongside the poster designs. Now, some major new releases have been announced, including a rarely-before-seen silkscreen for Bonjour Tristesse. “The white border and credits have been eliminated, leaving the iconic image and title alone,” says the archive. There’s nothing to pull focus from the elegant, powerful design, and the rich silkscreened colors are stunning. Simply put: it’s a work of art.” Other new additions to the archive are Bass’ unused, alternate design for Schindler’s List.
Anagh Banerjee, The Other Side
We’ve been covering a lot of work by creatives from Mumbai recently. As such, we wanted to give a shoutout to illustrator-printmaker Anagh Banerjee. Now based in Brooklyn, New York, much of his work is “inspired by music and poetry,” he says. “I am drawn to old things. People, records, trees, memories—good and bad—the ones that once you’re involved with, are difficult to be uninvolved with.”
For the past three years he’s been working on a project about the Partition of India, called The Other Side, which consists of a series of woodcut prints and monoprints based on first-hand accounts of Partition survivors. To go along with the prints, he’s also been collaborating with animator-filmmaker Ninaad Kulkarni, to co-direct the first ever virtual reality documentary on the Partition, called The Other Side VR. “This film re-imagines my woodcut prints in a 3D animated immersive environment,” Banerjee explains. “It has taken 72 years since the Partition for there to be a museum dedicated to it. And yet, there is hardly any knowledge about it. My objective with this labor of love is to contribute towards memorializing the Partition, in my capacity as an artist.”
