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Posted by Jason Urban on September 23rd, 2009 | 
Jimmy Luu has been developing an interesting body of work called The Office of Printed Ephemera. The work consists of letterpress translations of various electronic communications. The tension between analog and digital is a favorite topic at Printeresting so we thought we’d share some images of his recent show at St. Edward’s University in Austin, TX; the pictures don’t do the work justice but they should give you some sense of the project.
I had a few questions about the work and Luu was good enough to share his thoughts. I asked if there was a physical office and how quotes were chosen for printing. Here’s Luu’s response…
So, no there is no physical office. Unless that office is my studio. Which it could be. When I started the project, I was thinking of the word office in a couple different ways. Between being a fictional physical office in the way that most people would read it, and “office” in the other sense, to mean “function” or “authority” as well, so what purpose does printed ephemera have, and why am I choosing to immerse myself in it.
For the rest of Luu’s response, more pics of the show, and a full exhibition essay, follow the page break.
Posted by Jason Urban on June 1st, 2009 | 
This is one of four public service posters designed by NY-based design firm Big Ant International for the Global Coalition for Peace. Amazing work for a good cause. BAI does a lot of really smart print campaigns… their projects for the Red Cross and BK Plastic Surgery are particularly sharp.
Posted by Jason Urban on May 26th, 2009 | (Via Chris Clark Via BoingBoing)
Over the last week or two, this little device from Cargo Collective has been busy making the rounds throughout the blogosphere. It’s too print-related for Printeresting not to follow suit with a quick post. It’s pretty self-explanatory so I’ll let the pictures do the talking.
 Ever the sucker for some good information graphics, I couldn’t not include a pic of the user’s manual. I may enjoy the instructional images as much as the object itself.
What’s next- kitchen-friendly Tetris-inspired multiples?
Posted by RL Tillman on May 6th, 2009 | UnderConsideration has launched “For Print Only,” a design blog “for print only.”
…That’s a weird name. “Printeresting” must have been unavailable. Currently there are just a few posts, but if FPO is half as good as their previous blogging endeavors, it will be worth your bookmark.
Posted by amze on May 1st, 2009 | 
Gerd Arntz was a German, socially-conscious artist & designer who was wildly prolific during much of the last century. The Gerd Artnz Web Archive has recently made a great deal of his work available online for the first time, I highly recommend engaging in a subtle act of class warfare by spending the rest of your day not working and looking through the collection of beautifully designed relief prints. The images posted here are taken from the archive.
His designs and art work for his early life are associated with the leftist and communist movements in Germany. His work in developing some of the early designs for what would become information graphics began later, from the Web Archive:
Published in leftist magazines, his work was noticed by Otto Neurath, a social scientist and founder of the Museum of Society and Economy (Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum) in Vienna, Austria. Neurath had developed a method to communicate complex information on society, economy and politics in simple images. For his ‘Vienna method of visual statistics’, he needed a designer who could make elementary signs, pictograms that could summarize a subject at a glance.
Arntz’s clear-cut style suited Neurath’s goals perfectly, and so he invited the young artists to come to Vienna in 1928, and work on further developing his method, later known as ISOTYPE, International System Of TYpographic Picture Education. During his career, Arntz designed around 4000 different pictograms and abstracted illustrations for this system.
In addition to his career spanning work on the amazing ISOTYPE system, Arntz continued to dedicate his life to the belief that design could be used to further a equality amongst people and elimination of the class system.
Posted by Jason Urban on January 10th, 2009 | From revolution to establishment. Commercial potential in socialist-style. If anything, it’s all too predictable.
As written in the NY Times…
The Saks slogan, “Want It!” is printed in lettering similar to the graphic designs of Rodchenko, the Russian graphic designer who was one of the founders of Constructivism. The images, largely realized by Cleon Peterson of Studio Number One, Mr. Fairey’s design company in Los Angeles, depict the season’s trends in black-and-white images with geometric slashes of red, some of them shown on models posing as if they are champions of workers’ rights. An ad for a slouchy bag, for example, tells shoppers to “Arm Yourself,” while a style of relaxed, cropped shorts are described as “Brave Pants.”
(Via OMG Posters)
UPDATE: Another thought… are you supposed to wear your “Brave Pants” when eating an “Angry Whopper?” First major advertising trend of the new year: heavy-handed use of strong adjectives.
Posted by amze on January 6th, 2009 | 
Birkhauser, The publishing house responsible for, Tactile: High Touch Visuals, describes the book:
Three D – Graphic Spaces highlights a current trend in international graphic design: more and more visual designers are staging their compositions as three-dimensional scenarios, in order to turn them into posters, magazine covers, web sites, and animated films. The result is a host of suggestive new pictorial worlds that range from playfully arranged still lifes to room-filling installations. Edited by Gerrit Terstiege, editor-in-chief of the European design magazine “form”, and designed by the prizewinning German studio Pixelgarten, this book offers an inspiring look at the various modeling techniques and means of expression involved.
Edited by Gerrit Terstiege, editor in chief of the design journal form, and designed by the prizewinning Frankfurt-based design studio Pixelgarten, “Three D – Graphic Scenarios” provides an inspiring look at the various drafting techniques and expressive tools associated with its subject. The publication is rounded out by an essay by Steven Heller, for many years the art director of the New York Times, and an interview with the noted graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister, one of the leading exponents of this trend.
While the book is solely focused on commercial design work, it does offer some inspiration for the fine artist and an ample amount of glee for any art book lover. This exciting volume can be found for purchase here.
More images and smart & concise review by Regine Debatty can be found on the equally smart art/design blog We Make Money Not Art by clicking here.
Posted by RL Tillman on January 6th, 2009 | This fall some quirky billboards popped up here in Baltimore. They featured a field of orange Uncle Ben’s rice packages, with the looming visage of Uncle Ben arranged in various dramatic compositions. Like a teaser campaign for a blockbuster action movie, the ads are vague: they feature no prominent copy, and the cropping of Uncle Ben makes him even less recognizable than usual.
As you can see in that last photo (by my pal KVH), these ads have also been posted in places that are not obvious advertising locations, including street-level plywood favored by wheatpasters and such. The vague ads caused some confusion, with one blogger pulling a U-Turn and pondering the mystery for “several hours.” Others, enchanted by the design, express admiration for the billboards’ attempt to reach the consumer “on an emotional level.” There’s even a fan club of sorts: Uncle Ben’s Place is a dedicated Flickr pool.
With bold design, peculiar placement, and enigmatic content, the graphic aesthetic falls somewhere between faux-Pop, faux-street and faux-totalitarian. You might remember that another astroturf ad campaign, the “Heel” posters for Beverly Hills Chihuahua, used a similar approach. Is the goal just to make rice cool again? Or is Uncle Ben’s sounding a cautionary alarm about the frightening power of print?
Posted by Jason Urban on December 1st, 2008 | UPDATE (12/3): Willis was kind enough to respond to a few questions. Follow the page break at the bottom of the post to read more.
Did I say “type”? I meant hype. I’m a little rusty on my Public Enemy lyrics but they’re coming back to me. During high school, “Nations” and “Fear” were in constant rotation in my walkman but I have to admit, it’s been a while since I dusted off those cassettes. That’s why I was so pleasantly surprised to learn about Austin-based designer Ryan Willis’ letterpress tribute to PE.
Public Enemy: The Trinity is a beautiful merging of (relatively) contemporary hip hop language with the aesthetic of handset type (that’s Adobe Jensen in case you’re wondering). I can’t think of a more deserving group to get this kind of “historic” treatment. I’ve requested some more info about the project and if I get it, I’ll update this post.
Continue reading Don’t Believe the Type
Posted by RL Tillman on August 26th, 2008 |  
 
Daniel Eatock made these images by placing some Letraset Pantone markers on top of a stack of paper, and allowing the ink to bleed through the sheets for one month.
The edition number was determined by the number of sheets the ink bled through from the possible 500. The numbering of each sheet corresponds to the position it was within the stack and also determined its value. The final sheet the ink reached, (furthest from the top) was numbered 1 / 73 and valued at £1, the one above numbered 2 / 73 and valued at £2 etc. The top sheet (the sheet the pens rested on) was numbered 73 / 73 and valued at £73.
Now, I have a liberal attitude toward defining print terms, but “the edition number”? …Mr. Eatock, you sir are a rascal and a scamp!
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