I wish I was here
Beyond Borders fundraising
Beyond Borders is a graphic design exhibition and a cultural exchange featuring the work of graphic designers living and working in Iran. Highlighting the convergence of digital design tools, new technology, ubiquitous social networks, limitless globalism and age-old cultural traditions, Beyond Borders is a survey of Iranian poster design that has been completed in the last five years. It's an exciting hybrid that is equal parts past, present, and future. The exhibition will be hosted in the United States at the American Institute of Graphic Arts’ (AIGA) National Design Center in New York. We're working hard to raise the money that will make this exhibition possible and we need your help! Check out the Kickstarter campaign at: http://kck.st/WaIJo4
The good foot
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdz88MBWomo&w=420&h=315]How did we ever survive before the internet? For those of us that are just a little bit older than the world wide web, who grew up when the world was connected through a series of pneumatic tubes like the ones at the bank's drive up window, things can actually start moving too fast. Really, it's basic biology. Our bodies developed in slow space, not the hyper active digital environment we live in today. Advanced communication was talking on a phone with a really long cord that you could pull into your bedroom. Texting was done on an electric typewriter and the delete button was nothing more than a small bottle of White Out. Back then, the body developed differently. Your eyes moved less. Your fingers moved less. There was less clicking, tapping, scanning, and sitting. I've got to believe that as we move into the next millennium the human body will evolve into something with larger and more powerful eyes, a bigger brain to collect all that data, and smaller, pointier fingers for better tapping. Oh wait, that sounds and looks a lot like all those aliens that keep visiting us. Oh well. Too bad about losing all our hair though. Must be the radiation. So, for folks like me, things are starting to move way too fast. But then I see something like this old clip of James Brown offering up some simple dance steps. How awesome and how real. My wife and I saw James Brown live at the Lowell Civic Center in Lowell, Massachusetts (shout out for Lowell). Always the Godfather. You can't replace experience with data. It's just not the same. Keep dancing.
Calligraphy skillz
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/60241818]
Calligraphy is one of the more traditional forms of writing but perhaps one that we've lost touch with the most. Unless of course you are in the wedding planning business and you're addressing envelopes all day. Even then business is probably slow. It's fair to say that calligraphic traditions from around the world (think: Asia, Persia, Olde English) result in some of the most beautiful letter forms out there. On the street it's a different story. It's rare to find writers who have been able to successfully reinterpret calligraphic traditions. It does happen, like in the work of Dutch designer, calligrapher and graffiti artist Niels Shoe Meulman. If you haven't seen his work you should check it out as well as the book by Adam Eeuwens titled Calligraffiti. But wait, this post is about Seb Lester, another great calligrapher pulling from age old traditions. I came across this amazing video of him effortlessly writing black letter. Watching him work is kind of poetic.
Words, words, words
Yup. I love 'em. I love words and I love Walt Whitman, whose command of them is impressive. I'm slowly making my way through Leaves of Grass. Very slowly. Anyone who tells you that they breezed through this tome in a few days, a few weeks, or even a few months should be taken down to the local precinct for some serious good cop bad cop. Really, how can you process all those words so easily. They beg to be read, read again and then underlined. O let me be lost if it must be so! I suspect my strongest connection to Whitman is his ever-present connection to death in all its varieties. It's been a problem for me (and my therapist) for some time now. Well, really, more a problem for me than anyone else. I'm a work in progress much like I imagine Whitman was. While I am locked to my responsibilities and try desperately to live in the moment, I think Walt was able to somehow transcend all that bullshit. God bless him for that. Maybe that is just my imagination and he was as torn up as the rest of us. Love, of course, in another theme that runs deep throughout Leaves of Grass. Yup, a good mix of death and love and you've got me. If anyone knew about getting upper, I mean really using words and language in the service of their person and their heart, it was Whitman. Forever alive. Forever forward.
Master of none
I'm good at a lot of things, not great, just good. But I'm finding it real hard to get anything done lately. Must be all the pills I'm taking. I was in Basel last summer. I've heard plenty of great things about the city and I did my level best to make it as great as I'd heard. But you just can't force things. I was able to see some interesting stuff, found some street art and paid my museum admissions. And like any good design slave I made my way out to Vitra for a tour of the campus. But what I liked most about Basel was the way people floated down the river that splits the city. I had just been in Zurich doing something similar where the lake empties out into the city. In Basel, the fast current and the distance of the float was impressive. I could only imagine floating away down the river, out of town, and off into eternity. Maybe lost forever. Or was that just the pills talking. So, here at home I've armed myself with everything I need to get out into the world and share some creative energy. Maybe I'm too old. I go to bed at 10:00 p.m. and I've got zero interest in hitting the streets late at night (or early in the morning). I think that coming up with the idea is much more actionable than taking action.
Goodbye alphabet project
All good things must end. Such is the fate for the Getting Upper alphabet project. The alphabet featured the work of 26 terrific designers and artists from California. Their work was exhibited at the Pasadena Museum of Contemporary Art and was well received by thousands, yes thousands, of visitors. For quite some time the letters were available here for purchase as limited edition screen prints. They may still be available for sale at the museum. Thanks again to all the artists that participated, to Bloom Screen Printing for their support of the project and also to Mohawk Paper for supplying the wood.
Still tagging
Here's a fun tag. While traveling through Switzerland you buy some tag board, a pencil, an eraser and an exacto blade and a few days later you've got a rather awesome stencil. I used the bello script font which is quite beautiful. And with stencil in hand it was time to cross the border into France for a mountain stage of the Tour de France. Turns out that spray paint is really expensive in Europe and a can just doesn't last as long as it should. I was able to lay down a few dozen of these along the last few kilometers of the race. Of course, this pic taken along the finishing straight was my favorite.
New projects. Old friends.
Things are always changing. They just got to. Same is true for Getting Upper. The original exhibition and the limited edition posters live on (and yes, you can buy the posters right here). But new ideas and new projects are percolating. Here's a recent pic of some poetr-iffiti (can you say that?) that we developed for an abandoned building in San Rafael, California. New poems are being added all the time. It's great reading when the traffic backs up during rush hour. And it sure beats looking at a boarded up window.
Tony Quan (aka TEMPT) featured in new documentary
Tony was kind enough to participate in Getting Upper and released a great version of the letter T using the Eyewriter software. Now his story is on the big screen with a recent premiere at the Slamdance film festival. We haven't seen any other limited edition TEMPT prints so you might as well pick one up right here. Learn more here.
Holiday sale. Buy your alphabet posters today.
Happy holidays from Getting Upper. We're selling each of the 26 different letter posters that make are part of the Getting Upper alphabet project. Jump in and grab a few for friends and family. In fact, if these folks have names , and we're sure they do, there is a poster out that will be just right for them. But don't stop there. Oh the things you can spell with just a few of these wonderful posters. Alone or together, they're great! $20 eachShipping & handling is $10 for up to three posters, $20 for four to seven posters and $30 for eight or more posters. But don't hassle the math. Our super duper shopping cart will take care of all the hard stuff.
Welcome to the Getting Upper poster project
The renowned philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel wrote that, "To learn to read and write an alphabetic writing should be regarded as a means to infinite culture," while the post-structuralist French philosopher Michel Foucault wrote that, "Language is oppression," because it is developed to allow only those people who speak it not to be oppressed. These two contradictory ideas, one based on the premise that through letters, the world opens itself up to us and the other, which considers how letters and language can close the door shut, are the basis for an experimental typographic project called Getting Upper.The idea for Getting Upper all started after some consideration of the evolutionary relationship between the graffiti community and modernism, post-modernism and finally deconstruction. It sounds complicated and when you start quoting Hegel is can get pretty deep. But basically, it was interesting to see how a generation of restless teenagers growing up in high-rise and low-rise ghettos with limited access to economic empowerment fought back with one of the few things they could control, words. They created their own language by "getting up," the recognition that comes with the near constant act of tagging your name. It became the driving force in the nascent graffiti scene and as they tagged over and over again they experimented with different hand styles. In turn, these teenagers developed an intuitive understanding of how letters, the building blocks of language could be redesigned and controlled for their specific needs. No wonder these artists referred to themselves as writers and their work as writing.An interest in language-based experimentation and the ways it can empower people or unlock new avenues of cultural expression encouraged this collaborative design project. If "getting up" describes proliferate tagging, then “getting upper” is what happens when we break free from history, from the global marketing culture, from the need to communicate and from legibility itself. That's why 26 graphic designers and artists were each asked to reinterpret a letter of the alphabet based on the theory of deconstruction. Now deconstruction is often understood to mean different things. But in this case it aligns closely with philosopher Jacques Derrida's idea that words have different meanings based on each reader's past experiences, cultural connections, or social influences. Under these circumstances absolutes disappear and an author's original intent is open to infinite subjectivity. It is important to note that rather than a negative process of dismantling, deconstruction is more accurately defined as affirmative because it frees concepts from their historic foundations and opens up new possibility.If that can be the case with words then why not letters themselves? Which brings us back to graffiti and letters, those building blocks so necessary for developing meaning in our lives and allowing us an opportunity for shared expression. In the 26 posters that make up the Getting Upper alphabet, graffiti was the inspiration but the results are the unique personal experience and work of the 26 graphic designs invited to participate. Each approached their letter from their own perspective and the results are as diverse and the ideas and images that continue to shape our culture.
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Get all the latest about the Getting Upper exhibition and public events. As the exhibition concludes stay with @gettingupper to receive news about upcoming poster projects and unique opportunities to purchase limited edition work from some of the best artists and designers working today.
Getting Upper Panel Discussion on 6/9
Reconsider. Re-imagine. Re-explore . . . the very symbols that define our language and meaning. Learn how twenty-six designers re-imagined the letter and explore what a letter can be. Join us for a discussion with featured designers from the Pasadena Museum of Art's exhibition Getting Upper, an exhibition inspired by language-based experimentation and how it can create new avenues of cultural expression.Rebeca Mendez, Jon Sueda and Kali Nikitas discuss what it means to get upper. For more information about the event visit the AIGA Los Angeles website.