Projector magazine. Issue #5
The issue starts with the publication on Kurt Neff. Swiss design is an established collocation, but we can usually hear it in context of typography and graphic design. Swiss design is a concept that incorporated purity and clarity, driven to absolute accuracy and sharpness. However, the Swiss design is not only lettering. The works by Kurt Neff, who has chosen a rare and incredibly responsible niche — toy design — prove that. Not only do children play his toys, but also adult and serious people admire and collect them.
Talking in a bright and lively language about themselves and their provocative and sometimes rowdy works, here are the guys from GrafProm — Ilya Pavlov and Maria Norazyan — the young duo from Kharkov; the authors whose works, including corporate identity for the Triennale Fourth Block, are well-known far beyond Ukraine. Ilya and Maria: «This is how, GrafProm lives: having fun with our friends, colleagues, os sometimes being in designer trance, traveling and admiring constructivists. We’re a studio, or likelier — a couple, as a good friend said». We thank our member of the Editorial Board Professor Oleg Veklenko for having introduced us to each other.
«Russian Design» by Olga and Alexander Florensky this time features the stuffed animals of the project Taxidermy. «A stuffed body is an object that smoothly combines the features of a living creature, a sculpture, and a toy. The idea and the skin come from an animal; sculpture provides the frame, fixed posture, and some essentially needed drama; toys give the archetypal, the abundance of artificial details, numerous seams, softness and accessibility, which, however, does not mitigate the inevitable aura of violence and death around this kind of funny subject».
In the section «Lettering» we share the first part of Jery Kelly’s study of a historical type reconstruction. The material is so texturally-rich and abundant that it doesn’t fit into one publication. This work was first made public at the annual conference ATypI, held in St.Petersburg in September 2008. Projector is proud to be the first to publish this work. The article is to be continued in next issue.
In contrast to the almost academic presentation of historical aspects of font reconstructions, there’s a daring project Daily Type. There is a happy minority of undertakings which kind of continue of their daily work of their creators. Such projects are run not due to external factors neither on commission, but come from inside for the sole reason that it’s more difficult to hide them in yourself than to share with the audience. Daily Type is a vivid example of particularly such a designer project.
Among the objects of this issue there’s a wonderful lamp Boalum. Our contributor Anna Balagurova: «The analogy with digestion is used most frequently when defining this lamp. If it is true that all dogs go to heaven and become angels, radiating divine light, then helminth in their guts look exactly like Boalum».
Continuing on children, we represent the work by Charles and Ray Eames — a charming plywood chair shaped as an elephant. This publication comes within cooperation between Projector and the Vitra company.
The «Environment» section introduces the wizards from Lyon, who have painted dozens of thousands of square meters of the city walls. Their masterly technique of scenic eye deception brings an entirely new illusory reality into the city.
Alexander Borovsky about the photo project Scaffolded City by Mitya Kharshak: «Scaffolding is a sign of a normal desire to somehow rearrange the lines of the city into something organized or, as we have it more often, embellished. Meanwhile, all these scaffoldings and designs, combined with the original stable cultural messages which big architecture gives us, are the same text lines — and, I must say, they’re very interesting. For Christo, this is a sign of self-assertion. Kharshak is the artist of an ecological type: he listens, takes a close look, tries to preserve something getting extinct, that represents what is lost in the heat of the big code conversions».
The portfolio of the Spanish graphic artist Alex Trochut is shared in the section «Interactive». «In Alex’s portfolio, there’s a very noticeable cover design for The Rolling Stones. The album title Rolled Gold Plus is arched out of a nearly two-meter strip of gold 1 mm thick. Next, Alex photographed and then depicted it by Illustrator. The Rolling Stones covered the costs of the preparatory stages to design the draft».
The section «Photography» continues to acquaint us with the masters from St.Petersburg. This time, here’s Sergey Sveshnikov, his works and two experienced tools — a Nikon, advanced with a floor lamp switch, and a senior Rolleiflex of 1937.
In continuation, here’s the talk to Dmitry Azrikan, which started in the previous issue: read about the American reality the designer faced in the early nineties. Dmitry talks to Sergey Helmyanov about what he had to change in himself, in the approach to the work, and his projects.
The student project Lights Up! — bright and unexpected games with light — continues the «School» section, dedicated to design education. No less bright than the illustration, is the artistic text by our contributor Alexey Boyko.
The «Book» section, as it was promised in the previous issue, begins Mikhail Karasik’s series of publications on Soviet book design of the 1920—1930s. The publication «At the Steering Wheel» reveals the ideological role of images in the Soviet book design and graphics of the time.
