COMMUNICATION ARTS TYPOGRAPHY ANNUAL 9
Kiliii Yuyan Stina Persson Pearlfisher Austin Advertising Exhibit
January/February 2019 Twenty-Four Dollars commarts.com
BY GARRICK WEBSTER
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tep through the door at Pearlfisher’s studio in the Hammersmith area of London, United Kingdom, and you’ll enter a space full of optimism, progress and creativity. It’s bathed in natural light, there’s a bar with a concierge and a shelf is full of industry awards. With white walls and pale wood floors, opulent arches lead through to a gallery space, and there are botanical illustrations of cacti, aloes and succulent plants everywhere.
“This is some of the art that we produced to promote our garden at the Chelsea Flower Show,” says Jonathan Ford, one of the company’s three founding partners. “It was literally an immersive experience. We created the illusion that you were underwater, so it was like walking through a coral reef.” It’s not really what anyone expects to hear when visiting one of the world’s leading independent branding agencies. With bases in London, New York, Copenhagen and San Francisco, Pearlfisher is known for its work boosting the desirability of iconic brands, like Cadbury, Starbucks and Target. But garden design? That’s new—something the Pearlfisher team immersed themselves in for a special, signature project last year. In 2017, the agency celebrated its 25th anniversary, and to mark the occasion, its founders wanted to do something different—to make a real statement of intent. “We didn’t want to produce a book of 25 years of Pearlfisher. That was a definite no-no. We asked the company, and they said, ‘It’s all about looking forward,’” says Ford. Having designed a lot of packaging over the years, the staff at Pearlfisher realized that they have contributed to the vast amount of waste that modern society generates. So, for the company’s 25th anniversary, they decided to highlight one key issue—that of plastic in the ocean. Going back to the
Pearlfisher name, which references the Japanese ama— women who free dive to find pearls—one idea was to create an ama statue out of recycled plastic and submerge it in the sea off Japan, where pearl fishing takes place. It would have represented how people can live in harmony with nature. However, the location seemed too remote, and Pearlfisher wanted to make a wider impact. Then they hit on the idea of creating a specially themed garden at the United Kingdom’s number one horticultural event, the Chelsea Flower Show. Founding partner Karen Welman started sketching, a concept was developed and, sure enough, Pearlfisher’s application to the Royal Horticultural Society was accepted. After a year of hard work, the company unveiled its creation at the 2018 show. Three cylindrical tanks containing live coral and fish supported a 20-foot glass disc filled with water. When people walked into the open space between the tanks and looked up, they saw a 3-D printed sculpture of an ama poised above the glass disc and appearing to be diving into it. The three tanks were surrounded by all sorts of plants, like cacti and Spanish moss, which were configured like a coral reef, and people could relax among the plants to experience a sort of dry land seascape complete with the sounds of the ocean. Surrounding the installation were 500 plastic bottles, representing the amount of waste plastic that goes into the ocean every 2.5 seconds. Media outlets, including the BBC and Harper’s Bazaar, picked up on Pearlfisher’s unique contribution and spread the story to around 500 million people globally. The company also landed a gold award for the garden’s design—a unique gong to sit alongside all its Cannes Lions, Clios, D&AD Pencils and DBA Design Effectiveness awards.
Captions supplied by Pearlfisher. Jonathan Ford was chief creative officer on all projects shown. Right: “The inundation of ‘craft’ as an expression of authenticity in every category was diluting Taylors of Harrogate’s positioning. By exploring an extension of ‘craft’ into ‘craftsmanship’ and bringing this together with a focus on family, flavor and service, we defined a new creative vision—‘The Home of Extraordinary Flavour’—to take Taylors forward.” Harriet Ferguson, senior designer; Yael Alaton, strategy; David Bates/Hiroyuki Izutsu/Suthipa Kamyam, contributing artists; Taylors of Harrogate, client. 36
Typography Annual 2019
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TYPEFACE DESIGN 1 (series) Carl Crossgrove/Juan Villanueva/Lynne Yun, typeface designers Charles Nix, type director Monotype (Woburn, MA), foundry “The modernized Walbaum typeface is a restoration of a classic design. A serif typeface that can be used across a wide range of applications, from small caption text to massive display headlines, the Walbaum typeface features a warm design, making it well suited for brands seeking a type solution that blends high style with approachability. Walbaum is at home in publishing, advertising and branding, in both digital and print.�
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UNPUBLISHED 1 Samuel Jacques, Conifère (Montréal, Canada), designer “Hand-drawn typography inspired by cheap vernacular design found in local French Canadian grocery stores, bookshops, liquidation stores and thrift stores.“ Gold and white on black paper, screen-printed edition of fifteen. © Samuel Jacques
2 (series) SERIESNEMO (Barcelona, Spain), design firm “Raw Beer is a beer collection of avant-gardes. Each design represents a cultural current: brutalism, Dadaism, futurism and nihilism. Together, they create a powerful graphic system with a big typographic impact. These beverages have been created using ArqType, a brutalist variable semi-serif typeface inspired by brutalist architecture from the ’50s and ’60s. Its solid and squared appearance evokes the classic buildings and materials of this architectural and cultural movement.” © SERIESNEMO
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3 Rateb S, Shaban (Amman, Jordan) typographer/ calligrapher/designer “I designed this project first as a poster and second as a logo to identify my artworks and designs in solo exhibitions. The poster represents my name twice. I used Arabic letters with specific triangular shapes. I designed them as a complete Arabic typeface for titles. When I started the design of the poster, I found that complementary colors are a suitable solution for the design, which attracts the eyes of viewers.” Silkscreen. © Rateb S, Shaban
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FRESH XXIX
In New York City’s East Village is a space that shrugs off neat labels. It’s a salon for exhibitions, live readings, performances and events. It’s a sometimes-open retail store. It’s a studio shared by friends. It’s XXXI, the home base of XXIX, a “small, hardworking design studio” whose portfolio straddles divides. Cofounded by Jacob Heftmann and Jake Hobart, XXIX’s approach is to “create contemporary graphic design on screens,” as Heftmann says. “The way we look at graphic design has always been with technology as a fundamental aspect of the work.” That work includes fresh website design, as well as identities, animated signage, packaging, and side projects like Small Victories, which enables designers to take files in a Dropbox folder and turn them into a website, and @telier, a platform that opens up XXXI and other studios to designers on a residency basis. What’s next for XXIX? “To grow the studio in size and thinking to address what a graphic design studio can be today.” xxix.co
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