Creative Review

Iron Fists: Branding the 20th c. Totalitarian State

“Glory to the great October!” A Russian poster commemorating the 1917 Revolution,
from Steven Heller’s new book, Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-Century Totalitarian State
In Iron Fists, an illustrated survey of totalitarian visual propaganda, Steven Heller offers an insight into the visual representations of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Communist USSR and China writes Katya Kan. Heller’s argument centres around the idea that totalitarian imagery is based on the potential of brand devotion. “Like any corporate identity campaign,” he writes, “the totalitarian regime demands the brand loyalty of its subjects.”
In his new book, Heller discusses how posters, magazines and advertisements were used within the visual systems of these dictatorships, alongside more formalistic elements such as typefaces and colour palettes…

Beck’s Bottle Art

Label artwork, Head 6, by Tom Price
From 1st August until Christmas, bottles of Beck’s beer will be adorned with the work of four emerging artists – thanks to a new scheme called Beck’s Canvas, a collaboration between the German brewery and London’s Royal College of Art…

Creative Futures Bursary Project: Digital Club

Stills from Digital Club’s film, Mare Street E8, which the duo created using their Creative Futures bursary
For almost 20 years, Creative Review has been encouraging the next generation of talented creatives through our annual Creative Futures scheme in which we celebrate the promise of a selection of emerging talent in visual communications.
This year’s crop of Futures were selected by the CR editorial team – our only criteria were to find indiv­iduals or teams who we feel have an extremely bright future ahead of them and who are indicative of the future direction of the industry.
Just before Christmas, each of our selected Futures gave a talk at one of three Creative Futures events. We invited everyone coming along to the talks to bring a piece of work with them – an image, some text, even a piece of music. We then asked each of our Futures to produce a new piece of work responding to the experience of being selected for the scheme, giving their talk and to the work brought along. These projects were funded by a bursary provided to each Future by CR and PlayStation. Over the next few days we will be posting up the resulting pieces of work – below is Digital Club’s animation…

Creative Futures Bursary Project: David O’Reilly

For almost 20 years, Creative Review has been encouraging the next generation of talented creatives through our annual Creative Futures scheme in which we celebrate the promise of a selection of emerging talent in visual communications.
This year’s crop of Futures were selected by the CR editorial team – our only criteria were to find indiv­iduals or teams who we feel have an extremely bright future ahead of them and who are indicative of the future direction of the industry.
Just before Christmas, each of our selected Futures gave a talk at one of three Creative Futures events. We invited everyone coming along to the talks to bring a piece of work with them – an image, some text, even a piece of music. We then asked each of our Futures to produce a new piece of work responding to the experience of being selected for the scheme, giving their talk and to the work brought along. These projects were funded by a bursary provided to each Future by CR and PlayStation. Over the next week or so we will be posting up the resulting pieces of work plus documentaries on each Future, made for us by Fallon. First up is David O’Reilly’ new animation, entitled Please Say Something…

Degree Shows 08: Royal College of Art (Show 2)

Karen Lacroix’s Now Now Now Now poster looks from a distance like it’s been painted. Closer inspection reveals the letterforms are made entirely from imagery from Google Earth. Snowy landscapes become less snowy. A comment on the effects on global warming
The Royal College of Art show is always one we look forward to here at Creative Review. Such a wealth of interesting projects – from posters and books to typographic exploration, projects that explore interactivity, great animation work and new product design. We had a look yesterday at the Communication Art & Design work and couldn’t help but notice that collaboration between the students seems to be a recurring theme this year. We took a few photos on our journey round the show…

Lost: the D in D&AD

Hat-Trick Design was nominated for its Lest We Forget stamp in Graphic Design,
one of only two nominations in graphics categories this year
While an unprecedented six Golds were handed out at last night’s D&AD awards, the Graphic Design section produced just two nominations and no pencils. We asked former D&AD President, Michael Johnson, and Sean Perkins of North why they think graphics was so under-represented (last year seven Silvers and four nominations were awarded in the section) and what D&AD – and indeed the wider design community – should do to change this situation in the future…

D&AD Awards: The Gold Rush

Earlier this evening a record six Black Pencils were handed out in an unprecedented act of judicial generosity at D&AD’s 2008 Awards. Apple scooped two (making it the biggest single winner of the coveted Gold Award to date, with six since 1999) and it was a very good year for advertising categories, with The Partners’ Grand Tour initiative for The National Gallery picking up a Gold; and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and Projector Inc. also winning for online campaigns (no Graphics awards though, of which more here and here). Oh and that Gorilla made a brief appearance as well…

Art Directors Club Award For CR

Creative Review was one of several UK-based winners at the Art Directors Club awards in New York last week, picking up a silver for our Monograph series.

The Annual 2008

Almost 100 pages of the finest work of the year as selected by our esteemed judges and published in our bumper, double May issue

The Aeron Chair: Office Design Icon

The Aeron chair – a triumph of empiricism over aestheticism? No design studio is complete without one: Daniel West traces its history

Guerrilla Advertising on the streets of Tokyo

A new Japanese language edition of Guerrilla Advertising: Unconventional Brand Communication (written by CR’s Gavin Lucas, art directed by Mike Dorrian and originally published by Laurence King) has just been published by Tokyu Agency Inc in Japan…

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