123 klan

The world famous Canadian design and graffiti collective 123 klan are a 7 person force, but primarily, husband and wife team "Scien" & "Klor" run the show. They are an enormous inspiration to me, successfully bridging the gap from their illegal activities and becoming major players in commercial design, fashion, street and digital arts. Colour is a key weapon in their arsenal of work with a sparing approach used throughout, the palette never contains more than two colours plus a black or white. This combined with pop slogans, punchy type and whimsical characters creates a defined boldness of colour/shape and a tongue in cheek humorous quality.

"The Klan was formed in 1992 but when artist Scien and Klor discovered the typographic work of Neville Brody, graphic design became an extension of their graffiti output. They were the first to mix graffiti and graphic design on the web - making this platform not just a space to be seen but also a true creative tool. Likewise, the influence of graphic design is visible in the canvasses they continue to craft around the world".

123Klan pioneered what has now become the overused and incredibly cringey and genre of graffiti inspired graphics, which now is anyone's to clumsily pick up and knock out some cheap trainers or a website with. Which is unfortunate because what they produce, they do very tastefully and maturely with the end result looking very polished and cared for, a far cry from their many pastiches. Ultimately though this has given everyone's work a bad reputation i feel, and it is harder for those few gems of artists to shine through. Or easier, which ever way you look at it.

"Society still has an ambivalent attitude to graffiti. Multinational corporations pay graffiti artists to perform live writing events in building foyers, while their freelance counterparts are getting their collars felt for tagging the outsides of the same buildings. It’s a question of ownership.

The French duo known only as Scien and Klor has come in from the cold. Together, they founded 123klan in 1992, christening their graffiti writing outfit with a name that is now as much a design practice as it is a street culture totem. Their client list includes the likes of Sony, Nike, Adidas, Carhartt and Stussy.

Nowadays 123klan still does live graffiti exhibits around the world, but also produces books, customises toys and generally makes the world a better place to be. “We used to be wanted by the police,” says Scien. “Now we’re wanted by clients.

Parra

Lazy dog 6e anniversaire video from lazydog original on Vimeo.

Isnt this video great? The animation is by the artist Parra. His quirky and light hearted work has become extremly popular and it really easy to see why. I think as a reaction to a lot of overworked and in-your-face kind of artists and graphics, Parra's reductive and minimal style has really shone through the midst's and he has become extremely successful of late.

"His first solo shows in London (Jobs I Did For Friends For Under £100 & Tits and Typo) got him signed on the London based agency Big Active, which generated many opportunities. Parra got the chance to work on big commercial projects next to his own projects. His work buzzed around the internet heavily while doing popular solo exhibitions in New York, LA, Milan, Paris and Berlin". This lead to major corporate collaborations with giants like Nike and Keep which were hugely popular clothing and shoe ranges that sold out very quickly. These humorous, illustrative, fun works often depicting characters alongside slogans of hand drawn typography translate very well into clothing graphics. Subsequently, his own brand rockwell has been launched in the high end street wear market. I proudly own an very limited run Nike and Parra collaboration t shirt they worked on which quite into, I'd also like to get a print of his at some point.

Textile pattern and Girard

I have always been really interested in pattern, especially when it hand finished or woven textile. Those garish and hideously kich train/tube/bus seat covers really ignited triggered a reaction in me from an early age and I have a fondness for them. Embarrassingly, although I've always wanted one I have never compiled a series of reference photos documenting the different colour swatches and patterns of transport seating. I could see myself getting really into an ongoing project like that. taking the longer way round because i want to ride the obscure line which has the most interesting seat patterns, the awkward looks I'd get from passengers as they watch me photographing empty seats on the night bus. in my experience the lowly mini bus or coach often have the most "out-there" designs, looking like a kind of generic woven lsd experience, if there is such a thing. I came across the textile work of Alexander Girard recently and he really does pattern fabric properly..

I can see now that clearly a great deal of the seat designs I've enjoyed over the years have been greatly influenced by this 60's legend. Always bold and crisp in definition with a highly vivid colour palette girard represents the zenith of patterned fabric design for me.

Edutainment

I was really enjoying this public information cartoon from the 50's which gave information about nuclear fallout and what to do in case of an attack. I find the modernist American animation from this period very endearing and pleasant to watch. A simillar feel to Hannah Barberra's The Jetsons or Flintstones. It's interesting and quite surreal seeing something as serious as a fallout infomercial during the cold war being broadcast to the adult population in the medium of cartoon, almost satirical. Certainly cant see that happening today, at least in such a light manner. However it does work quite effectively by getting the information across plainly and simplisticly, which i guess in the scenario is what you'd want. There is a lot of old footage from this time where anything from sex education to safety videos.

I've included an example below

The impact society has on advertising

It has been said that there is no truer representation and social documentation of a particular time period than by looking at advertising from the time. It can be very enlightening as to what the fears/values were of the time. In order to hi-light this as much as possible It's interesting to look at a long standing corporate giant like Coca-Cola and compare its two ads with 50 years difference. The first ad, launched in the 50's depicts a young modern housewife taking a break from housework in order to enjoy "the pause that refreshes" with her coke. Notice key features which have been deliberately drawn into the scene like the the new icebox and vacuum cleaner showing this is the successful modern wife who can afford these luxuries. i also find it hilarious that the tag line and paragraph refer to a break from cleaning the house which coke would never dream of including in a campaign today.

The second advertisement is from 2006 and depicts a kind of fictional wonderland in which everything stems around coke. Notice how it is deliberately asexual in order not to alienate any party. If they are going to get gender specific nowadays they have to categorise it with an entirely separate drink eg diet coke (female) coke zero (male) which each gets specifically targeted ad campaigns made for it. Sticking with regular Coke, this ad has no emphasis on anything really other than a kind of light hearted fun filled land in which there are no problems and everyone enjoys coke. a lot of advertising seems to be going down this route at the moment and i'm not really rating it.

on a purely artwork and no concept basis the 50's one still wins hands down, this happy computer graphics stuff is rubbish.

Old and new processes with Reid Miles

I'm really interested and inspired by the work of Reid Miles who was behind much of the blue note jazz record sleeves. To me, the graphics feel like they have been stripped down of anything that is unnecessary to the design, casting away that which was cluttered. His works are models for composition and have an overwhelming cleanliness and clarity about them. Strong, bold geometric shapes give a head nod to modernism, kept within a restricted colour palette of usually an off white, black and signature colour. In a search for brevity his works have a consciously understated design ethos which focuses more on the functionality ( i.e relaying the information on the sleeve) and how to design that in the most simplistic and aesthetically pleasing way possible. This way of thinking is a staple ethos in modern graphic design, with many designers work being so reductive that literally nothing other than the bare information is included in their wholly functional practice. The admirable part of it is that although in our lives we are saturated with images including clean lines, bold shapes and perfect circles of course at this point there was no computer aided design and this work was all produced by hand. This gives it an entirely more credible nature because its creation and execution is so laboured, precise and ultimately, skilled. Compared to the very little time it would take you to knock out a tacky pastiche of his work on photoshop.

Large scale commercial painters

The Ritual Project - start to finish from Jon on Vimeo.

I have a huge respect for artists/craftsmen who work using the traditional method in which they were trained. Hand painted signage/advertisements and letterpress are skilled trades, which are dying out in our society. In these busy 2000 something times it seems we have no time for traditional work of this high level, which is very sad. It is very easy from a corporate viewpoint to renew your workforce in favor of more efficient and modern processes. But I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that the quality and attention to detail grabs our attention as a consumer a hell of a lot more than your standard printed sign or vinyl billboard campaign. The advantage of speed and price that these mass produced campaigns bring bear no relation to the effectiveness that it has on the public, its just easier from their point of view. I think its fantastic that Stella Artois still seem to value the use of artisans by commissioning this series of works in New York, which I'm sure were not cheap. Although expensive I really believe that overall it would have been financially worth their while from the people who actually stop and soak in their surroundings, I'm sure Londoners would appreciate this kind of thing and would love to see more work popping up in our city. A lot of people, including myself, find the bombardment of advertising on us offensive, maybe this is a way we could learn to live with it. At least it is beautiful and gives skilled artists work. But that’s a separate debate.

UP THERE from Jon on Vimeo.