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Wieden+Kennedy Cass Bird Scott Laumann TypeTogether Exhibit
September/October 2014 Twenty-Four Dollars commarts.com
By Anne Telford
A FUGITIVE APPROACH FUELS AN ARTIST’S FLIGHTS BETWEEN COMMERCIAL AND GALLERY WORK.
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llustrator Scott Laumann is a master of reinvention and a bit of a nomad. Over the past decade he has lived and worked in Spain, Germany, Philadelphia, Minnesota, Orange County and San Diego. His career path changes along with his peripatetic life as he redefines for himself what it means to be an artist. So far this year, he has completed a private portrait commission of Lou Reed and the cover for a 60-year retrospective book detailing the history of the Cancer Research Institute. And at press time, he was working on a gallery installation for a music performance involving broken tree branches and 200 painted tumbleweeds.
Eight months ago, in search of a smaller town and proximity to open space, Laumann, his wife, Alicia, who is a dancer and choreographer, and their eight-year-old daughter, Paloma, relocated from San Francisco, California, to Fort Collins, Colorado. Situated at the base of the Rocky Mountain foothills of the northern Front Range, 65 miles from Denver, Fort Collins is home to Colorado State University and many boutique beer breweries. It has provided Laumann with a sense of community and new collaborators. “I think I’m always trying to find my identity in a place. I like new experiences, I like the challenge of new experiences, but I think there’s still a deep-seated desire to be rooted somewhere at the same time,” he says. Laumann spent his first eighteen years in Escondido, California, but he’s been moving and exploring ever since. He attended Northern Arizona University, and upon graduation in 1994, he moved to San Francisco. Shortly thereafter, he was taken on by artist agency Gerald & Cullen Rapp, which connected him to editorial work for a range of clients, including Rolling Stone, GQ, Time, Texas Monthly, the
New York Times, the Grammy Awards, Warner Bros. and Princeton University.
“I started out doing pastel, then collage-based conceptual work and then ink printing,” Laumann says. He recently discovered a block print he’d made as a seven-year-old. It hangs on the wall next to his current work and clearly shows that he has always been drawn to strong shapes, bold color and a discernable message. His early career was defined by portraits of musicians, writers, and film and political figures. The insightful illustrations reveal his subjects’ personalities through vivid brushwork and dynamic action. Steve Charny, former art director at Rolling Stone and current creative director at Topix Media Lab, says, “The first Rolling Stone illustration assignment I gave to Scott was a portrait of Bob Dylan for the lead record review. The multilayered technique Scott employed for Dylan’s face, the intense gaze, the swirling red background echoing the shapes in Dylan’s hair and skin—it was a riveting piece of art, and everyone who saw it was completely knocked out by it. To this day, it still remains one of my all-time favorite Rolling Stone commissions. It was so successful, it was picked up by French Rolling Stone for their cover, and it is even better at that size.” John Knepper, director of sales at theispot.com and formerly with Gerald & Cullen Rapp, says, “I have known Scott as an illustrator for about fifteen years now, and I think what draws clients is his ability to consistently deliver work that is both technically and conceptually strong, regardless of the approach. Scott’s style can range from painterly collage to a graphic block print, depending on the project and the client’s direction.”
Right: “This illustration accompanied ‘Collection Control,’ an article about chronic collectors that suggests how to distinguish collectibles from clutter and organize your treasures once and for all. One particular person had collected 350 teacups, most of which were shoved in boxes and bags. Better to simplify and pay a little extra to safely store the things you love.” Brooke Willis, art director; Organize magazine, client. 50
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BOOKS 1 Robert Festino/Michael Schnaidt, designers Robert Festino, creative director Tamas Dezso (slipcase)/Christopher Griffith (c0ver)/various photographers, photographers Mark Heflin (New York, NY), director Mauricio Ledesma, associate project manager Amilus Inc., client “The beauty and chaos of the year 2012 are documented in American Photography 29, the latest in a series of annuals that become a time capsule of the world we inhabit. Only 229 images were selected by a jury of creative professionals to represent the best images from more than 9,000 entries. Produced in a large format with a hardcover and boxed slipcase, the images in AP29 resonate with a clear point of view.”
2 Allen Crawford (Mount Holly, NJ), designer/ illustrator Diane Chonette, Tin House, art director Tony Perez, Tin House, editor Tin House, publisher Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself is an illustrated edition of Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself.” “The entire 256-page book was drawn by hand, including the text. The 1855 edition of ‘Song of Myself’ was used because it’s considered the most wild and radical version. The text flows freely throughout the book, inviting multiple paths through the poem in a format that can easily be turned in the reader's lap. The poem was illustrated in chronological order to document the illustrator’s fourteenmonth journey through the verse.”
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EDITORIAL 1 Carla Delgado, designer DJ Stout, art director Pentagram (Austin, TX), design firm Drexel University, client “exEL magazine is an annual research magazine for Drexel University. The design visually highlights the subjects of academic research while downplaying the researchers themselves. Drexel’s researchers are included in the editorial mix, but the typically uninteresting academic headshots are kept small, and the more visually dynamic imagery associated with their research endeavors is given center stage. The school of fish swimming across the cover of this edition features snapshots taken by researchers investigating the effects of a new dam on a variety of exotic fish that live in Brazil’s Xingu River.”
2 Carla Delgado, designer Julie Savasky, lead designer DJ Stout, art director Scott Stone, editor various photographers Pentagram (Austin, TX), design firm Nalco Champion, an Ecolab company, client “Nalco Champion magazine is a new publication for a global oil field chemical company formed in 2013 following the acquisition of Champion Technologies by Ecolab, the parent company of Nalco Energy Services. The premier issue set the tone for the publication, using dynamic photography, illustration and extensive infographics to tell the story of the multifaceted company. The cover features a dancing squirt of crude oil.”
_DREXEL UNIVERSITY RESEARCH MAGAZINE 2013
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[ INTO THE BREACH ] Can humanoid robots one day do the kind of post-disaster work that humans can’t? A team of Drexel researchers, working with colleagues around the world, are in the process of finding out. _by Mike Unger / illustration by Josh Cochran
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Identity Design Among the most challenging of design disciplines, identity design must incorporate the sometimes contradictory requirements of simplicity for ever-shrinking digital applications and visual distinction to convey an organization’s uniqueness. For these reasons, flat design, a trend in user-interface design, is gaining influence among identity programs. Manuals 1: Design & Identity Guidelines (Unit Editions), edited by Tony Brook, Adrian Shaughnessy and Sarah Schrauwen, is a study of corporate-identity design manuals from the 1960s through the early 1980s—considered the golden era of identity design.
The Twinings Tea symbol is the world’s oldest unaltered logo in continuous use.
Corporations are increasingly utilizing custom typefaces as a way to differentiate their brand in all communications. The Citroën typeface, by Studio Cortesi, was commissioned by Landor Associates as part of an overall program for Automobiles Citroën S.A. that included identity, branded environments and brand management.
Besides its suggestive shape, DesignStudio’s new Airbnb logo is controversial because Airbnb is relinquishing control of its image by encouraging users to alter and modify the company’s logo, in the hopes that it will spread virally.
findguidelin.es, by Arno DiNunzio, is a searchable directory of official brand guidelines that are viewable online.
Flexible, or fluid, identities, with their myriad of symbol permutations, like the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco identity by Wolff Olins, have become increasingly popular with cultural and media organizations, but have yet to make significant inroads into the corporate environment.
CA QUERIES CREATIVES
What new challenges do designers face when creating identity programs? Bill Gardner, Gardner Design and logolounge.com, Wichita, KS. “So many people now view the world through a window the size of a business card, which has spelled an inevitable change in logo design that rewards simplicity. Designers continue to push back and evolve the meaning of ‘simple.’ That logos have to be scalable has always been understood. But our perception of ‘small’ has changed—in some cases ‘tiny’ is being rather generous. Dimension and detail are necessarily removed at inception so that these logos can be read properly on mobile screens.”
Eddie Opara, Pentagram, New York, NY. “Our ever-adjusting democratic digital landscape forces every studio to deal with the notion of ‘scalability’ even with the smallest of clients, who now need a complete design language. Every company has a potential global customer base and their graphic-designed identity is the driver. Clients are using analytic metrics to follow how they are perceived by their customers over time, so future identity design packages may need to become more shape-shifting, instantaneously scalable, flexible and fluid.”
Christine Celic Strohl, Strohl, San Francisco, CA. “We have become saturated with extremely well-executed identity work. Technology has allowed geographical barriers to disappear, causing clients and designers alike to be dazzled by the bounty of lovely—albeit often fictional— work. However, aesthetics alone can’t carry a successful identity program, and businesses are disappointed by the process. In order to provide a unique, relevant perspective, it’s clear that the client/ designer relationship benefits from being local. Creation of meaningful content requires a deep understanding of the client’s challenges, culture and personality.”