Just Add Stock

Congratulations to all the winners of Just Add Stock, Eye’s award scheme for design that uses library images. The judges have decided and the winning entries are published in Eye 73 (Autumn 2009).

You can read more about Just Add Stock over the coming weeks on the Eye blog, where we will be posting articles about all the winners. For more about Eye see our website and the online Eye shop.

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Stamps Jim Sutherland’s ‘Lest We Forget’ series was a clear winner, with the resonant way it brought together two ideas by juxtaposing two iconic images. The result speaks clearly to a UK audience that associates the poppy with Remembrance Day and the fallen of the Somme.

Winner Design Jim Sutherland, Hat Trick Design Images Getty Images; Imperial War Museum Project Lest We Forget stamp series (Royal Mail, 2006-08).

One of three special stamps, issued annually in November, commemorating the dead of the First World War. Each builds on photographs of poppies, in this instance incorporating a photograph of the Somme battlefields.

Eye Awards

JUst add stOCK

Library images can be a rich resource for powerful and creative design, celebrated in Eye’s new award scheme

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When we launched the Just Add Stock awards a few months ago, it was a risk, a big step in the dark. For a start, many of our friends and contributors won’t have anything to do with awards, citing bad experiences with juries, entry restrictions and lack of time and / or money to enter. We dealt with this subject in Jason Grant’s article ‘Awards madness’ in Eye 69. However the same issue included a piece (‘Mad about awards’) by Alissa Walker that examined the upside of awards, including their benefits to young designers and their role in the general ecology of design culture.

It remains true that many designers – whether emerging or mid-career – can get a significant break, or a pat on the back, through winning an award.

And though some of our friends suggested that we should devise a ‘new writers’ scheme or a music design award (all excellent ideas), we thought it would be interesting (and straightforwardly do-able at this early stage in our new company) to turn our attention to the Cinderella of the graphic design world: work made with stock, or library images.

We know that many of our readers use

stock and we’re certainly glad of the commercial support we’ve had from image libraries over the years.

However things are changing fast.

New technological developments in the way designers seek out images have transformed the industry, and the pressures of shrinking budgets and tight schedules have led to a renewed prominence for libraries within graphic design. We had a hunch that there would be some good, original work out there that used stock, and that was true, with terrific entries in a wide range of sectors.

The Just Add Stock jury looked for all the obvious things: ideas and concepts; originality and ingenuity in their use of stock; and also the overall success of the work within its field and audience.

The jury members were: Aporva Baxi, creative director, DixonBaxi; Pam Bowman, designer and educator, Dust; Tom Hind, director of photography, Getty Images; and Deyan Sudjic, director, Design Museum, London. Our judges attacked the pile of entries with great relish and made a great team, each contributing a distinctly different perspective on the work submitted.

Music In this category, the judges noted with amusement that one of the joint winners had literally ‘just added stock’. This was Untitled’s design for a two-CD set of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.

The other winner was at the opposite end of the stock-use spectrum: Mat Maitland’s collaged cover for Basement Jaxx’s ‘Raindrops’ is an exuberant cut-up of Shutterstock images.

Joint winner Design David Hawkins, Untitled Image Bryonia alba (1915-25),

by Karl Blossfeldt / Archiv Ann und Jürgen Wilde, Zülpich Project Bach Brandenburg Concertos, two-CD set (Soli Deo Gloria, 5 October 2009).

‘After exploring different ways of presenting these famous six concertos, we looked for imagery with a delicate musical quality, and came across Karl Blossfeldt, a photographer, sculptor, teacher and artist famous for his close-up photographs of plants.’

Joint winner Design / illustration Mat Maitland, Big Active Images Shutterstock Project Cover for Basement Jaxx single ‘Raindrops’ (XL, June 2009).

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Books The book jacket category had more entries than any other, but the judges quickly disposed of a large number of formulaic covers, homing in on a shortlist of strong contenders, which they whittled down to four: Show of Hands, Mesmerization, Map of Ireland – admired for the way the stock image was used across the front and back of its jacket – and Columbine. The first three were highly commended, but the outright winner was Henry Yee’s starkly minimalist cover for Columbine, an account of the American highschool massacre.

Highly Commended Design Nate Salciccioli, The DesignWorks Group Images Fabrice Strippoli / Millennium Images UK Project Anthony McCarten’s Show of Hands: A Novel (Simon and Schuster, 2009).

‘The author has wonderful, lively prose, and I tried to have a cover that communicated in the same language,’ says Salciccioli.

Highly Commended Design Why Not Associates Images Shutterstock; Getty Project Mesmerization: The Spells that Control Us: Why We Are Losing Our Minds to Global Culture

by Gee Thompson (Thames and Hudson, 2008).

Winner Design Henry Sene Yee Art director Flamur Tonuzi Image Steve Peterson / Zuma Press Project Dave Cullen’s Columbine (Twelve, 2009).

Highly Commended Design Catherine Casalino Design Image Jupiter Project Stephanie Grant’s Map of Ireland: A Novel (Scribner, 2008).

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Book series There was little debate about the winner in this category, the Penguin Magnum series (already discussed on the Eye Blog by Robert Hanks), in which photographs from the Magnum archive are wrapped around a series of equally celebrated non-fiction books.

To make the most of the full-bleed picture, the title and author of each book are printed on a removable sticker, while the bar code appears only on the spine.

Another Penguin, a new translation of The Arabian Nights in three volumes, was highly commended. Penguin in-house designer Coralie Bickford-Smith adapted images from Ottoman miniatures for the jackets, each of which represents a tale from the volume concerned.

Winner Art director John Hamilton, Penguin Images Pictured left: Philip Jones Griffiths (Hiroshima); Dennis Stock (Hell’s Angels) © Magnum Photos Project Covers for the Penguin Magnum Collection, a new edition of six classic American non-fiction titles (Penguin, 2009) which use images from the Magnum archive.

Highly Commended Design Coralie Bickford-Smith, Penguin Books UK Images Bridgeman Art Archive Project Three-volume limited edition set of The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights, translated

by Malcolm C. Lyons (Penguin, 2008).

Interiors Though this category yielded just two entries – the smallest number in the entire awards – TILT’s use of Getty stock imagery for a law practice’s interiors impressed the judges with the boldness of the project, since such offices are usually so bland. The jury concluded that both clients and employees would feel more ‘empowered and engaged’ in the space, and commended the clients’ bravery.

Winner Design TILT Design Images Getty Images Project Environmental graphics for Eversheds’ headquarters in London, completed May 2008.

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Printed advertising The judges commended the highly contemporary way Volume used stock illustration for a multistranded campaign for a San Francisco art centre. ‘It’s an idyllic world, hi-jacked,’ said Aporva Baxi. ‘There’s definitely a depth to what’s going on here,’ said Tom Hind, responding to Pam Bowman’s worry that we’d seen it before.

However, the outright winner was Why Not’s stark black and white poster for The End Of The Line (the critically acclaimed documentary about the fish industry), which juxtaposed just one powerful stock image with type.

Winner Design Why Not Associates Image Rainer Jahns / Alamy Project Poster for Rupert Murray’s 2009 film The End of the Line Client The Fish Film Company

Magazines There were plenty of interesting entries – from weeklies, monthlies, newspaper magazine sections, customer titles and trade mags. However all but one lacked the ‘graphic twist’ the judges were looking for.

The clear winner was Micha Weidmann’s deliberately crude and striking ‘Monarchy’ cut-out for the New Statesman. Several judges recalled seeing it on the newsstands, and at least one had actually bought it on the strength of the cover.

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Winner Design Micha Weidmann Studio Images Getty Images Project Cover for ‘Monarchy Special’ of New Statesman, 9 July 2009.

Illustration and art direction by Micha Weidmann.

Highly Commended Design Eric Heiman, Volume Images AGE Fotostock; Imagesource; Veer Project Campaign for theYerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco

Reports and brochures ‘Good choice of images – shame about the design / type’ was a recurring theme on the judging day, and in this category, which customarily makes extensive use of stock, there was too much work that was unimaginative or timid.

A welcome exception was Zerofee’s bold Angola 3 broadsheet, about the incarceration of three Black Panthers.

Winner Design Paul Buck, Zerofee Images Getty Images Project Broadsheet – Angola 3, 2008. Pro bono, for the campaign to release two members of the Black Panthers held in solitary confinement in Angola prison, Lousiana, for three decades. (The third was released in 2001.)

Identity Mat Maitland, joint winner of the Music award, won the ID category outright, with his extensive system of advertising and venuedressing for the 2008 Liverpool Biennial. Tom Hind admired the ‘cutand-paste feel’ of the collages, which Deyan Sudjic described as ‘punk electronics’, while Aporva Baxi pointed out its ‘expansive, illustrative qualities’, already evident in Maitland’s Basement Jaxx record cover in Music (see p.63). Hind appreciated the way that photographic details from the stock, such as shadows and reflections, were still visible in the final artwork.

Winner Illustration Mat Maitland, Big Active Images Shutterstock Project Advertising and venue dressing for the Liverpool Biennial art festival (2008).

Art direction and design

by Thoughtful Agency, Manchester.

Collages by Mat Maitland.

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Books

Eye thanks the judges: Aporva Baxi (creative director, DixonBaxi, London), Pam Bowman (designer, educator, Dust, Sheffield), Tom Hind (director of photography, Getty Images) Deyan Sudjic (director, Design Museum, London) and everyone who took part by entering the award.

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