#297 SEPTEMBER 2013
LIVE FROM THE UNDERGROUND Balancing the thrill of subcultures with the dictates of commerce. THE CULTURE OF DESIGN www.desktopmag.com.au
#297 SEPTEMBER 2013 AU$9.25 NZ$10.95
www.desktopmag.com.au
Contents
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35
31
REGULARS
IN THIS ISSUE
10 Bulletin September
20 Profile Webuyyourkids
13 Life/style Rob Cordiner
35 Trails Escif Publicis Jonathan Zawada Bert Danckaert Drury Brennan Ian Strange
14 Exhibit Publish It Yourself 16 Longform Niels Oeltjen 31 Perspectives Max Olijnyk 72 Fresh Brisbane – a wayfinding typeface Troy Leinster 74 Reviews Navigating the Underground 7? Praxis Bonnie Abbott
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42 Feature Stupid Krap Remix Album 20 CREATE AWARDS Shortlisted entries 52 Photography 54 Typography 58 Print Commercial 66 Website
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What is so compelling about the art of sub cultures? The grit of rebelion? The challenging styles? The public cnavas? We look at six artists, designers and projects that express or capture this spirit in dierent ways.
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Escif Publicis Jonathan Zawada Bert Danckaert Drury Brennan Ian Strange
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T RAIL
ESCIF Escif, an artist from Valencia, Spain, paints in the style of many contemporary street artists, using portraiture or illustrative scenes rendered with a paintbrush. Yet Escif hasn’t lost the spirit of dissent in beauty, painting ambitious scenes of protest, political commentary and, on some occasions, how-to instructions for breaking and entering, self-defence and survival guides. His particular expression within his locality, his skill and his will to communicate result in epic records of his country’s recent turbulence, lending him the title of a ‘conceptual muralist’.
STREETAGAINST.COM
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BERT DANCKAERT Simple Present, an ongoing collection by Belgian photographer Bert Danckaert, reclaims and recontextualises the unremarkable corners of public space. Through his lens, Danckaert shows us our unconscious impact on the environment around us, capturing a street art that had no purpose or planning.
BERT-DANCKAERT.BE
“We see in Bert Danckaert’s work a strangely familiar universe: places we pass through without giving them any notice, spaces that are just trajectories, parts of a line connecting one place with another. Places, in short, that define our lives and that of so many other people in the urbanised world.” – Jan Blommaert “Sometimes it is as if everything in these pictures was moving, but has come to a sudden halt. Or as if someone threw a handful of objects in the air, like in a children’s game, and they landed in an unexpected way – waiting for Bert Danckaert to turn up to photograph them. The situations are ‘everyday’, but the framing removes them from their context and their sense. We are overwhelmed by the ridiculousness of the lives we’ve created for ourselves.” – Lynne Cohen
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PUBLICIS As far back as Roman times, graffiti has conveyed messages from the underground, walls of protest or reports on underlying social issues. This idea has been used with disturbing effect in an advertising campaign by Publicis Singapore. Created for the country’s Samaritans, the scrawls are actually ambigrams – they can be turned upside down for a different message. Produced for the Samaritans’ suicide prevention work, the campaign has the strap line “The signs are there if you read them”, which offers verification of the notion that ‘thoughtless’ vandalism can have a deeper meaning, if you have the time to really look.
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