Good Design // Bad Design is the design blog created by the Southampton based design practice Johnny Toaster. Good Design // Bad Design is dedicated to exploring the good, the bad & the downright ugly.
Recently at Johnny Toaster we have been working with local artist Sarah Filmer, we featured her in one of our recent exhibitions and designed and built her website. One of Sarah’s pieces which we really liked is the Blue Jumper.
The Blue Jumper is a collaborative art/research/knitting project which looks into knitting as an activity that both creates and connects. This is a wonderful metaphor for inclusion, diversity and ‘a community of individuals’.
“The work centres around a main body of knitting that is added to by anyone who would like to work on it. The only parameters are that the yarn is blue, and the piece is worked on directly. The knitting can be done individually, or in groups.
As the piece comes in to being, and with the consent of contributors, I will be collecting video of the knitting itself, those involved, and other related occurrences. Knitters will also be invited to write a small card about their own connection with, thoughts about or experiences of knitting.”
The idea is that the project will create a tangible piece of work as well as, video footage, that can be developed for exhibitions, inclusion in festivals, and ongoing participation.
Make sure you keep an eye on her blog for updates, thoughts and more pictures!
Theo Olesen has been working tirelessly taking our little profanities and turning them into something beautiful. Check out his site to see more: beautifulswearwords.com.
Maybe it is because at the moment I am working primarily as a web design and developer, but I really enjoy looking into the more old fashioned, crafty side of graphic design. This is probably the reason why I keep posting work like Hungry Workshop’s Areograms.
This project, Bodoni, is a really nice journey from a downloaded, digital Bodoni Poster font, through the design process and then out into the real, analogue world in the form of woodblock printing on a press, the result of which, looks just wonderful – the texture of print on paper simply cannot be replicated digitally.
Bodoni was produced by Nigel Bents, Paul Oakley and Jonny Holmes at Chelsea College of Art & Design. Each character was designed digitally by students using Illustrator, laser cut out of 3mm plywood by Cut Laser Cut and mounted on type-high block by Stef Willis in the college workshop.
This delightful branding system for Westbrook Brewing Co. was created by Charleston based designed agency Fuzzco who aim to create a personality for each of the identities they develop.
For the Westbrook identity they based the personality on wrought-iron work and the sometimes surprising ingredients you might find in a Westbrook Beer. Additionally, Fuzzco introduced southern iconography to pay homage to the Charleston homebase.
Each year Johnny Toaster is proud to be a part of the growing community of people who help to put together the EjectorSeat Arts Festival, and we have been working together with local illustrator Matt Canning (who goes by the pseudonym Herds of Birds) to create the branding for this years festival.
This week the first incarnation of the festival’s website went live, which you can find at ejectorseat.co.uk, so remember to keep an eye on it for news as acts and events are announced over the next couple of months!
Like all responsible adults here at Johnny Toaster we spend a great deal of time planning for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. This week our planning was greatly helped by this brilliant web map which shows us the danger zones and places in which we can find food, supplies and of course guns!
Also Mexican advertising agency Menosunocerouno have come to our aid with this ingenious (not to mention beautifully designed) little box which has all the things you might want or need in any apocalypse including:
Abuelita Chocolate – to keep your energy up.
Simple Knife - an absolute necessity in every apocalypse.
40 Emergency Black Matches – start a fire, get warm, cook a meal, job done!
Xtabentun D’aristi – an original Mayan liqueur, keep your spirits up!
Basic Water – drink responsibly!
Doméstica Yellow Notebook – remember to keep notes of your struggle, so that future generations can make films about your survival efforts.
This week we discovered the work of Hungarian design duo Hidden Characters. We’ve chosen to show their own branding, which we find quite charming, plus the colours they have chosen are really quite inspired.
Unfortunately their website isn’t up and running just yet, however you can find more of their work at behance.net.
As final year Solent Illustration students, we find ourselves approaching the end of our time at University; and this means the Final Degree Show is approaching. In addition to having a degree show in Southampton, we also organise a more accessible London exhibition show for potential clients to visit. In order to showcase our work in London, we have to raise enough capital to fund it ourselves. With this in mind, we organise events and fund-raising opportunities throughout the academic year.
This February we produced work to display at the Bargate Monument Gallery, Southampton for which, we organised, curated and supervised the entire exhibition ourselves. It ran from the 13th to the 19th February and was a sell out show. We hope to continue this success with our Pointless Posters Exhibition in partnership with Johnny Toaster – Johnny Toaster’s generous support of the Solent Illustration course has given Southampton’s growing creative community the opportunity to see the creative outputs of the final year students.
The Point of a Pointless Poster…
The idea of Pointless Posters is to create an image of any sort with, as the title suggests, no obvious reason, meaning or message. In doing so it creates a sort of contradictory object. A poster is meant to give us some sort of information – i.e directions to a location or details of an upcoming event. To create a meaningless poster however, that renders these traditional uses obsolete is an interesting thought.
We are surrounded by posters on a daily basis, constantly relaying information to us, forcing it into our lives whether invited or not. So much of the information can also be irrelevant to the viewer, it may have no connection to them and in this way the meaning becomes void and lost. Pointless Posters plays on this idea by creating posters that are intended to say nothing to the spectator, and in this way they are left to try and decode the images – images which ultimately will have them making analyses for no reason. The viewer often tries to ‘read’ into pieces of art and find the artist’s intention. Even if sometimes their conclusion may be far from the actual meaning, the spectator is often rewarded with a sense of satisfaction. This decoding of a hidden meaning may be thought to be achieved with Pointless Posters but ultimately, it is an ill-fated motion of dissection. The spectator is working for nothing; they are the donkey chasing the carrot on the stick.
Each poster is an individual interpretation by each artist of what a Pointless Poster is. Every poster is a single colour screen print on the same variety of paper; this ensures a continuity and unified theme throughout. The use of screen printing reinforces the ideology of posters with their immediacy and ability to be mass-produced.
Final Point…
Amongst us, a huge array of styles are exhibited: ranging from more traditional print-makers to the diagrammatic artist, we are typographers and paper-cutters and everything in between; this exhibition showcases this diversity and heralds it.
SO.A.P. Issue 3, is here! The latest installment of the Southampton based arts paper Johnny Toaster designs and helps put together. It is freely distributed throughout Southampton at many locations, keep an eye out for it to grab your copy.
SO.A.P. (Southampton’s Arts Paper) is a collaborative newspaper promoting the vibrant arts mix in Southampton. SO.A.P. has been set up by a group of like minded people in Southampton – the Dangerous Friday Group. The paper isn’t designed to make a profit, it is designed to be a communication tool and a great read for people in the city. Precluding adverts, the paper asks each contributor to submit an article relating to the ‘arts’ of Southampton. Johnny Toaster is part of the Dangerous Friday Group and helps with the on going project and art direction of the newspaper.
