Reading Typography graduate, John Morgan, has been nominated for the 2013 Designs of the year competition run by the Design Museum for his work on the visual identity for the 13th Architecture Biennale in Venice.
Read about his work on the Eye blog: Common ground: a designer’s letter from Venice.
John is currently teaching students on our MA Book Design course.
Penguin’s brightest star is not an author but illustrator (and Reading Typography graduate) Coralie Bickford-Smith, according to AbeBooks. The AbeBooks site features an interview and shows her brilliant covers for Penguin Classics, the Great Food series and her interpretation of a three-volume edition of the Arabian Nights. There is even more at Coralie’s own website, http://www.cb-smith.com
Over the summer BA Graphic Communication students who has just finished their first year entered a competition run organised by Oculus, a Reading design company who are celebrating their 20th anniversary. The students were asked to create a brand for a fictional company and to deliver both visuals and a written rationale of the thinking behind their idea.
The University is a partner in the Pencil to Pixel exhibition which opened yesterday in the Metropolitan Wharf, in Wapping. After the taster of Gill’s drawings seen in Beauty in the Making last spring, Monotype pulled out all the stops for Pencil to Pixel: the event marks the first public viewing of many materials from the archives in Salfords, from original drawings by Bruce Rogers and Chris Brand, to an unbound folio masterpiece of Modern typography belonging to Adrian Frutiger, to an innovative display taking over the entirety of one of the walls, displaying a never-reccurring combination of typeforms from the company’s library. The exhibition is accompanied by twelve “collections” (booklets showcasing themed selections of typefaces by Abbott Miller, Patrick Burgoyne, and others), and a range of specimens and keepsakes.
The exhibition marks the publication of two major editions: a new issue of the Recorder, celebrating Robin Nicholas’ career in the company (with an opening article by Gerry Leonidas), and a special issue of Eye magazine, dedicated to the contributions of Monotype to type and typography. Both editions include superb photography, and should become instantly collectable – not least because the material in the exhibition is unlikely to be made available in this scale anytime soon.
There are many Reading connections with the exhibition, starting with the main organisers: Dan Rhatigan and James Fooks-Bale are both graduates of the Department. The special Recorder issue follows on from the Centenary Issue of 1997, published on the occasion of the ATypI conference in Reading; and the Linotype the Film publicity on display sports the exquisite (but unreleased, yet) redesign of Metro by another graduate, Toshi Omagari. Not least, the Recorder includes a picture of Robin teaching a few years back in a room eerily similar to the studio where Book- and Information Design postgraduates spend their days!
An Information Design Association talk by Lulu Pinney
6.30pm on 15 October
Performing Arts Lab, Royal College of Art
The internet has had a profound impact on journalism, as it has on many things. The vast quantity of data the internet has enabled us to discover, collect, explore and share is part of this. Visual design provides a powerful tool for finding and telling the stories contained within data. With data journalism spanning several disciplines designers have much to contribute, and much to learn.
BOOK A TICKET…
http://www.amiando.com/idadatajournalism.html
Lulu Pinney
Educated to become a numbers person but equally curious about pictures and words, Lulu gained design experience at Pentagram, Haymarket Business Publishing and BBC News Online. She now teaches, creates and blogs about infographics.
Martin Andrews as Caxton and Fraser Mackenzie as the printing assistant in Sky Atlantic’s documentary The British. There’s also a starring role for the Department’s wooden Gutenberg press, designed and constructed by Alan May. Watch an extract on YouTube.
James Mosley and Alice Savoie are contributors to a new book published to coincide with the Congrès des Musées Européens de l’Imprimerie in Lyon. James Mosley contributes an inventory of ‘the materials of typefounding’, while Alice (who is an AHRC-funded research student) writes with Alan Marshall and Bernadette Moglia on ‘our typographic heritage’.
Copies are available from www.imprimerie.lyon.fr
Today is the last day to view the BA Graphic Communication final displays of work (the MA displays will be up a week longer). If you’d like to see some of the work online, go to spreadtheword2012.tumblr.com to see BA students’ work or www.infobook12.com for MA work. You can also buy the MA students’ new journal Typography with a view from the Department office for £5.
The public viewing for the BA and MA displays of work this year is from Tuesday 19 June to Saturday 23 June. This will include work by BA Graphic Communication, MA Book Design, and MA Information Design students!
We are open from 9.00am to 5.00pm, and on Saturday from 10.00am to 3.00pm. All are welcome to visit; some helpful location information is here, or contact Charlene McGroarty (c.mcgroarty@reading.ac.uk) for more information.
Local design agency Theme Group change their road sign every month, using pixel art to mark an anniversary or seasonal topic. The winner of the May competition was Part 1 student Craig Melvin, whose design reminds passers-by that this month is the 35th anniversary of the Star Wars film premiere. Although Craig would have preferred the sign to go up on May the 4th (ed. Oh, come on!) he is pleased with his internship at Theme during the summer vacation.