"Saul Bass" on STAR WARS.

Pretty well done Bass pastiche posted on youtube. It was a student project by a "B. Hilmers" I guess. Great minimized designs of some classic characters.



See more of Bass' great feature titles at the Not Coming to a Theater Near You website. It's kind of a stilted way to see the sequences but, they're pretty decent captures and the slick interface allows you to really study the transitions at your leisure.

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"Secretarial Silver"

Poppytalk, has asked Janine from the Uppercase Journal to share, and talk about, her modest collection of typewriter ribbon tins. They are all beautifully designed, and are in great condition. Great colors, typography, printing… just perfect. I wish I collected things that could fit so easily in one small box.

Here is a tiny preview, but you should really go look at them on their Flickr page. Nice big photographs of the entire lot.

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Ad-Art by Raymond Savignac.

All that I know about Raymond Savignac I've only just read in this five year old Obituary from the New York Times. He's one of many great illustrators and designers who's work I've seen for years, but I never took the time to find out who's work it was. It's thanks to my favorite blog, Grain Edit, for posting an image of Savignac's work that I finally found out more about this highly celebrated poster artist and found more of his work online.

As usual I'm the last one to "discover" this artist only to find that all their posters command extremely high prices, even modern reproductions, and books about the artist are out of print and highly collectible too. Oh well. I'll settle for perusing the archives at the Savignac Store.

An assortment of Savignac posters follows, enjoy…

Note: Most of the images can be viewed larger if you click on them.

This image is funny, but sort of gross.

This must be a self portrait.

The man in this image looks a little uncomfortable with his dancing partners state of undress.

Spaghetti cannibal?

I love this painting. France doesn't really lend itself to anthropomorphism, but Savignac pulls it off.

He worked in a few very different styles over the years, and sometimes, like in the above image, he brought the two together. The figure is so primitive and childlike, but the fridge and all the items inside are so expertly rendered.

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1000 Frames of Hitchcock.

Tippi Hedren, photographed by Robert Burks.

1000 Frames of Hitchcock, found on the Hitchcockwiki, is an intersting ongoing project that (I think) is created by someone named Dave Pattern, or DaveyP. He has distilled all (or most anyway) of Hitchcock's films into mute, columns of tiny screen-grabs. It's a funny idea since Hitchcock was such a meticulous planner and these 1000 frames are just a giant backward step in story telling. Bringing you back to what the completed storyboard must have resembled, minus the incredible cinematography (often Robert Burks) and art direction. Even if you aren't trying to read the silenced pictures, the 1000 frames project serves as a treasury of great photography, and inspired, and varied, graphic design.

Ingrid Bergman, photographed by Robert Burks.

Random out of context sampling…

Eustance Tilly (Lifeboat), photographed by Glen MacWilliams.

Frenzy, photographed by Gilbert Taylor & Leonard J. South.

The Ring, photographed by Jack E. Cox.

Shadow of a Doubt, photographed by Joseph A. Valentine.

To Catch A Theif, photographed by Robert Burks.

The Lodger, photographed by Gaetano di Venimiglia.

North By Northwest, photographed by Robert Burks.

Note: The boy-extra in the blue shirt, plugging his ears in anticipation of a gun shot after many takes of the same scene.

I love this shot. I'm surprised that it made it into the film actually. Relying on a tiny orange spot to make a point on the big screen in 1954 was pretty risky considering how many random spots and specs find their way onto any film with regular use. Oh, but it's such a great idea.Rear Window, photographed by Robert Burks.

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"I don't count the feathers, I just count the wings."

King Birds, avaliable as a serigraph from Treadway Gallery.

If you or the grade school you went to owned a copy of The Giant Golden Book of Biology, than you may recognize the work of Charley Harper.


I really like his work, sort of a John J. Audubon for the modernist set and children. Harper's geometric distillation of animals, items, and environments and his subdued palette have a lot in common with, and maybe even directly influenced, the work of both Richard McGuire and Chris Ware. Sure, many people have used this manner of simplification to represent all sorts of things, but in the work of Harper, McGuire, and Ware I think the drawings take on more than just an iconic or typographic appearance, but they usually capture a movement or gesture of whatever sort of person or animal it is they've drawn which really helps bring the drawings to life.

Backyard Birds; House Wren, With Clothes Line; Blackburian Warbler; Beetle Battle, all available as prints from Fabulous Frames & Art. Giant Golden Book of Biology available in dusty thrift store bins($1), your local library's annual discard sale(25¢), and ebay($400).

Todd Oldham recently assembled a massive book of Harper's work and produced this short video about Harper where you can see Charley talk about his work, and a take a peek into his studio.

Harper died earlier this year at the age of 84.

"When I look at a wildlife or nature subject, I don’t see the feathers in the wings, I just count the wings. I see exciting shapes, color combinations, patterns, textures, fascinating behavior and endless possibilities for making interesting pictures. I regard the picture as an ecosystem in which all the elements are interrelated, interdependent, perfectly balanced, without trimming or unutilized parts; and herein lies the lure of painting; in a world of chaos, the picture is one small rectangle in which the artist can create an ordered universe."

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