pro magazine

POSTERS

ISSUE NO.1

NOV / DEC 2010

PRO

EDITOR’S LETTER

The objective of this magazine is to show case different design firms and their process for a certain type of design project. Each issue of the mag azine focuses on a specific graphic design proj ect, and the firms and their projects are chosen based on the type of project. The firms are also picked depending on the their location in the world in order to give the reader an opportunity to compare the firms and their methods. The goal for the magazine is to pro vide a source of inspiration for stu dents and professionals in the graphic de sign field. The interviews with the designers serve as a preface to their creative pro cess in order to provide some insight as to how they work through everyday de-sign challenges. Through reading the magazine, the hope is that the viewer can take away something from the con tent, whether it be advice, tips, new meth ods, or even just plain inspiration. The name of the magazine itself refers to the preposition ‘pro’, which means ‘for’, and we interpret it as pos itive since process is the showing of progress and development.

This issue we focus on posters. One of the key factors of graphic design is the communication and how the information being communicated is presented. Then one must think, ‘What is the purpose of a poster?’ Essentially, there are three functions of poster. It could ad vertise events or products, display in formation or instructions, or teach some kind of information. A poster is any piece of printed paper designed to be attached to a wall or vertical surface. Ty pically posters include both textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or wholly text. Posters are designed to be both eye-catching and convey information, and they may be used for many pupos-es. They are a frequent tool of adver-tisers (particularly of events, musicians and films), propagandists, protestors and other groups trying to communicate a message. In addition, the methods of production for posters have devel-oped and changed over the years. Nowadays, there are a variety of methods, including multiple-color prints, screenprinting, offset printing, etc. There is also an array of material available for posters to be printed on. In this issue, you can see different methods used by different designers across the different countries. We hope you enjoy this first issue of PRO magazine!

WHAT IS PRO?

A BRIEF HISTORY / 4

BLANCA GOMEZ / COSAS MINIMAS // 11

MELISSA & JW BUCHANAN / LITTLE FRIENDS OF PRINT MAKING // 21

SIMON HAUSER & DAVID SCHWARZ / HAUSER, SCHWARZ // 31

POSTER (n.) – A large printed picture, notice, or advertisement displayed in a public place.

- OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY

A BRIEF HISTORY

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Although lithography was invented in 1798, it was at first too slow and expensive for poster production. Most posters were woodblocks or metal engravings with little color or design. This all changed with Cheret’s “three stone lithographic process,” a breakthrough which allowed artists to achieve every color in the rainbow with as little as three stones - usually red, yellow and blue - printed in careful registration. Although the process was difficult, the result was a remarkable intensity of color and texture, with sublime transparencies and nuances impossible in other media (even to this day). This ability to combine word and image in such an attractive and economical format finally made the litho-graphic poster a powerful innovation. Starting in the 1870s in Paris, it became the dominant means of mass communication in the rapidly growing cities of Europe and America. The streets of Paris, Milan and Berlin were quickly transformed into the “art gallery of the street,” and ushered in the modern age of advertising. During the 1890s, called the “Belle Epoque” in France, a poster craze came into full bloom. In 1891, Toulouse-Lautrec’s first poster, Moulin Rouge, elevated the status of the poster to fine art. French poster exhibitions, magazines and dealers proliferated, satisfying the public’s love affair with the poster. Early in the decade, the pioneering Parisian dealer Sagot listed 2200 different posters in his sales catalog!

In 1894, Alphonse Mucha, a Czech working in Paris, created the first mas-terpiece of Art Nouveau poster design. The flowery, ornate style was born practically overnight when Mucha was pressed to produce a poster for Sarah Bernhardt, the brilliant actress who had taken Paris by storm. Bear ing multiple influences including the Pre - Raphaelites, the Arts and Crafts Movement, and Byzantine art, this style was to dominate the Parisian scene for the next ten years and to become the major international decorative art move -ment up until World War I. The poster slowly took hold in other countries in the 1880s, but quickened during the Belle Epoque. In each country, the poster came to the fore to celebrate the soci-ety’s unique cultural institutions. In France, the cult of the café (including absinthe and other alcoholic products) was omnipresent; in Italy the opera and fashion; in Spain the bull-fight and festivals; in Holland literature and products for the home; in Germany trade fairs and magazines, in Britain and America literary journals and the circus. The first poster shows were held in Great Britain and Italy in 1894, Germany in 1896, and Russia in 1897. The most important poster show ever, to many observers, was held in Reims, France in 1896 and featured an unbelievable 1,690 posters ar ranged by country. Despite cross-pollination, distinctive national styles became more apparent as the Belle Epoque pro-gressed. Dutch posters were marked by restraint and orderliness; Italian posters by their drama and grand scale; Ger-man posters for their directness and medievalism. The all-powerful influence of France had found a counterbalance. Art Nouveau continued after the turn of the century, although it lost much of its dynamism through sheer imitation and repetition. The death of Toulouse-

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Lautrec in 1901 and the abandonment of poster art by Mucha and Cheret (who both turned to painting) left a void in France in the new century.The void was filled by a young Italian caricaturist named Leonetto Cappiello, who arrived in Paris in 1898. Strongly influenced by Cheret and Toulouse-Lautrec, Cappiello rejected the fussy detail of Art Nouveau. Instead he focused on creating one simple image, often humor -ous or bizarre, which would immediately capture the viewer’s attention and imagination on a busy boulevard. His 1906 Maurin Quina absinthe poster, a mischievous green devil on a black background with simple block lettering, marked the maturation of a style that would dominate Parisian poster art until Cassandre’s first Art Deco poster in 1923. This ability to create a brand iden -tity established Cappiello as the father of modern advertising. Meanwhile, artists working in Scotland’s Glasgow School, Austria’s Vienna Secession, and Germany’s Deutscher Werkbund also were trans-forming Art Nouveau’s organic aproach. These schools rejec ted curvilinear ornamentation in favor of a rectilinear and geometric structure based on functionalism. A key outgrowth of these modernist efforts was the German Plakatstil, or Poster Style, which was begun in 1905 by Lucien Bernhard in Berlin and in Munich by Ludwig Hohlwein. For a poster competition sponsored by Preister matches Bernhard took the novel approach of drawing two large mat ches and writing the brand name above them in clean, bold letters. The stark sim-plicity of the design won him the competition. Bernhard’s minimalized naturalism and emphasis on flat colors and shapes made his work the next step towards creating an abstract - and modern - visual language.

TOULOUSE-LAUTREC.MOULIN ROUGE, 1891

CAPPIELLO, LEONETTO.CACHOU LAJAUNIE, 1900

CHERET, JULES. EL DORADO, 1894

ANONYMOUS.MAGAZZINI NAZIONALE TESSUTI MODE CONFEZIONI, 1905

A BRIEF HISTORY

BERNHARD, LUCIAN.BREISGAU-PERLE, C. 1914

VERREES, J. PAUL. JOIN THE AIR SERVICE AND SERVE IN FRANCE, 1917

CASSANDRE, A. M. ITALIA - COSULICH, LLOYD TRIESTINO - ADRIA, C. 1935

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LEUPIN, HERBERT. EPTINGER (BUBBLES), 1945

MULLER-BROCKMANN, JOSEF. MUSICA VIVA - JANUARY 6, 1961

HOFMANN, ARMIN.TELL, 1963

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World War I meant a new role for the poster: propaganda. Indeed, the war ushered in the biggest advertising campaign to date, critical to the wartime communication needs of every combatant: from raising money, recruiting soldiers and boosting volunteer efforts, to spurring production and provoking outrage at enemy atrocities. America alone produced about 2,500 poster designs and approxi-mately 20 million posters - nearly 1 for every 4 citizens - in little more than 2 years. The lessons of brilliant American advertising in WWI posters were not lost on the Bolsheviks, who turned to poster art to help win their civil war against the Whites. Lenin and his followers proved to be the pioneering masters of modern propaganda, and the poster became a weapon which would be used throughout the century in both hot and cold wars everywhere. After World War I, Art Nouveau’s organic inspiration seemed irrelevant in an increasingly industrial society. The new realities were better expressed in the modern art movements of Cubism, Futurism, Dada and Expression-ism, all of which would have a profound influence on graphic design. In the Soviet Union, the Constructivist movement took hold in the ‘20s with the goal of creating a new technological society. Building on Kasimir Malevich’s Suprematist movement (the Russian outgrowth of Cubo-Futurism), the Constructivists developed an “agitational” style of composition, marked by strong diagonals, photo montage and color. Led by El Lissitsky, Alexander Rodchenko, Gus-tav Klutsis, and the Stenberg Brothers, the Constructivists’ work would have a major impact on Western design, primarily through the Bauhaus and the de Stijl movement. This scientific language of design was popularized in a new international decorative movement called Art Deco. In this machine age style, power and speed be - came the primary themes. Shapes were simplified and streamlined, and curved letterforms were replaced by sleek, angular ones. Art Deco showed a wide variety of graphic influences, from the modern art movements of Cubism, Futurism, Vorticism and Dada; to the design advances of the Vienna Secession, Plakatstil, and the Rus -sian Constructivists; to the exotic art of Persia, Egypt, and Africa.

A BRIEF HISTORY

The poster again played a large com-munication role in World War II, but this time it shared the spotlight with other media, mainly radio and print. By this time, most posters were printed using the mass production technique of photo offset, which resulted in the familiar dot pattern seen in newspapers and magazines. The use of photo graphy in posters, begun in the Soviet Union in the twenties, now became as common as illustration. After the war, the poster declined further in most countries as television became an additional competitor. The last gasp of the classic age of the lithographic poster occurred in Switzerland, where the government heavily promoted the printing industry and poster excel-lence. The establishment of a standard poster size and national kiosk system in 1914 was an additional aid. Appealing to the Swiss sense of precision, the style which developed during WWII and the early fifities in Basel was the Sachplakat, or Ob ject Poster Style. Delighting in making everyday ob -jects into giant icons, its roots go back to the Plakatstil of Lucian Bernhard and the Surrealist movement. The style depended on spectacular Swiss printing to create its wonderful trompe l’oeil ef -fects. Visual elegance was often matched by gentle humor. With the end of lithographic printing in the ‘50s, Leu -pin, Brun and the other Basel Sach-plakat artists turned to a humorous style less reliant upon the rich color and tex tures of lithographic printing. Switzerland’s dominance of the poster field continued to grow in the late fifties with the development of a new graphic style that had roots in the Bau haus. Because of its strong reliance on typographic elements in black and white, the new style came to be known as the International Typographic Style. Refined at design schools in Zurich

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elders’ teachings. Weingart’s liberation of typography was an important foun- dation for se veral new styles, from Memphis and Retro, to the advances now being made in computer gra -phics.The role and appearance of the poster has changed continuously over the past century to meet the chang ing needs of society. Although its role is less central than it was 100 years ago, the poster will e volve fur ther as the computer and the worldwide web revolutionize the way we commu-nicate in the 21st century.

and Basel, the style utilized a mathematical grid, strict graphic rules and black and white photography to provide a clear and logical structure. It became the predominant graphic de sign style in the world in the ‘70s, and continues to exert its influence to day.The new style was perfectly suited to the increasingly global postwar market place. The Swiss language problem (three major languages in a small country) became a world-wide problem, and there was a strong need for clarity in word and symbol. Corporations needed inter-national identification, and global events such as the Olympics called for universal solutions which the Typographic Style could provide. The International Typographic Style began to lose its energy in the '70s and early '80s. Many criticized it for being cold, formal and dog- ma tic. A young teacher in Basel named Wolfgang Weingart led the palace revolt which ushered in today’s predominant graphic style loosely known as Post-Modern design. Weingart experimented with the offset printing process to produce pos ters that appeared complex and chaotic, playful and spontaneous - all in stark contrast to his

TROXLER, NIKLAUS. MCCOY TYNER, 1980

WEINGART, WOLFGANG. SCHREIBKUNST, 1981

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BLANCA GÓMEZCOSAS MINIMAS

Madrid, Spain

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I am originally from Madrid and that is where I currently reside. I am always saying that I’d like to move somewhere else for at least a while, but here I am, I supposeunderneath it all Madrid isn’t so bad.

COSAS MINIMAS got its start several years ago in a very curious way. I was working for another graphic design studio at the time and was in the habit of constantly drawing on post-its. Most of the drawings ended up in my wastebasket and my boss would tell me that I should do something with those drawings, but I never paid much at tention. One day he simply told me that he had chosen a name for my web-site and purchased it for me. So it just naturally morphed out of what was once merely a hobby at work. What was initially meant to be a personal pro-ject gradually and naturally turned into a professional project. Having a site dedicated to my personal projects forced me to learn more and more.

When I was little I would draw all day long like many kids do and my parents enrolled me in a painting academy. I would always say that I wanted to be a painter, but as I grew older I didn’t see it as a feasible option and the idea faded. When it was time to head to col-lege I wasn’t clear what I wanted to do with my life. I had always considered drawing a hobby, but never imagined it as one that could earn me a living. In-stead I chose to study Publicity because I thought it would lend itself to creativity and aide in my professional develop-ment, but I soon realized that Publicity was not for me. I continued my studies,but explored other alternatives like photography and film through my fourth year, which I spent in Milan. It was in Milan that I became interested in graph-ic design. I remember attending an

eye-opening exhibition of Milton Gla-ser’s work and somehow finally figuring out what I should do. When I returned to Madrid I enrolled in evening classes at a design school while I wrapped up my publicity studies. I was in classes all day until 11 P.M. and it was very ex hausting but well worth it in the end. One month after finishing college and my design coursework I began work ing for a small graphic design stu-dio that was mainly dedicated to the production of business literature. That is where I learned to work in a very rigorous and precise manner. I’ve been working for graphic design studios for seven years now.

WHERE ARE YOU FROM ORIGINALLY?

WHEN DID COSAS MINIMAS BEGIN AND HOW HAS IT GROWN?

TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOUR DESIGN BACKGROUND. WHERE DID YOU STUDY?

Q&ABLANCA GÓMEZ

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To be sincere, I’m not too certain what inspires me. I suppose that everything that surrounds me and everything that I like inspires me inevitably. I’m a huge collector of objects and books. Picasso said something along the lines of it being best for inspiration to find you working. I happen to think that’s good way to put it.

Given the easy access we have to thousands of good artworks today, it is impossible for me to recall all of the artists that interest me. Moreover, the Internet has produced an interesting phenomenon thanks to sites like ffffound, and I believe that many works have come to eclipse the very artists that produce them. It seems these days we are more likely to recognize an image or style long before we know the artist. I find this interesting because in the end it is the work itself that matters most.

As time went on I began dedicating more time and effort into COSAS MINIMAS. That is how my first commissions and collaborations came about, always via the web, until finally my hobby be-came my primary job. It’s not like I had a plan or predetermined objective, it just happened. These days COSAS MINIMAS continues on its undefined path; dividing my time between per-sonal projects, the store, and commer-cial commissions.

Let’s try anyway: The French illustrator Sempé has stuck with me since I was little and read Nicholas. I love the tenderness and humor in his illustra-tions. Other illustrators that are among my favorites include Dupuy and Bar- berian who also illustrate comics. I’ve always been very interested in Comics. I also like many Japanese illustrators. I recently discovered Tatsuro Kiuchi and the simplicity in his drawings, especially those in black and white, I found to be very impressive. As far as designers go, I am clearly a fan of mid-century design, above all else people like Alexander Girad, Olle Eksell, And Bruno Munari. Presently, I am smitten with Vostok, a Catalonian studio that employs unimagi-nable printing techniques. Another illustration favorite is illustrator and designer Cristobal Schmal who also happens to be a colleague.

WHAT INSPIRES YOU MOST?

WHICH ARTISTS / DESIGNERS DO YOU ADMIRE AND / OR ARE INSPIRED BY?

BLANCA’S WORK SPACE

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BLANCA GÓMEZ

It’s not a project in the strictest sense, but I was very flattered that Janine Vangool chose an illustration of mine for the cover of the first issue of Uppercase Magazine. I had never before seen my work featured on the cover of a maga-zine much less the first issue and now I fear I won’t see it again. The best part is that my work was on the cover of a fantastic magazine, but I feel honored more than proud.

I am lucky to have a collaborative project pending with some friends that aside from being my friends also hap-pen to be really great at what they do. The less positive side is that the project is currently stalled because of me. In reality, the paradox is that I am rather individualistic in my work and I’ve been used to working alone for a long time. On the other hand, I would like to col-laborate with so many people that I am incapable of naming just one.

Absolutely. Not just at the beginning, today my clients continue to find me via my website as the Internet helped mark a significant point of flexion in my career. Moreover, if I had to promote my work in other ways it never would have occurred to me to do so outside of Spain. Today, the majority of my work is done for foreign clients and that truly widens my professional horizons. I also have an online store and I communicate with clients via email. And thanks to the Internet I have met colleagues that I speak to on a daily basis who keep me from going crazy as a result of working alone. My blog is another way that I get feedback about my work. In any case, what I am saying is rather obvious. I suppose that in the future things

will continue to evolve and I don’t see myself working any other way. Some-times I think that in the future I would like to interact more directly with my clients, but then I remember the close-ness of clients when I worked at an agency and realize that it’s possible to be much closer to a client thousands of miles away than face to face. If it weren’t for the internet I would probably still be working on more corporate type projects because at the time I lacked the confidence needed to contact potential clients to present my personal work.

CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT ANY PROJECTS YOU’VE BEEN INVOLVED IN THAT YOU’RE PARTICULARLY PROUD OF?

IS THERE ANYONE YOU’RE INTERESTED IN WORKING WITH / FOR?

HAS THE INTERNET INFLUENCED YOUR WORK? HOW DO YOU THINK IT WILL CONTINUE TO EVOLVE?

UPPERCASE MAGAZINE SPRING 09

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PROCESS

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While my process for commissioned work is very disciplined (whenever possible), I don’t have a predetermined process for per-sonal projects because I work chaotically. The following work was commissioned, but has a very personal touch. The client gave me free reign in the production of limited edition prints for his store. The store specializes in music posters so my first idea was to make a fake poster billing for a fake concert. The turning point came about while listening to the song Autumn in New York, I decided then I would do something jazz inspired with New York as the backdrop. Sometimes I sketch on paper and others I start sketching in Illustrator. In this case I decided to start drawing (in Illustrator) the character playing the trumpet in basic shapes. The first character was too silly or caricature-like for the idea I had in mind. I eliminated the trumpet and began to style him.

CAN YOU WALKS US THROUGH YOUR WORK FLOW?

BLANCA GÓMEZ

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Once I have a clear idea of form I begin experimenting with various brushes. I also experiment with fonts for the text. I begin to work on the background and play with color once the charac-ter is defined. The title of the song in spires a melancholic image (blue) and I decide to experiment with a palette of cool colors. This process can be some what chaotic and I can have as many as 20 different versions in one docment, but here I’m sharing fewer samples. As I work on the background I in corporate the character into the composition and move him along the landscape. I lose the fake poster idea because at this point I’m aware that the illustration has overshadowed the design.

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After several hours of trial and error there is nothing I like. I decide to leave the computer and sketch on paper. These sketches are quick and rough in order to get some idea of the composition of the elements. When I do this I recognize what is wrong, the character and the background are too similar and this is confusing and the character is lost in the background. I decide to reduce and contrast the color palette and also change the size of the elements. I reduce the cityscape and make the character more prominent on a first plane. Now it is night in the drawing and there is a protagonist in sight. I think this will work much better. I normally finish my illustration in Illustrator before I begin working in Photo shop, where I complete thingswith brushes and textures. But that wasn’t the case here. Once I had a clear vision I began wor-king with various elements that I already had, collage style, directly in Photoshop. Now we have the back ground of the illustration.

BLANCA GÓMEZ

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Once I have a clear idea of form I begin experimenting with various brushes. I also experiment with fonts for the text. I begin to work on the background and play with color once the charac -ter is defined. The title of the song in spires a melancholic image (blue) and I decide to experiment with a palette of cool colors. This process can besome what chaotic and I can have as many as 20 different versions in one do cument, but here I’m sharing fewer samples. As I work on the background I incorporate the character into the composition and move him along the landscape. I lose the fake poster idea because at this point I’m aware that the illustration has overshad-owed the design. Finally we have the illustration, but it could use some life because it appears dark and sad. I add the stars that I started with in Illus -trator and that is that last touch that it needs to come to life.

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MELISSA & JW BUCHANANLITTLE FRIENDS OF PRINT MAKING

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

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MELISSA I grew up in Milwaukee. So imagine my chagrin that as an adult I would move back here.JW I grew up in a shitty little in dustrial town in southern Minnesota called Austin. It was completely flat and there was nothing around but windblown prairie dirt in any direction for fifty miles at least. Bleak. When I meet other people from Minnesota and they ask where I grew up, they say, “…Oh,” in that knowing way. (It’s not an endorse-ment).

JW Yeah, we went to art school. I think my enduring impression of school is kind of negative. I learned a lot in art school – I can’t deny that. But for us, the main benefit of being at art school was the unfettered access to the facilities. We tried to make the most of that; I mean we really, really cranked out the work. As far as advice: This is some thing I’ve said before, but if you’re in art school, you’re essentially pay- ing people to look at your work and take it somewhat seriously. I used to get something out of that; but then we started doing posters and design work that reached a wider audience, where the success or failure of something became definitively less subjective. Then I was like, “ya’ll have been replaced, bitches!” (I didn’t really say that, but you can imagine.) So my main advice to recent graduates is that the flow of good and

JW How to tell this story without repeating ourselves horribly…MELISSA The Little Friends of Printmak-ing was at first a sham student orga-nization that our friend Joe started so that he could rent vans from the university. James and I came up with the name because we got really sick of people calling us at home to ask if they could join the organization, which they couldn’t, because it was fake.

MELISSA So we came up with the Little Friends name in order to drive people away…to make it sound like something nobody would want to have anything to do with…like a bunch of creepy printmakers in polar fleece vests and lavender jeans who want to be your little friend. And then later, we decided to make it a real student organization that actually did things, because why not?JW Ultimately we adopted the name for ourselves. It suits us, I think.

WHERE ARE YOU FROM ORIGINALLY?

DID YOU ATTEND ART SCHOOL? IF SO, HOW DID YOU LIKE IT? WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO RECENT GRADUATES?

HOW DID YOU DECIDE ON THE MONIKER “THE LITTLE FRIENDS OF PRINTMAKING?”

Q&AMELISSA & JW BUCHANAN

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JW We met in art school at the Univer-sity of Wisconsin in an epically humiliat-ing cut-and-paste-the-little-paper-squares foundations course. It was awful and we bonded over its awfuness.MELISSA It was a long, drawn-out flirtation. We would draw things to im press each other. We were also in a race to see who could most completely blow off that class. I won.

JW I don’t. Having someone whose eye and taste you can trust is a huge luxury. There aren’t many people who I trust that way, & Melissa’s the top of the list.MELISSA I hate it. It’s terrible. Don’t tell James.

JW I wouldn’t rule it out, but there’s such strange alchemy involved in col- laboration. It can turn out so crummy.MELISSA Over the past few years, we’ve worked with some cool designers on making screenprints for them, ushering them through the basics of the process, helping them turn their idea into a really good design for print. That’s been interesting.

JW I guess that we must, just in the course of making so much stuff, but we don’t make a distinction. It’s not important to us.

bad advice that comes from critique will eventually get shut off, so maybe come up with your own way of getting your work in front of people and make things that interest people and are, some-how, a part of their lives. MELISSA I mostly liked being in art school for the side benefits. For in- stance, school allowed me to work for years as an assistant preparator at an art museum. That was an awesome job. Really, whether I liked the entire experience or not is clouded by the fact that I got so little sleep, I barely remember it.

HOW DID YOU BOTH MEET?

DO YOU EVER GET TIRED OF WORKING WITH ONE ANOTHER?

WOULD YOU WANT TO COLLABORATE WITH ANY OTHER ARTISTS?

DO YOU EVER CREATE INDIVIDUAL WORK?

THE LITTLE FRIENDS’STUDIO SPACE

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MELISSA I first did printmaking in high school. It instantly appealed to me – I liked that there was a process and that involved planning and executing a series of tiny steps. I also enjoy vacuuming and reorganizing my record collection. I am very dull.JW My high school didn’t offer print-making so I had to take a graphics course in the school annex, next to the auto shop in a room that intensely smelled of acetone and possibly gave me brain cancer.

JW Various NDA stuff (mostly print and apparel) and then also art prints. Also something so exciting I can’t talk about it even though I haven’t signed any-thing. I’m convinced that if I talk about it then it won’t happen. It’ll be crushed beneath the weight of expectations.MELISSA Our latest series of BAD VIBES art prints is coming out soon. It’s exciting to get back to just making artwork.

JW We get up around 10am, do our best to answer emails and take any calls we have to take, and we work until past midnight. I try to take a bike ride, if I can, before the sun goes down. That’s about it. I never leave the house. Come and get me, burglars.MELISSA We also have food breaks occasionally. We print something every weekend. We used to try to print a small amount every night, but I started dreading it so we backed off a bit.

JW Our first paid design work was doing screenprinted posters for a club in Madison that no longer exists. They were a punk vegan co-op in the basement of a church and so they had very limited credibility to people who did not already know they were having cool events. “Follow me to this darkened church basement. Les Savy Fav is playing. Really! This is not a trick, I promise. There is no cult indoctrination down here, seriously.” Not convincing.MELISSA The promoter had seen an art show of ours and thought our work would translate well into posters. We did a couple just for giggles and when people were still asking us about them six months later (and if we were going to make any more) we figured we were on to something.

WHEN DID YOU FIRST BECOME INTERESTED IN PRINTMAKING?

WHAT CURRENT PROJECTS ARE YOU WORKING ON?

WHAT IS A TYPICAL DAY FOR YOU LIKE?

WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST DESIGN GIG?

THE LITTLE FRIENDS’STUDIO SPACE

MELISSA & JW BUCHANAN

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PROCESS

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Everything we do is really more concept-driven than not. We’re idea people, not stylists; which I guess makes our process more like a designer’s than an illustrator’s. We feel like we need to be fairly certain about our concept before we start anything, so a lot of what we do is decided upon before we even pick up a pencil. We have a nice, sunny room where we can sit and hash out ideas; we live near the beach which gives us lots of room to pace around and stare into the distance like a couple of idiots. We also do a ton of “research.” Research is so important. You can’t operate in a vacuum. And that extra time you put into researching something pays off tenfold in nuance and smart little details that people remember. You get that extra time back. Like, at the end of your life. We’re pretty much anti-sketching. Our sketches are very rough and extremely small. And we usually make just one sketch. You’re taught that you sketch and you sketch, and then you start to fall in love with the little bits and pieces and so you develop those further in another sketch, and so on. That always seemed like a waste of energy to me. Obviously it works just fine for thousands of other people. But we’ve never been a sketchers. I remember having to fabricate hundreds of fake sketches at the end of the semester in art school, because sketching was com-pulsory. We have a concept and a permanent-marker sketch that’s like 2” x 3”. And so then we just work.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS? We work in Flash, and then Illustrator. Obviously, silkscreen is the main influence on our aesthetic and our process, because we do so much of it. When we’re working, we just sort of automatically set things up for silk-screen, even when we know it’s not going to be printed that way. It’s become how we draw, how we deal with color and texture. It’s how our brains work now. I guess it doesn’t seem like an earth-shattering revelation or anything, but when we’re designing something for silkscreen, we’re design-ing it in layers basically from the jump, instead of starting with a drawing and then separating it out, reverse-engineer-ing it into a print. You have to let a print be a print. Did we mention that we design things about half-size, so they don’t get too complicated? We set up our color separations as a multi-paged pdf and go to the architec-tural printers’ or Kinko’s to get them printed out on bond paper with an oversized laser plotter. Lots of people prefer to turn their separations into film positives, and there are some major benefits, but bond paper saturated with vegetable oil is a way cheaper and greener solution. We a use photo-sensi-tive emulsion for our stencils, and yes, we bought a real exposure unit instead of building one, or trying to use the sun, or having a closet full of halogen lamps, or whatever. When you’re doing your own printing, there are lots of areas where you can cut corners or invent your own method, but some things you just can’t skimp on. An clean, reliable exposure is one of them.


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Here’s the sketch for the Sonic Youth poster we did this month. Our sketches are tiny and crummy because of our distaste for sketching but also because it makes sense for us. A poster needs to communicate from 20 feet away, or further. So, if it doesn’t work at two inches tall, right in front of your face, then think again. Already, though, the basic idea is here. You can see that it’s a big skull, with stylized teeth, a tiny body, and an axis running down the middle of the face, with elements projecting out from that axis. We scan in the first sketch and then draw over it in Flash. A sketch like this will sit on the bottom layer of our file and just get more and more messed up with notes and little roughed-in pieces until it’s basically useless. Next comes the line art. This is the main bit of work. It isn’t everything, though– We’ll still add some hand-drawn bits and pieces, and then after everything’s separated out into color layers, an opportunity to do some thing cool and printerly (or designe-rish) will present itself and we’ll add a little bit more detail. You can see in this image that we have a couple of roughed -in ideas for the text placement. That was because we couldn’t be sure if Sonic Youth or their people would go for the “tiny band name set in the dead center of the poster” concept and we needed an alternative where their name could be really, really big.

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Now, we color in the line art. At right, you can see our little color pal-ette. We mock up the colors of the print, and then use it for reference, moving forward. This is a 3-color print, but since all silkscreen inks are transparent to some extent, you can figure on having nine distinct colors (and seven additional, more iffy colors) to work with. There isn’t really a formula or a set of rules for creating a palette like this, since you can mix inks to achieve almost any effect. You just have to have a pretty clear idea of what you want, and then just apply it consistently. Here’s the colored-in image, with the line art deleted. Although the image isn’t quite finished, this is our first real look at what we think the print will look like. We’ll add some more details now, while it’s still convenient to do so. Now, using the palette as a key, we separate the image into its component color layers. If you ad just the transparency of the layers, though, you should end up with a something that looks like your colored-in line art. Now fairly convinced that this design will work as a screenprint, we take these layers into Illustrator, add some textures, and then export them as b/w separations. IT’S THAT EASY!

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THE PRINTING PROCESS

Honestly, we’ll try out anything. We do tend to gravitate towards concepts that give us a lot of opportunities to pack in little details and stuff that’ll give the work some personality or a point of view. But a lot of times it has less to do with the subject matter at hand than just approaching it the right way, finding the angles, creating a subtext.

You might be asking the wrong people. Sometimes they’re done just because there’s no more time left. Doneness is a subjective concept, but you know when something looks overworked. So what we’re usually trying to do is to walk a project right up to that line, and not go over it. But really, given unlimited time, we could (and would) revisit every -thing we’ve ever made and fix it, like Hergé with the Tintin books, adding and editing in perpetuity. And then we drop dead.

HOW DO YOU PAIR CONCEPTS WITH YOUR DISTINCT STYLE?

HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN A PROJECT IS COMPLETE?

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S IMON HAUSER DAVID SCHWARZHAUSER, SCHWARZ

Basel, Switzerland

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Q&ASIMON HAUSER & DAVID SCHWARZ

DAVID Simon and I, we both come from different parts of Switzerland- he’s from the German speaking part and I from the French. We both came to Basel to study and that’s where we met. We studied at VisCom for three years before the Bachelor Program. After we gradu-ated, I did some assistant work at school for two years and at the side started to work self-employed.SIMON I started working with Philip Stamm, working with his huge book project about Adrian Frutiger for 1 year. Then after, I did some civil service and then was in an office for 70% and we worked together for 30% and after that, I had to decide whether it was worth it to do both. And I decided the right thing, I guess, and then we started working together.

TELL US ABOUT YOURSELVES. WHERE ARE YOU FROM AND HOW DID YOU MEET?

HOW DID YOU GET INTO DESIGN? DID YOU KNOW WHEN YOU WERE YOUNGER THAT YOU WANTED TO DO DESIGN?

DAVID For my part, I did a lot of drawing when I was younger, so I knew I want -ed to do something artistic and something visual. I think when I was already 15 or 16, I had already thought about doing graphic design but then I went further with studying and I actually thought I was going to do music instead, and it was only later that I thought about going back to graphic design and that’s when I started my studies. SIMON I never knew really well what I wanted to do. I just went to school and after the first 9 years you can go further to school, like a gymnasium. Yeah and before, I also did some one week internships at some companies and one was for a graphic designer at a small agency in the village I grew up in. I liked it, but it was no option for me just to go directly to work. In switzerland, you can do an apprenticeship. You have 4 years and you work in a company, you learn all the stuff and then afterwards you have one or two days at school, and after that you can work as whatever you learned. Or you can go to school and then you have a lot of different things to learn but not specified for a certain thing. And I chose this one because then I didn’t have to know exactly what I wanted to do.

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DAVID We didn’t do many works together in school, but we did one project together, or a couple maybe, and when i was self-employed I asked Simon to help me out with one or two projects at the time. And for me, I really like to work self-employed because I just like to be my own boss but I didn’t like to work alone. For me, there was this moment where I had to pretty much choose if I wanted to go more into school and maybe do more teaching or research program, or if I wanted to do more of my own work. And that’s pretty much the time when we talked about it with Simon and thought we’d give it a try to build up something because

DAVID It’s been… three years now? More or less.

Simon also wanted to be self-employed but maybe later on-- he actually wanted to gather more experience before, but it just happened this way that we had the opportunity and a couple of projects to start with and so we gave it a try. And quite quickly, we found the studio and we really liked it, and we had a couple projects like the Kaserne that were pretty big projects, so quite quickly we noticed that it would be better if we were both 100% here. It took a little while, I’d say like after a year, we were both really working 100% here.

There are these tests you have to do to get into the school, sort of like an audition, and it’s quite a lot of effort to do, to get in, and so you should be quite sure that you’re doing the right thing. Most people do it and finish it to the end. It’s also interesting because since it’s so difficult to get in, people tend to apply to different schools, like, Simon applied to Zurich as well and was only taken in Basel so it kind of gets people to move around Switzer-land a little bit, which is nice. and in the class, by the time we were studying, most students weren’t from Basel

HOW DID YOU DECIDE TO START YOUR BUSINESS?

AND IT’S BEEN HOW MANY YEARS?

HAUSER, SCHWARZ STUDIO

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SIMON I think it’s not so easy. We had a lot of luck to get good clients, and to keep them. And yeah, we pitch to companies to work for them, but usually we get jobs from other jobs, or from people we know; through connections, that’s the best way.DAVID In the beginning, it’s through friends, then it’s maybe friend of a friend, and then at some point it’s maybe friends from clients. And that’s nice, because it builds up. I think in the beginning, we had a couple bigger projects, but the thing is that you’re working a lot during that time and then when the work’s done, all of a sudden you have a little bit of a time out where you don’t have much to do. With time now, after three years, we have many more clients so that means maybe we have a lot of smaller projects coming in as well but it’s always kind of rolling, filling in the gaps between the big projects. So I think that’s also the key, to have as many projects as possible at the same time. And also yeah, we still do look for new projects, that’s important, espe-cially to come out of basel a little bit, because it’s relatively easy to build up a network in your hometown. We actually think it’s exciting to have works a little bit outside of basel as well, so we have some clients in Zurich, or in Bern, Lausanne, and that’s where we’re trying to build a little bit broader.

DAVID I would say, we do a lot of brain storming when we’re stuck. probably just the main source of inspiration is just talking about it and trying to find ideas. SIMON Laying out all the stuff you’ve already done and trying to get new ideas out of it. I have two blogs which I read. One is fontblog, it’s quite a huge one in germany. The other one is slanted, that’s also a huge one from germany. I also like books. I used to buy a lot of books but then it stopped a bit, but still I really like them. DAVID And then also looking at books we have. I don’t really look at blogs. I don’t buy books, I’m not really a book person. I never read them, that’s the problem. SIMON What I think is also important is that we both enjoy cultural events, like concerts, exhibitions, theater, yeah every kind, whatever. Or traveling, it’s also a good way to get inspiration.

SIMON I try to have more or less regulated day. I like structure so I always try and start the same time in the morning. I try to be here at half-past-8 but it’s always a bit later and in the evening, i’d say it’s round 7. And yeah, 5 days a week, always the usual. We try and get all the work done through the week because we don’t want to work over the weekend. We really try to not work too much because there’s always the potential for design-ers and architects to work too much.

HOW DO YOU FIND PROJECTS? DO YOU HAVE A REGULAR CLIENT BASE OR DO YOU PITCH FOR SOME WORK? HOW DO YOU FIND THE JOB MARKET IN SWITZERLAND?

WHAT ARE YOUR SOURCES OF INSPIRATION/WHERE DO YOU GO WHEN YOU’RE STUCK ON A PROJECT?

WHAT’S A TYPICAL DAY LIKE FOR YOU?

SIMON HAUSER & DAVID SCHWARZ

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PROCESS

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In the process, all the deadlines are set by the client. Especially like Voltar, the catalogue has to be ready by the time the fair is starting. The invitations have to be sent two months earlier, so there’s always like a deadline that’s fixed. And we have to make sure that we can deliver it for that deadline. Usually we don’t really have a very strict timeline, like we don’t know exactly next week what we’re going to do. We know what projects we’re going to be working on but we don’t know what day we’re going to do what, it depends on the needs. Some projects we know there’s a lot of creation involved, then we should start a bit earlier working on those projects to do all the brainstorming and whatnot because you can’t just wait for the last moment and then say ‘okay now let’s have an idea’ because you don’t know if you’re going to have it. When there’s creation involved, you don’t know exactly how much time you’re going to need. It’s also always good to put it aside and after two or three days, look at it with fresh eyes again, and probably then, it’s easier to decide And the creation, since we’ve started, it’s not easier than it was in the beginning, it’s still as frustrating, we still have the feeling sometimes that we don’t know how it’s going to look like and that we’re not going to find any ideas.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS? What I think is interesting, when I look at the process or different possibilities we had like half or one year ago, when we had to choose which way to go, it’s just clear which was the right direction to go after putting it beside for a really long time. But you can’t do this in the regular process, I think probably it’s also because you decided there and after half a year, it’s more settled down in your head. And because we’re two different people, it’s already a good trick to find out which is the good direction in creation because if I do something and Simon doesn’t like it, it’s already that it’s not really working in a way. and the same way the other way round. When we both like something, then it means that there’s something behind it already, and when we’re still not sure about a project and if we think that it’s important then we get some other opinions. We often send it to some friends of ours who studied with us that we trust. You need this kind of network to help you out. Or ask, for example, my girlfriend sometimes, who isn’t a graphic design-er. If you know if it’s not meant for graphic designers or visual people, it’s good to have someone look at it without a graphic designer’s eyes. You also get good input from somebody with neutral eyes, I would say.


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The client for this was Kaserne, which is a central urban establishment which involves the arts. For example, it hosts events like free contemporary theater, dance and performance scene, as well as concerts in the area of popular music. Kaserne is a regular client of ours and over the years, we have developed the corporate design and signage, as well as the seasonal promotional material. This includes event posters, calendars, and tickets. For this poster, the owner wanted something to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of the Kaserne. We already had the initial idea of keeping this poster very typographical, so we started working with the ‘k‘ of Kaserne and the number 30, looking as to how the we can make the characters interact. Here are some initial iterations. As you can see, we already had bright and high-contrast colors in mind.

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In terms of sketching regarding our process, it very much depends on the project. For some projects we do sketches on paper, for some others we only work on computer – whatever works! But we usually do a lot of sketches on paper before going to the computer. It is also common for us to share files and to work on top of each others ideas. There are no egos hurt or possessiveness of an idea. We have the mutual understanding and respect for what we both bring to the table because we both want to produce good work. The second row is what we actually presented to the client. He wasn’t too sold on the overlapping text because he wasn’t sure how legible or readible the poster would be from a distance. So we returned to the heavier weight for the information and spent a lot of time arranging the text in order for the characters to interact easily while still communicating the important informa-tion. The final iteration of the poster was a tri-color offset print with silver ink, and we were quite happy with how it turned out, and so was the client.


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SOURCES

GRAIN EDIT: BLANCA GOMEZ & LITTLE FRIENDS

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