[via the Society for Typographic Arts]

Jay Ryan is a Chicago-area concert poster maker, who screenprints all his hand-drawn work at the Bird Machine, a print shop he started in 1999. Jay will discuss his computer-free design work, his hands-on printing process and some of his favorite prints made during the last 13 years.

As this discussion takes place on the first of April, Jay may simply show slides of rabbits and/or fish which he has seen in various public parks.

6:30 - Dinner/Buffet/Cash Bar

7:15 - Presentation

The Parthenon Restaurant
314 South Halstead Street
Chicago, IL 60661

$25/members
$35/nonmembers
$10/students

[via Post Family]

Make sure to hit the opening reception of The Coop’s Artist of the Month, featuring the photography of Stephanie Bassos.

In September of 2007, Chicago-based graphic designer Scott Thomas (a.k.a. SimpleScott) got an email from Michael Slaby, new media director for the Obama campaign. Within 48 hours, he quit his job and signed up for a grueling 13 months as national design director for the Obama campaign, designing materials on the fly in what would come together as possibly the best branded political campaign in history. As the Obama presidential campaign got really rolling in 2008, design observers from across the country were in awe of the uniform presentation of all the campaign visuals. It was no small feat to execute a true 50-state campaign where official visual assets were made available to the organizers and participants at every rally, from signs at a neighborhood cakewalk fundraiser in Crawfordsville, Indiana, to banners at the nomination in Denver. Thomas and his cohorts realized quickly that they couldn’t respond to every email coming in that asked for the “O” logo or a “Change” banner, that they weren’t going to hire someone just to distribute art, and so they placed all the design assets online where anyone could download them. It seems obvious, but for a design or branding campaign, especially from folks who come from a corporate ad design environment, this open source approach represented a big shift away from traditional thinking about visual brand management. But the campaign design directors didn’t just have to manage the replication of official design pieces, they also had to work around, with and through the enormous surge of imagery produced on the laptops, easels, and silkscreens of hundreds of artists who were inspired by candidate Obama. Thomas, who along with Chicago artist Ray Noland (a.k.a. CRO), is curating the upcoming Unofficially Official gallery show of Obama art that explores this intersection of carefully branded campaign design and DIY artistic support, talks here about branding a political campaign and the upcoming art show.

EL*STOP: What was it like managing the visual branding of this campaign in an environment where street artists and others had as much influence as they did?

SimpleScott: Yeah at first we had to come to grips with that because from an ad agency perspective, which I came from, we were used to having a lot of control over the visuals that came from something. But because we had so much grassroots support, we actually kind of created this brand extension called the supporters group and one of the things we wanted to do was involve people in the process as much as possible, and that involved us creating a downloads page that made available all of the assets from the campaign in order to print them out and put them on a t-shirt or put them on signs and push the idea that everyone can be involved in this election. And it really took off. In terms of the art movement that sprung up around the campaign, there was a lot of support that we actually created our own artist for Obama gallery that had a lot of really talented people.

LS: Like Shepard Fairey?

SS: Shepard Fairey originally designed the “Progress” poster as a limited edition silkscreen basically saying ‘Hey world, I support Obama.’ The day I found out about that I was wearing a Shepard Fairey shirt, so I was obviously a long-time fan and had read his manifestos and understood his view on design. So being kind of a fan, we reached out to him and said, ‘Hey would you be interested in doing some stuff for the campaign?’ and he responded with a very enthusiastic yes. So we went through and found some pictures we owned the rights to, which of course has been a problem with his Hope and Progress poster because that was an AP image, so we gave him certain images to use and he picked from those and created a couple illustrations for us, one was a change poster that was the first piece in our artists for Obama gallery and then he later created another one for our vote for change campaign, one that I call serious barrack and one that I call very smiley barrack.

LS: Was the Manifest Hope gallery part of the campaign?

SS: A guy by the name of Yosi Sergant was responsible for Manifest Hope, and he actually started a 527 group so that he could raise money to make posters and things, and he was the lead organizer on that campaign, which for him led to landing a fairly prominent position inside the White House; he is one of the public liaisons of the White House.

LS: Coming from an agency background, was the design process different on a political campaign as opposed to a corporate branding and advertising campaign?

SS: Our typical process would have involved a lot of mood boarding, and thinking and exploration before we start a campaign. Essentially ad agencies have to pitch ideas to corporations and the corporation says thumbs up thumbs down on ideas and typically it goes through a large committee and design by committee typically means that it gets watered down and the end product is kind of lame. One of the things we realized is that we didn’t have the ability to do all of that, so we lost the mood boarding, we lost that entire process and basically we started designing on the fly, designing organically, meaning we had to design an print graphic or an email graphic that day, there was no time for working out the brand and sort of doing brand standards and really thinking through how we were going to roll out this “campaign,” that’s not how we worked… The best quote I heard from the start of the campaign was Michael Slaby in my initial interview with the campaign was, “There isn’t much of a chance for protection in this, we’re working fast, looking down a barrel and building this airplane while we’re in flight. So there’s going to be a time when a wing is broken and you’re just going to have to get out there and patch it up with duct tape, and it might not be pretty, but it will keep us in the air.” And that was a great analogy, we built it in flight and it worked out really well. And by the time we got the to the general election we had pretty clear brand standards. We had worked out typography and color and balance and were pulling images from his historical past and were able to push those down the ladder to our other designers.

LS: What point did you realize you wouldn’t be able to control the imagery associated with the Obama the candidate?

SS: It was pretty early on when we saw this critical mass of artists and designers in the world leaning towards Barrack and, interviewing a lot of these artists [for the Unofficially Official show], they all kept bringing up the fact that this was the first time they wanted to be involved in a campaign. And typically, I think, many artists don’t believe in or agree with either of the candidates and so they go the anti side.

LS: Yeah, I don’t remember seeing a really positive political piece from Shep before…

SS: Yeah it was typically like the “More military, less skools,” poster and that was his mentality and he was very much anti-establishment and then, before you knew it, he was designing the establishment. But I think it was Barack’s message hope, and we were all able to latch onto this positive message that we hadn’t heard in a while that inspired a lot of people to get out there and support barrack. And the thing was that it inspired us too, the more people you have in on the design the broader the reach of the campaign. So we kind of viewed it as making the pool a lot larger and creating in some ways this larger net in which people could rally behind Barack.

One of the interesting things we found in trying to create such a consistent brand in politics is that when all of the sudden state [Democratic parties] or these direct mail companies try to adapt the brand, it doesn’t look like the campaign. Even if the campaign is funding it, people almost discount it if it doesn’t look a certain way. And that happened actually quite a bit where, if something designed something in a field office, people would wonder if it was real or not. I think this is going to effect future elections, it’s this downward spiral almost, once you start making something incredibly consistent, you have to make sure that all the pieces are also consistent.

LS: I’m fascinated with the choice of the Gotham typeface for the campaign assets. Did you choose that typeface? And if so, did you know at the time that it was originally designed for GQ magazine? Was it also a conscious decision to go with an American-designed typeface over a Swiss, French or German one?

SS: Yes. We discussed our type choices quite thoroughly. At the time that we started, the campaign was using Gill Sans, which, though a nice face, didn’t seem fitting. The final straw when we decided to switch everything was while designing a feature graphic that said “Turning the Page in Iraq” the ‘r’ and the ‘q’ in Gill Sans, and it had quill-like terminals that made it feel too typographic… almost like a wedding invitation or something. Not very fitting for the word Iraq. The other major deciding factor was that Gotham was a traditionally American face. It was inspired by the Port Authority Terminal in New York City. It was rooted, firm, stable, had many weights, it was very easy to typeset, all these made our decision quite easy. That night I typeset the words “CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN” which now can only be seen in Gotham it seems. Obviously a Swiss face like Helvetica, which is used by many government organizations would be communicated as the establishment, I always said it would have made Senator Obama appear generic and authoritative.

LS: How did the Unofficially Official show come about?

SS: I have a gallery, in Chicago, called the Family Room, which is part of a design collective I’m a part of called the Post Family, we’re a group of seven designers who support each others’ design habits, which is how we refer to ourselves. We hold each others’ hand through the fact that we want to be doing more letterpress stuff, we want to be doing more silkscreen stuff, we want to get back to our hands, we want to get outside the computer and outside of the box a little bit. And we do a pretty good job of supporting one another and a good job of making sure we have the resources that we need, and so we began a gallery about five months ago. We want to show local artists and help build the community. And we wanted to do an Obama art show, but I started thinking about and realized ‘I don’t even have enough room to show all the stuff that I’ve collected.’ So I started talking to the city of Chicago to see if they’d be interested and they were talking to Ray Noland and it was like, ‘let’s just all work together on this,’ and so Unofficially Official will showcase a lot of the work that produced within the campaign as well as showcasing the groundswell of work that sprang up outside the campaign as well, and I think it’s the first time that has really co-existed. Manifest Hope was all about the grassroots and this is sort of a culmination of the two.

Officially Unofficial - Inspired Art for Obama Exhibition from rebexa on Vimeo.

OFFICIALLY UNOFFICIAL - INSPIRED ART FOR OBAMA

An exhibition of prints, posters, photographs, and videos that emerged in 2008 as icons of the art movement in support of Barack Obama for President.

Curated by Chicago designer Scott Thomas, former Design Director of the Obama Campaign; Chicago artist Ray Noland; and Nathan Mason, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.

Featuring more than 100 works from independent artists and designers and the Obama ‘08 campaign including Ray Noland’s “GoTellMama!” poster series, Shepard Fairey’s now iconic “Hope” poster, and Sol Sender’s Obama ‘08 logo and branding.

This exhibition is made possible with support from Ken Harman/Obama Art Report and Hal Elliott Wert/Kansas City Art Institute.

Tuesday, March 31
VIP & Press Preview, 6PM – 9PM

Performing Live: The GENT$, Rachel Katzman, Shala, with DJs:Million$Mano, DIZ

Exhibition runs April 1 - May 31, Monday - Saturday, 10AM to 6PM and Sunday, 10AM to 5PM

Officially Unofficial Artists:
Aaron Allen, Aaron Amaro, Aaron Foster, Aaron Meshon, Above, Alex Fine, Alex Fuller, Alex Pardee, Alex Ross, Antar Dayal, BASK, Benjamin Kuhn, Brian Flynn, Burlesque of North America, Caleb Kozlowski, Chad Mize & Phillip Clark, Cody Hudson, Coufal Family, David Choe, Dawoud Bey, Delicious Design League, Eddie, EMEK, Felix Jackson, Gui Borchert, Hand-Cranked, Ian Malard, James O’Brien, James Widener/Snuffhouse, Jonathan Hoefler, Jorge Rodriguez Gerada, Julian Norman, Lance Wyman, Lowell Thompson, Mac, Manick Sorcar, Mario Terero, Max Estes, Mear One, Micheal Genovese, Mickalene Thomas, Mike Jacobs, Morning Breath, Munk One, Patrick Moberg, Rafael Lopez, Ray Noland/CRO, Rebecca Berdel, Rene Garcia, Robbie Conal, Robert Indiana, Ron English, Sam Brown, Sam Flores, Sarah Hoskins, Scot Lefavor, Scott Hansen/ISO50, Shana Berry, Shannon Moore, Shepard Fairey/OBEY, Sol Sender, Sonya Fridman, The Date Farmers, Tom Slaughter, Tony Puryear, Tristan Eaton, Tyler Gibney/HVW8, Wes Winship, Yee-Haw Industries, Zoltron

Official Site: http://www.officially-unofficial.com

“FISH-WORK,” photographs by Corey Arnold

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“thanks man, see you around man, fuck yeah, you guys are wild, thanks man, i dig it, see you,” works on paper by Cody Hudson

Opening reception, 6pm, Friday March 27, Andrew Rafacz Gallery, 835 W. Washington Blvd.

Portlander, fisherman and one of PDN’s 30 new photographers to watch Corey Arnold shows “FISH WORK” project in Chicago this Friday. From PDN: Ask Corey Arnold to pick the one place in the world he feels most
comfortable and he’s likely to respond, “The Bering Sea.” Arnold,
who spent six years on those icy, treacherous waters working on a
commercial crab boat, says fishing and photography have been
intertwined since he was five. His father owned a boat, Arnold
explains, “and we’d go on it all the time. He was really into
photography and was always taking pictures. When I was 12 he got me
a Pentax K1000.” When he enrolled at the Academy of Art in San
Francisco after two years at Northern Arizona University, he began
commercial fishing in the summers to help pay the bills. It quickly
became much more than just a summer job.

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I think this poster, as well as the title of Cody Arnold’s “thanks man, see you around man, fuck yeah, you guys are wild, thanks man, i dig it, see you,” kind of says it all.

Photographer Ryan Roberts started Mostly Gallery (1619 W. Julian, #1, Wicker Park/Bucktown) as space to show and sell his own work, but this Saturday Mostly will host the opening of a group show by three of Chicago’s most beautiful losers. That’s no knock on artists Pooper (Elisa Harkins), Nerfect (Mr. Walters), or Pants Laroo, the three artists whose work comprises the Poop Yer Nerfect Pants show, which opens Saturday, March 28 at Mostly, with a reception at 7-11pm (21+) and runs through April 25. These playful, DIY-inspired works show three great Chicago artists having the time of their lives creating striking visuals that are alive with the energy and verve of the populist (so-called) low brow art movement.

Poop Yer Nerfect Pants
When: Reception Sat 3/28, 7-11 PM ( 21+). 3/28-4/25.
Phone: 773-697-3893
Work by Pooper (Elisa Harkins), Nerfect (Mr. Walters), and Pants Laroo.
Mostly Gallery
Wicker Park/Bucktown 1619 W. Julian, #1
773-697-3893

Ah, the Chiditarod. Giving grown men and women a charitable reason to dress up, tie themselves to a shopping and run through the streets of Chicago for four years running. Despite rain, this year’s record participation turned out more than 100 teams of five urban mushers each, and you can see them in all their costumed glory in this Flickr set by leetlegreenmen:

More than 70 artists, mostly local, have recreated Chicago city blocks out of cardboard and paper, and the astounding lilliputian productions that comprise the exhibition The Exquisite City (including my favorites: a series of houses by Jay Ryan, and a scale model of The Hideout by show curator Kathleen Judge) are on view for free  at the Chicago Tourism Center, 72 E. Randolph, Monday through Saturday from 10am-6pm, and Sundays from 10am to 5pm, through March 15.

The show, which was originally produced by the Viaduct Theater last year, but the last two weeks of its run at the Chicago Tourism Center offer viewers the chance to pick up the last of the remaining unsold pieces ($50-$3,000) as well as an artist-led gallery walk at 1pm on Saturday, March 7, which will be preceded, from 11am to 12:30pm by a sound installation piece by Sean Culver, featuring field recordings, music and other city audio elements.