Feels like its still unfinished

Graphic Design in China in the 1920s and 1930s

May 10th, 2012 by Mirko in Blog, Graphic design, Inspiration

A collection of chinese posters taken from Shanghai’s golden age. It’s interesting to see how chinese characters give a whole new face to Art Nouveau or Bauhaus styled posters.

All these posters are taken from the book Chinese Graphic Design in the Twentieth Century.

Digital publishing contest – Magnify your world

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• The contest & prizes
• The rules
• The judges
• The Tools
• The contestants

The Magnify Your World Contest

MAGNIFY YOUR WORLD is a contest with six categories for submission and one category specifically designed for the public to vote. Entrants will need to designate their design for one of the six categories below. Each entry is automatically eligible for public voting and to win the Designers Choice Award.
BOOKS: any type of book for the general public (children, photography, design, text/educational, travel, etc.)
BROCHURES & CATALOGUES: created for corporate use including brochures, annual reports, catalogues, media kits
COMIC BOOKS: graphic novels, comic books, web comics
EDITORIAL: magazines, newsletters, newspapers, blogs, online magazines
MUSIC & MOVIE: bands, filmmakers, DJs, theatres, venues, albums, documentaries
SELF-PROMOTION: promotion of services, student portfolios, designers, photographers, writers, PR/ad/interactive/design
firms, law firms, etc.
PEOPLE’S CHOICE: all entries are entered into this category where a winner will be chosen based on public voting. Voting may start as soon as you register, so mobilize your friends and family.

BASIC GUIDELINES & ELIGIBILITY

• All submissions must be created using the Mag+ platform
• IMPORTANT: Eligibility to win requires the entrant to upload a MIB-file of their design
• Each app needs to have a minimum of 5 pages (verticals) with a maximum of 30 pages
• All work has to be original. We cannot accept submissions of copyrighted material, such as a photography book using National Geographic photos or an album app featuring music from Radiohead.
• Submit your designs early to be eligible for the Employee Pick of the Month prize.
• If you submit early, you can continue to refine your design up until the final submission deadline of May 31, 2012.

AWARDS

Our esteemed panel of design leaders will be selecting winners from each of the six categories. Best in Category winners and the Designer’s Choice winner are eligible for Best in Show and the grand prize of $5,000.

Prize Money

• Best in Category: each winning entry will receive $1,000
• The People’s Choice Award winner is voted on by the crowd and will receive $1,000
• Best in Show: the winning entry will receive $5,000

Recognition

• Best in Category winners will become the face of the next Mag+ advertising campaign
• All Winners will be featured on the Mag+ web site through the end of 2012

Monthly Prize

Each month an Employee Pick of the Month will be selected by one of the creative leads at Mag+. The winner will recieve an iPad and be displayed on the contest site homepage.

DEADLINES

May 31, 2012: Deadline for Submission entry (all MIBs must be uploaded.) Voting for People’s Choice ends.
June 11, 2012: Best in Category & Designer’s Choice Winner announced
June 20, 2012: Best in Show Winner announced

READY TO COMPETE? JOIN NOW.

• Join the contest

  $199 Don't care for competitions? Cool! Skip directly to Go! and publish your app for just

• People's choice top 3

  1. 1 Health and Wellness Magazine
  2. 2 The Ultimate to do List
  3. 3 vianamag

  See complete top chart »
• Stay updated with Mag+: Subscribe to Mag+ blog
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How much of your art is Signed or Watermarked?

Sign Your Art so People Can Read It... and Other Tips


Artist Signature Identification from Artbusiness.com >>

Signing your art is an integral part of the creative process. The instant you apply your name to a piece of your art, you declare that art officially finished and ready for public exposure. No matter what your signature looks like, what form it takes or where you put it, no work of your art is complete without one.
Your signature identifies your art for all time as having been created, completed, and approved of by you and you alone (with the exception of collaborative works, of course). When someone wants to know who created your art, your signature tells them. When someone sees your art for the first time and wants to know who the artist is so that they can see more, your signature helps them find you. When you're not around to identify your art (and sooner or later you won't be), your signature identifies it for you.
Far too many artists treat signing their art as little more than an afterthought or inconsequential incident, like signing a check or a credit card receipt. But dismissing the importance of your signature and the moment of signing can lead to all sorts of problems later in a work of art's life. This is especially true the better known or more famous an artist eventually becomes.
The most serious signature problem? No signature. Believe it or not, a significant percentage of artists these days don't even bother to sign their art. Why? Maybe they think their work is so identifiable that everyone automatically knows who did it. Maybe they think everyone knows who they are. Maybe they think everyone will continue to know who they are for all eternity. Well guess what? Maybe they're wrong. So rule number one-- by far the most important rule-- sign your art. Period.
The second most serious signature problem? Names so illegible that the only people who can identify them are those who already know the artist... because they're the only ones who can recognize the signature when they see it (they can't actually read it; they just know what it looks like). Anyone outside the immediate inner circle is pretty much screwed. So rule number two-- sign your name so that people can read it. To repeat: Sign your name so that people can read it. You don't necessarily have to sign legibly on the front of the art, but make sure you clearly sign or otherwise label or identify your art as being by you-- somewhere, anywhere-- as long as it's on or attached to the art.
Artists sign their names illegibly for a variety of reasons, similar to those who don't sign at all. Some think it looks good, some do it to impress people, others think their work will always be identifiable as theirs whether or not anyone can read or recognize their names, still others feel that an unreadable signature has a mystique about it, an only-special-people-can-read-it quality. Maybe, like with artists who don't sign at all, they're so over-infused with hubris, they actually believe that no one will ever forget who they are or ever question who made their art. The truth about that? Nothing is further from the truth.
Here's a signature example for you... care to take a guess?






To begin with, so many artist signatures (of all time periods) are difficult or impossible to read that they've become a significant problem in the marketplace and identifying them, an industry in and of itself-- so much so that there's even a book about them. Author and art researcher John Castagno wrote Artists' Monograms and Indiscernible Signatures, An International Directory, 1800-1991, containing over 5,000 such examples, and it's not even close to being comprehensive. FYI, I actually offer a service where I charge a fee to identify indecipherable signatures (and only charge if I make positive identification-- which sometimes I do, but many times I don't). If artists had any idea what happens to art with signatures that can't be identified by using Castagno's book, searching randomly online, lucking out and finding someone who just happens to recognize the art, or enlisting identification services offered by people like me, a lot fewer signatures would be deliberately incomprehensible.
How does art lose its identity? You as an artist should be aware that people buy art all the time and never tell anyone who the artist is. People buy art all the time and forget who the artists are. People sell, donate, transfer or otherwise give away art all the time, without ever informing the new owners who the artists are (assuming they even remember), for instance, when they move or downsize their residences, redecorate, or when they just plain get tired of looking at it. Art also loses its identity when it changes hands through death, divorce, inheritance, barter, as gifts, and so on.
In fact, here's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Let's say someone buys a piece of art with an illegible signature for a hundred bucks at an artist's first show just because they like it and can afford it (the artist, of course, is a complete unknown). A few years later, that buyer is moving or his tastes have changed or whatever, so he gives the art to an acquaintance because she likes it. It's new owner doesn't ask who it's by, doesn't really care, and he doesn't bother mentioning who did it (assuming he even remembers) because after all, he got it cheap, right? The artist was a nobody, right? Right. Now let's say that it's 20 years later, the artist is famous, and that piece of art is now worth $100,000. You beginning to get the picture? Hey-- it happens-- and it happens a lot more often than you think.
Whenever a work of art ends up in circumstances where nobody knows, remembers, or can identify the artist, and nobody really likes or cares about it all that much (forget about how good it may be from a critical perspective or how famous the artist might be), it ends up at flea markets, garage sales, auctions, the Salvation Army, Joe's Maison de Junk, in the garbage, in the fireplace, garages, attics, gathering mold in basements or outbuildings, getting crammed into storage lockers, protecting barbeque grills from the rain, or becoming toys for little Billy-- you name it.
Do you want to jeopardize your art's future simply because people have difficulty reading your signature? I doubt it. And don't think that just because you're known in certain circles-- or even nationally or internationally for that matter-- that your art is safe forever. Not even art by the most famous artists in the world is identifiable by everyone. Wayward works of art by famous artists are rediscovered all the time, and do you know the main reason why? Because luck has it that someone somewhere with adequate knowledge of what they're looking at can identify either the styles of the art or their signatures and rescue them. And in all the rest of the cases where no guardian angel comes along, that art is off to oblivion. The moral of the story is that you can sign your name as inscrutably as you want and wherever you want as long as you also clearly identify yourself as the artist elsewhere on the art. Or risk the consequences.
Additional pointers for signing your art:
* Art by artists who sign with initials, monograms, and symbols often meets similar fates to illegibly signed art. Here again no matter how infatuated you are with your fabulous handle, clearly sign or otherwise identify yourself elsewhere on your art.
* Sign your art in the same medium in which you create it (except for graphics or limited editions, which are generally signed in pencil). For example, sign a watercolor in watercolor, an acrylic in acrylic, and an oil painting in oil paint. When you sign in a different medium, you increase the chances of someone will eventually question whether or not the art was actually done by you. Hey-- it happens all the time.
* Placing your signature or monogram into the compositions of graphics or limited editions (signing in the plate or composition) in addition to signing them by hand provides extra means of identification and can also "brand" your work or even protect it against people who try to copy it.
* Sign all of your art in pretty much the same way. Signatures should be consistent in size, coloration, location, style (written or printed), and other particulars. That way, people who aren't necessarily familiar with all the styles of art you've produced over your entire career will at least be able to recognize your signature, and therefore identify it as being by you. Also, signing your name in many different ways or locations eventually makes it easier for forgers to sign fakes in various ways and claim they're by you.
* Date your art. You may not think this is important now, but after you've been making art for several decades, you'll understand why. If you don't want to date your art on the front, date it inconspicuously on the back-- or even on the edge. Obviously, dating your art minimizes any guesswork as to when something was completed. The better known you become, the more important dates are for anyone interested in your evolution as an artist... and that includes those who'll be curating your retrospectives.
* If you make works on paper, you may want to use an embossing stamp or even a fingerprint in addition to your signature, thereby making the act of completion more formal and official. Art with your signature and a stamp or a fingerprint is also more difficult to replicate, forge or copy.
* Sign your art as soon as its done, preferably while the paint or clay or whatever medium it's in is still wet or pliable. Collectors prefer signatures that are "embedded" in the art because those types of signatures are the most difficult to forge or duplicate. Furthermore, the closer you sign to the moment of completion, the more you're in the "zone" in which you created the art, and the more unified and harmonious the signature is with essence of the art. The longer you wait to sign, the less the signature tends to match the overall tone or import of the piece.
* Don't sign on top of a varnished painting or completed sculpture because the signature then looks like it was added later, more as an afterthought than a declaration.
* Your signature should not be so bold or overbearing that it actually interferes with or detracts from the composition unless you purposefully intend for that to be a consistent characteristic of your art. It should blend rather than contrast or conflict with its surroundings and look like it "lives" within the art.
* Don't scratch your signature into dried paint, ceramic, or similar media unless this is how you normally sign. Scratched signatures rarely blend with their art and their authenticity can also easily be questioned.
Remember, you're not always going to know where every piece of your art is or where it's journeys will end. And you certainly won't be around for all eternity to vouch for it. Those who buy your art today will not necessarily own it tomorrow (or even remember that you were the artist). Regardless of where your art ends up or who eventually owns it, make sure that it will be treated with care and respect at all times, and never relegated to the "I don't know" pile. By taking the signing your art seriously, you maximize the chances that people will be able to identify and remember you through your life's work for generations to come.

Use Dashes Dashingly
Most fonts are equipped with at least two dashes: an en dash (–, –, which is the width of a lowercase “n”) and an em dash (—, —, which is the width of a lowercase “m”). Don’t confuse these with the hyphen (-), which isn’t a dash at all but a punctuation mark.

THE HYPHEN
Hyphens and dashes are confused to the point that they are now used almost interchangeably by some. Some fonts, such as Adobe Garamond Pro, retain hyphens in their original form; those hyphens look more like the diagonal stroke of a calligrapher’s pen than a straight horizontal line. You’ll also often see hyphens used as a replacement for a minus sign; however, a longer character is available in some fonts for this purpose.
Although the hyphen does look quite a bit like a dash or minus sign, it is a punctuation mark. It should be used primarily to hyphenate words in justified type. On the Web, this isn’t much of a concern because, as mentioned, there is no standard hyphenation control in browsers. The hyphen should also be used in compound modifiers (such as “fine-tuned”), to join digits in phone numbers, and in a few other rare cases (covered in detail on Wikipedia).

THE EN DASH AND THE EM DASH
In The Elements of Typographic Style – which is the unofficial bible of the modern typographer  –  Robert Bringhurst recommends that dashes in text should be the en dash flanked by two spaces. This is much less visually disruptive than using the em dash with no space—which is recommended in editorial style books such as The Chicago Manual of Style — because there is less tension between the dash and the characters on either side of it.
Why go against The Chicago Manual of Style in this case? The reason is that style manuals are concerned mostly with punctuation, not typography. An en dash surrounded by spaces achieves the same effect as an em dash with no spaces, but typographically it is less disruptive. This was a big debate between my editor and me when I was writing my book.
The practice of using two hyphens for a dash is a holdover from the days of typewriters. Besides being visually disruptive to smooth blocks of text, it is now unnecessary with the richer character sets that are available to typographers.
The en dash is also used to indicate ranges of numbers (such as “7–10 days”), although it isn’t flanked by spaces in this case.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/08/15/mind-your-en-and-em-dashes-typographic-etiquette/

Happy St. Patty's Day 2012

Missing everyone while im out here getting ideas for a cover design!