Note: I am currently hustling to wrap up work on a book about the new minimalist, brutalist and modernist typographies. I have a few entries on designers left to write and since I find blogging less initimdating than Microsoft Word I will be writing these last entries on jnamdevhardisty.com. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Thanks, Namdev
All images courtesy SEA Design
SEA 10 years book
The emergence of a new design Modernism certainly has the work of London-based SEA Design as an impetus. For over a decade the partnership of Bryan Edmondson and John Simpson has been making the hybrid of International Style design with high-end materials that is now de rigeur with a new generation of designers. SEA take the crisp typography of late 60’s Swiss design and build upon it with print effects and stunning photography, in effect producing a contemporary take on the International Style.
Richard Learoyd “Twenty Two Photgraphs 2005 07”
When approaching much of their work the first thing to grab you is some technique like the reflective metallic papers used in their catalogs and posters for The Architectural Foundation or the silver emboss on the cover of artist Richard Learoyd’s book “Twenty Two Photographs 2005 07”. Both of these projects utilize an almost “standard” Swiss typography but their physical materiality plants them firmly in the present and emphasizes them as objects. The Architecture Foundation pieces gain an additional dimension as each poster plays with the reflective surface of the paper. A simple gradient from orange to a fully revealed silver is enough in Encounters, while the background of the Presences poster (not shown) is given over to visual art from the exhibition of the same name. The catalog for Presences (not shown) asserts it object-ness in a different way. Instead of a book the catalog is conceived of as a box containing multiple inserts. Where the posters are displays of technology, the catalog is one spot-color throughout and the cover of each insert is an enlarged half-tone reinforcing the archival nature of the artworks.
The Architecture Foundation exhibition catalogs
In a self-promotion piece they declare that “SEA is all about design. Pure and Simple.” And for SEA, design is about objects. Things to be handled and handed about. They create pieces that invite touch and reflection and much of their work highlights the edges of a surface. The studio has worked with specialty papers manufacturer GF Smith since 1999 and this relationship has allowed SEA to explore the physical element of design to its fullest. The “Colorplan” book showcasing a collection of colored stock was inspired by the paper-stacks in one of the company’s warehouses and the resulting book resembles those stacks. But the typography also plays a role in the physical dimension of the work—running through-out the pages is large Helvetica Neue type that always bleeds off the sides. Ignoring the obvious embossing and other print effects that make the type physical, there is the fact that the letters have literally been chopped off. You can actually run your fingers along the exposed edge of the letter “e”.
GF Smith Colorplan book
GF Smith Colorplan book
While Helvetica Neue and Akzidenz Grotesk play a big part in their work, there are those instances that call for a softer approach. The identity for British cafe s&m is an entirely typographic solution based on onomatopeia and lists. s&m stands for “sausage and mash” and the servers’ t-shirts display a list of classic English food combinations set in stacks of Clarendon type. Their mugs meanwhile are adorned with the sounds of eating—dunk, slurp, sip, gulp. Coupled with the restaurants’ retro interiors, the effect is a demented take on all things classically British.
s&m servers tee
SEA have been on the path of the clean, the iconic and the modern for more than 10 years now and while some projects look as fresh now as when they were orginally published (the 1999 Rankin book for GF Smith, for example), the s&m and Boutique London identities show that their typographically bold solutions and passion for photography can be utilized in a multitude of ways. In SEA’s work, its the approach, not the typeface or paper that makes a design memorable.
*http://www.paperandprint.com/archive/print-paper/2002/06/3907.html
