For the better part of three decades multidisciplinary artist Guy Laramee has worked as a stage writer, director, composer, a fabricator of musical instruments, a singer, sculptor, painter and writer. Among his sculptural works are two incredible series of carved book landscapes and structures entitled Biblios and The Great Wall, where the dense pages of old books are excavated to reveal serene mountains, plateaus, and ancient structures. Of these works he says:
“So I carve landscapes out of books and I paint Romantic landscapes. Mountains of disused knowledge return to what they really are: mountains. They erode a bit more and they become hills. Then they flatten and become fields where apparently nothing is happening. Piles of obsolete encyclopedias return to that which does not need to say anything, that which simply IS. Fogs and clouds erase everything we know, everything we think we are.”
I found this website explaining why comic sans shouldn’t be used. Check it out: http://www.comicsanscriminal.com/
According to this photo, somebody should be warned about this issue 
Last week, we tried to come up with names for a magazine for our imaginary companies. I picked ‘Duru’ for my spa and beauty center, Hamam-i Zade. After deciding the name, i came up with three departments for the magazine. One is called ‘Işılda‘, this section will include self-massage techniques, tips for a healthy life, recipes of light foods so on and so forth. Second section is called ‘Kıpırda’. In this section, i will introduce sports activities such as pilates, yoga, yatching etc. Third section, ‘Etrafında’, will include news from all over the world, for example spa centers from different cities, presentation of cities, interesting stories of tribes or communities from hidden places in the world etc. Other than these 3 sections, also there will be 3 feature topic in each release of the magazine. These features can be interviews with people or biographies, stories of them.
With these decisions, i have searched a couple of photographs for my magazine. Here they are:
These illustrations are made by Tang Yau Hoong. I love them because they are very creative in combining two concepts in a simple way. I also love his serious ‘Drawings About Talking’.
You can check out more works from the author from here: http://tangyauhoong.com/
As you might know, Ankara metropolitan municipality got into a search of new logo for itself for the last couple of months. Ankara were using 3000 years Hittite Sun as its logo before:
Firstly, they come up with a logo includes a mosque which was complety non-sense. While nobody was understanding why there is a mosque in the logo, it was presented to the state council to jugde. The state council must have been critisized it, so that the mayor Melih Gokcek made a few touches to the mosque logo and added the figure of Atakule which is one of the symbolic buildings in Ankara. Although there wasn’t much difference between the two, the council accepted this version. The two logo are like this:
However, this didnt turn out as a success for Melih Gokcek. Because of the protests of other councilors, the logo was denied and again open to question. Then, Melih Gokcek did something that schocks all of us and came up with a ‘cat logo’. Ankara is famous for its cats that have different colored eyes. Here is the logo:
There are also other versions:
The council rejected this logo again. While we were waiting for the municipality to come up with a ‘goat logo’ or ‘rabbit logo’, it stopped. The council decided the old Hittite sun will be the logo again.
You can say ‘so what?’, but the thing that makes me post this is not the cat or the mosque. I’m not saying ‘why did they choose mosque instead of Anitkabir or the cat instead of a goat or why did they choose this font or why the new logos arent as tasty as Hittite sun?’. Of course it is another long topic to discuss. My point is Melih Gokcek is making these logos according to his ideas and tastes although he is not educated in design at all. A decision which interests the whole city is taken without consulting any expert and approved by the council. The council is again competing with Melih Gokcek in knowledge of design(!). Another funny thing is when people criticized the cat emblem of Ankara, Melih Gokcek defends himself by lecturing them saying “this is not an emblem, this is a logo. The council doesn’t know and mixing them up.”. We can quickly see how clueless he is about what is a logo, emblem and logotype. I think what Ankara should do is to work with a group of professionals and choose a symbol which suits Ankara the best.
I am trying to come up with different versions of the business cards for Hamam-i Zade. This was the old one:
I have tried to avoid using only corners, so these are the new ones:
After many trials, these are the finalized versions of letterhead, envelope and business card:
I was thinking about how hard creating something that has never been done before,unique and completely different is. How can one be a creative person? I’m remembering our instructor, Erdağ Aksel, keep saying that we should work our brains’ right sides last year. Becauseit is that part which enables us to think creatively. I found this beautiful illustration of a campagne of Mercedes Benz. They have put it into black and white along with fuchsia and yellow and all kinds of vivid colors. The Left Brain/Right Brain Project illustrates the differences between left brain thinkers and right brain thinkers though powerful artwork, comparing coders to painters and computer geeks to musicians. The last one is my favourite
Last week, we have decided what our final logos will look like in which colors. We also finalized the primary typeface that will be used for long texts. So this is where i am on my process:
In my previous post, i shared a work of Irina Werning about old photographs. Today, i saw second series of before/after photographs of her by chance. You can check out more of the photos from here: http://www.pondly.com/2011/11/back-to-the-future-2-by-irina-werning/
