where is my tomato

On Wednesday Nina and I helped hang the upcoming TDC56 exhibition, showcasing the winners of this year’s Type Directors Club competition. There were amazing pieces from all around the world, and many of the winners will be present at tomorrow’s opening reception.

Plus, the show poster, designed by Paul Sahre, is hilarious, so come see that as well.

The exhibition will be up until August 19, so if you’re not a TDC member, you can see it for free then. But who can resist brushing shoulders with the winners?

Very quickly, before I must go catch tonight’s episode of the Late Late Show (and it’s going to be exciting because Craig Ferguson is now on Twitter!) — Paul Sahre is so amazing!

Tonight at the SPD Speakeasy, described as encompassing ‘Alien abduction attempts, the hairless hand, dead pig heads, boring sex and eating the dinosaur’ on the SPD website, Paul Sahre did in fact cover all of those topics. But the best part was giveaways to everyone in the audience!

Paul’s office, located two floors above the Dunkin Donuts on Sixth Avenue and 14th Street, just down the block from our beloved Pratt Manhattan campus, is obviously full of much crap. It seems like a genius idea to me to use the opportunity to clean things out of his office and have the attendees go away with a souvenir. As we entered, we were each handed a number, and each number corresponded to an object that was laid out on the stage and tables. Paul said that every object had a story behind it, as relating to its part in his ‘image making,’ which was the focus of his talk. He said that if any of us wanted to know the story, we should email him and he would be glad to tell it.

He mentioned a few specific items at the end of the talk, including a poster he had designed in grad school which he now loathes (this went to Liz, and she had him sign it! He said, ‘Oh, you’re going to make me do this?’ as he looked upon it with difficulty), a poster designed to go on garbage trucks (afterwards we saw a garbage truck, and indeed there was an empty slot for posters), and a Captain America who was missing his shield. He said that since Captain America is nothing without his shield, and he knows that it is somewhere, that whoever got it should definitely email him about it.

Lo and behold, I got Captain America! How very exciting. Now he will sit at my desk and give me insider tips on how to be great and resourceful at image making like Paul Sahre.

It was such a blast. This man has actually gone camping to try to get abducted by aliens — all in the name of research, of course, for some spreads he was doing for an alien- or space-themed zine — and he shaves his hand whenever he needs to be a hand model (which seems to be often), and he amazes hoity toity art directors in his ability to cut down the budget via in-studio means. Example is this image found on his site, which he also showed at the talk, in which he had an intern throw stars (which is one of the tamest things an intern of his can do, considering adventures to buy dead pig heads and photograph men with arm tattoos!):

I wish I’d gotten pictures of the other items, but here’s a photo SPD used for the site — there’s some pretty amazing stuff:

And here’s the man himself:

The image above on the screen is actually a video of Paul working, which his brother took a while ago. Apparently his younger brother trained camels in a circus after dropping out of high school, and would come through town once in awhile, smelling permanently like circus. But the way that Paul would sit at his desk for hours on end was hilarious to him, so he took a video unbeknownst to Paul, who really does not move that much in it. Oh, the things to aspire to!

P.S. I had a moment of alarm when I walked by earlier in the day and saw that his OOPS sign wasn’t on in the window of his studio. I asked him afterwards, and turns out they were doing a photoshoot, so they had to turn it off. Whew! Walking by and gazing up at that sign has been a strange source of comfort since I watched the AIGA video of his talk last year.

Renowned designer James Victore explained that he titled the AIGA event, held at F.I.T., with a ‘How To’ because that draws people to attend. He probably should realize that people would attend without the ‘How To’ anyway,  since he is, after all, James Victore. A tall, commanding man with a mustache.

As a volunteer, I was given the task of passing out programs standing here at one of the bottom entrances:

Settling into our reserved back row seats, the other volunteers and I were treated, along with 280 other attendees, to the thoughts, profanities, and silly little insights into the man who has created some of the most thought-provoking posters of our time.

James said, ‘Young designers … you really want to get into museums because you can get so much action.’ At which point he showed the slide below, and said that when your work is up at the museum like this, girls will come up to you, giggling, wanting to take photographs.

Yet all the action aside, James explained that his work had been exhibited in museums worldwide for some years, but that recognition always comes last at home. Last fall, his work was accepted by the MOMA, and they gave him a call to inform him of the happy news. Excited, he asked, ‘Will there be a party?’ The guy replied, ‘No.’ ‘Will there be an announcement of some kind?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do I get like a plaque or something?’ ‘No.’ ‘… Do I get a formal letter telling me that my work has been accepted by the MOMA?’ ‘No.’ Finally, he asked, ‘Can I at least get a letter for my mom? She’d be so proud.’ And he showed us this slide below, a photograph of a letter addressed to ‘James Victore’s Mom’ that arrived the next day or so, and is now on his mother’s refrigerator (click to enlarge):

It’s always fun to hear designers mention other designers, and James constantly brought up Paul Sahre, with whom he is great friends. From driving out to Long Island to buy blank surfboards to paint on (James said that he painted on four of them within weeks, and Paul produced one in two years — ‘I’m too impatient,’ he said. ‘Why do you think my work looks the way it does?’) to Paul designing James’s monograph, the two are a duo that makes you go ‘aww.’ Paul was supposed to be in attendance, but had twins over the weekend (James added, ‘His wife helped, too.’), so was occupied.

Some fun things James said that he does to keep himself constantly thinking and enjoying downtime are Coffee Notes and Picture Wars. Coffee Notes is something James and his wife do every morning. The idea is that whoever makes coffee that day writes a note for the other person. He showed us examples of the notes covering one of the walls in his kitchen, and they were many and varied — collages, simple text (‘We think too much about coffee’ or something to that extent), drawings of one another (‘Apparently it’s very easy to draw me — you just draw a mustache’), and so forth. And once in awhile his kids will join in, too.

Picture Wars, he said, has caught on with those around him, and Paul couldn’t wait to have a son to continue the Picture Wars tradition. Picture Wars take place when you’re sitting at a restaurant, waiting for service, and you whip out a pen to draw on napkins your dining partners in compromising positions. One example came from a day when Paul was feeling ruthless and mean, and he drew James’s 12-year-old son, Luca, with his pants halfway down, and somebody exclaiming, ‘Luca wears Hannah Montana underwear!’ James said that this really hurt his son, who never gets hurt, and so in retaliation, James drew a picture of the Dalai Lama (spelled ‘Dali Lama’ in the picture) saying, ‘Paul is being a jerk.’

The event was a special one, because also in attendance were students from New York City’s High School of Art and Design, who were mentored by James through the AIGA/NY Mentoring Program. Their work, part of a project called ‘I Have a Voice,’ was exhibited in the lobby, but I couldn’t get a photo before some of them were cleared away by their owners.

All in all, though the man can swear like a pirate and ooze a good dose of cockiness, I’d recommend seeing James Victore speak. His great work ethic and passion for design and creating meaning are pretty darn inspiring.

AIGA/NY
How to Stay Hard: An Evening with James Victore
Tuesday, May 26 @ 6:30 p.m.
Katie Murphy Auditorium, Building D at F.I.T.
West 27th Street at 7th Avenue

Despite the provocative title of the event, I am very excited to be volunteering with AIGA for it. I first learned of James Victore‘s work in my Communication Design I class last semester with Lara McCormick in the fall. His work is, like the title of the event, very provocative.

As is this website for his workshop that he began last year with Paul Sahre and Jan Wilker. I’ve wandered onto this site before, but was highly confused until Lara said during class that you need to own 3D glasses to be able to read it. D’oh. Now that’s a cruel joke, but if I were them I’d sure be laughing. For more information on Paul Sahre, you can watch the video I posted here of a previous AIGA event. I actually sent an application to Karlssonwilker without realizing one of the principals was of this bunch. Needless to say, I did not get a response.

But interestingly enough, I met a girl named Tatjana at Steve Haslip’s Dirty Weekend workshop — she knew Steve because they had both attended the workshop (which costs about $1,000 I think) last year, and she was back in New York interning for James Victore. She was from Germany and was very nice, so I tried to keep in contact in case she wanted someone to show her around the city, but we’ve lost touch.

Anyhoo, you can learn more about James Victore by watching Hillman Curtis’s short film. Which reminds me, I’m still waiting for AIGA to reschedule the Hillman Curtis Design Remixed event. Get on it, AIGA!

Am watching this right now, and am enjoying myself … though, mind you, it’s 95 minutes long. The Office of Paul Sahre (O.O.P.S.) is located right by Pratt’s Manhattan campus, right above the Dunkin Donuts that we do not frequent. Instead, we go to the one past Seventh Avenue. Still, I’ve possibly walked by him many times! I love it around 38 minutes when he’s talking about his typo of A History of Western Philosophy.

Paul Sahre: A Designer And His Problems from AIGA/NY on Vimeo.