There’s something funny about Design History. And Michael Gross will be visiting my class in the LAT Media Center this Thursday evening at 7:30 to tell us a thing or two about it.

Michael is best known for his art direction – and most notoriously, his “Kill This Dog” cover – for the National Lampoon. Earlier, he was senior designer for the 1968 Mexican Olympics. He’s worked as John Lennon’s personal designer, Muppets consultant, Esquire art director, and producer for films such as Ghostbusters, for which he designed the “no ghosts” logo. He’s also an illustrator, photographer, and museum curator.

If you miss Michael here at Art Center, he’ll be giving a repeat performance at my Loyola Marymount University Design History class on the West Side Friday morning at 11, in room 211 of the Burns building. Both events are, of course, free.

Here’s a preview of a few Lampoon covers Michael will discuss…

Fabio Fontes

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Are you coming to the opening reception of the “3rd Annual Design History and Context Exhibition” this Saturday, January 21st? You’re invited, you know. It’s work by my UCLA Extension students and it’s at the 1010 Westwood Gallery, fourth floor, from 1 to 4:30pm.
The student/designers will be around to discuss their work. And refreshments will be served.
Recommended parking: Westwood Village Garage, 1036 Broxton Avenue, first two hours free.
You’ll find samples of previous student work at my Flickr site.
And here are some samples of what you’ll be seeing in person…

Naomi Hotta

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Naomi Hotta

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Marat Shayakmetov

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Teeranit Prapaso

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Teeranit Prapaso

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Timporn Kitwetcharoen

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Jennifer Lee

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If that’s the case, then you’re in luck! One of the authors of  the new, 400-plus page Saul Bass book will be discussing it at the Hammer Museum at 7pm. Here’s the write-up from my most recent imPrint column.

Perhaps I’ll see you there… time permitting.

I’m happy to say I’ve gotten heaps of praise from my review of Pivot. Mostly, designers thanked me for expressing in my introduction what they’ve been thinking and discussing among themselves for years. The only negative feedback was from one of those, y’know, New Yorkers.

Here’s the link on imPrint and Salon; I’d love to hear what you think.

And here’s the link to one of the better presentations currently being posted, by Jonathan Hoefler. His opening comment – about having drawn an “e” – made me el-oh-el. It also made me suspect he might agree with my assessment as well.

I hope Sean’s “100 Years of AIGA” affinity session was recorded; it was a goodie. In any event, we can look forward to “100 Years: the Book”… in a few years.

April Greiman has journeyed from the Kansas City Art Institute to the Basel School of Design – where she studied under Arman Hofmann and Wolfgang Weingart – and then to L.A., where she established her design reputation, and to CalArts, where she headed the Visual Communications department. And this is all before the 1984 introduction of Mac computers.

To find out what’s happened since then – and what will happen – in digital art and design, come to my Design History 2 class in the LAT Media Center this Thursday at 7 p.m. and hear for yourself, from April herself!

April’s talk is titled “think about what you think about (a sampling of thinking-)”… at least I think it is.

Comic books as graphic design? Of course they are! Come to my Loyola Marymount University class next Friday morning at 11 for a special presentation and see for yourself.

Award winning comic book-style illustrator Arlen Schumer will present an overview and retrospective of his works. Throughout his extensive, prolific career Arlen has been bridging the gap between two verbal/visual artistic disciplines: comic book art and graphic design. Comic Book Artist magazine named Arlen “one of the more articulate and enthusiastic advocates of comic book art in America.” Based in New York, he lectures at universities and cultural institutions across the country.

Arlen’s also one of the foremost historians of comic book art, from his landmark special issue of Print magazine devoted to comics in 1988, to his forthcoming presentation at the New York Comic Con, “The Auteur Theory of Comics.” His coffee table art book, “The Silver Age of Comic Book Art,” won the Independent Publishers Award for Best Popular Culture Book of the year. His other books include “Visions of the Twilight Zone” and “The Neal Adams Sketchbook.”

Come hear Arlen in person. And as always, my guest speaker classes are free!

Related post: “R” is for “__RR_R”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think

This visionary essay by Vannevar Bush, one of the founders of the Manhattan Project, was a wellspring for decades of computer development.

The LIFE magazine version of Bush’s essay includes this leading illustration, which makes it clear that Bush’s original vision for computation included a head-mounted camera.  There’s even a reticule built-in to the user’s glasses (see right lens), which imposes a two-D registration on reality.

Bush’s essay makes reference to schemes we later learned to call hypertext, personal computers, Internet, WorldWideWeb, and speech recognition, but the idea that that Bush also wanted a head-mounted gizmo for computing is little-recognized.

This ancient MacroMind Director animation from 1995 simulates a Bush “Memex,” a conceptual ancestor of the desktop workstation which was, in real life, never built. The user would have had a camera on his head and a camera wire up his sleeve, so that he could input images onto the microfilm system as projections rolled by in front of his eyes.

http://youtu.be/c539cK58ees