New Work: ‘David Hockney - A Bigger Picture’
Harry Pearce and his team have created the identity for David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture currently on show at the Royal Academy of Arts. This is the first major exhibition in the UK to showcase David Hockney’s landscape work. The show takes over the full suite of main galleries and features more than 150 works, mostly created within the last decade, and with the Academy’s galleries in mind.
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New Work: Poster for Tōhoku
Harry Pearce was invited to contribute to a book and app by Art Tails, a group of professional artists and creators related to the community of Tōhoku, the region of Japan hardest hit by the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. As well as contributing several pieces of his work he also created this poster specifically for the project as an acknowledgement of the inspiration of two of his heroes, Hamada and Yanagi. With his contribution he sent the following thoughts:
I am so honoured to have been asked to contribute to your beautiful publication. As well as sending you three of my favourite pieces of work, I really wanted to create something particular for this publication. It’s my way of a little thank you for your collective inspiration.
The Japanese and eastern aesthetic has been a major influence on my career and life. For a very long time the vision and insights of Shoji Hamada and Soetsu Yanagi have been a particular inspiration to me.
They taught me where to look for feeling and truth, in myself and my work. Many of your great artists and designers are so knowing in the truest sense. As an acknowledgement to you all I have taken a beautiful quote from Hamada, “Beauty is not in the head or in the heart, but in the abdomen,” and created this poster in his and your honour.
No matter the hardships your beautiful country is suffering, your spirit and vision will endure.
—Harry Pearce
Project Team: Harry Pearce, partner-in-charge and designer, Sean Chilvers, designer.
New Work: Saks Fifth Avenue Holiday Windows
Terron Schaefer, group senior vice president for sales and marketing at Saks Fifth Avenue, approached Pentagram to design the holiday window displays at the store’s New York flagship. The idea needed to connect snowflakes and bubbles—motifs which had been used previously—and give the store a way to display its merchandise.
Pentagram’s Harry Pearce and Naresh Ramchandani and their teams came up with a concept that divided the Saks store into two worlds, the subterranean world of the bubble makers and the imaginary world of the snow makers who inhabit the roof of the building. Connecting the two is a curious little girl called Holly who whilst shopping in Saks on Christmas Eve with her parents finds a door which allows her into both worlds. First she visits the cave full of fantastic machines operated by ‘beautiful people in beautiful gowns’. She then rides a bubble produced by the machines, which takes her to the roof where she meets the yetis that make the snow.
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New Work: D&AD Annual
Pentagram’s Harry Pearce was asked by Sanky from AllofUs, last year’s D&AD President, to design the 2011 D&AD Annual.
The heart of Pearce’s idea for the Annual stems from wanting to celebrate the wonderful graphic illusion and quality of the original D&AD mark, which was designed in 1962 by Fletcher Forbes Gill, the studio that later became Pentagram.
The D&AD mark is shown at scale on the Annual’s cover to allow, through a brilliantly intriguing photograph by Richard Foster, an exploration of the unreality of the planes, the spaces and perspectives that lie within the mark’s form. For protection during shipping, the book is encased in an outer carton that also features the mark.
Harry Pearce on How to Engage Consumers Through Design
Quick Link: Harry Pearce on How to Engage Consumers Through Design
New Work: Packaging for Sk:n
Harry Pearce and his team have worked with Sk:n, the experts in skin health and beauty, to develop the packaging for their new range. The central approach behind the packaging style is the establishment of the efficacy of this range of beauty products.
Harry Pearce’s Reading List on Designers & Books
Quick Link: Harry Pearce’s Reading List on Designers & Books
Hungry?
Harry Pearce was invited by the lovely people at Innocent to provide a spread of conundrums for their new recipe book, Hungry?
The book is designed to make it easy to get the family to eat healthily and each recipe has steps where children can get involved too. In between the recipes there are lots of distractions and ideas for the family to do while things marinate, bake, rise or brown. This is where Harry’s spread comes in with ten conundrums to be solved in order for the reader to claim the title of King or Queen of the Alphabet.
The recipe book was published last month by Fourth Estate, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers.
Harry’s original collection of ‘Typographic Conundrums’ was published in December 2009.
‘Graphic Intervention’: Three Decades of Posters Against AIDS
This spring marks three decades since the first cases of AIDS appeared and were announced by the CDC in June 1981. Since then, progress has been made in the treatment of the disease, which has infected more than 60 million people around the world. Posters have been a valuable tool in the fight, used to raise awareness, help prevention, and combat prejudice. Graphic Intervention is an exhibition of over 150 posters from throughout the epidemic that opens today at the Art Directors Club in New York. The selection includes a pair designed by Pentagram’s Harry Pearce and Jason Ching for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, used to train Russian police about the prevalence of HIV among injecting drug users in Europe and countries around the world.
The posters featured in Graphic Intervention can be seen in an online gallery here; the show remains on view at the ADC through July 29.