catherine griffiths 00 the typographer and designer

Latest projects (+ news)

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>> TOURING Designer’s Speak Series, Three’s Company, AKLD / WGTN / CHCH / DUND / Organised by DINZ, the tour kicked off in Auckland on March 10, 2010, and finished up in Dunedin four weeks later: each city was different for us: and each gave us a good time afterwards. Auckland was more lounge in atmosphere at 42-Below, Wellington relatively formal in the new theatre at the City Gallery, Christchurch’s CoCA gave us very nice accoustics and compliments, and Dunedin was the most responsive audience-wise.

Resn – Steve Le Marquand
Good Time Online Design: Resn expands your immersionariation and realign your pixcillary preconceptions as it dabbles in the digital diatribes
Catherine Griffiths & Bruce Connew
Together, Alone: Catherine Griffiths and Bruce Connew talk about their collaborations
Alt Group – Dean Poole
Do disturb: Creativity is a sport without an umpire. So who determines the rules?

And, the good news – we’re still talking.

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>> LOOK! The other morning, on my road ride, I finally finished photographing the 6.5km stretch of distance markers that I designed way back in 2004. They are placed along Wellington’s waterfront at 500m intervals. All are still beautiful. I cannot believe it has taken this long for me to record them in situ.

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>> NOW Major update of content showcasing my client projects is currently underway ... amazing what I have found in the archives ... watch this space ...

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>> TypeSHED11 voted Best Design Event of the Year by Urbis magazine

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>> Winner, 2009 Book Publishers Association of New Zealand Award for Best Cover – A Short History of Photography, by Harvey Benge, published by Random House NZ as a co-publication with British publisher Dewi Lewis: “The default cover seemed to be one with a strong image and some neutral, but embossed type. We were not looking for this type of cover, but rather ones that grabbed us through the intelligent application of design. Catherine Griffiths’ cover for ‘A Short History of Photography’ is the perfect example of this, and was actually the clearest winner in any category. It is visually striking and conceptually brilliant. Having ‘a history of photography’ without a photograph on the cover is itself breaking every unwritten rule – and yet it was necessary. Harvey Benge’s photos are a collection of pieces that pay homage to the greats of photography. As such, no one image could encapsulate the book. Instead, the cover acts as the index so that, whilst browsing the images, one turns back to the list of names on the cover for clues as to who is being referenced. It is a novel concept – but one that came out of a clear and logical analysis of the problem posed by a unique book. Griffiths even manages her own take on the concept with some typographic homages of her own ... ‘A Short History of Photography’ elicits a broad smile when you realise what is going on.” –Judges’ comment.

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>> Vapour Momenta Books is the publishing arm of photographer and artist Bruce Connew and designer, typographer and artist Catherine Griffiths. The new website displays our artist books, along with other titles of interest to us, and maybe you, as well as the odd snippet of news that involves our work.

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>> BUY ‘For the record’, the special TypeSHED11 programme . . . and more . . .

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>> View Stopover in the 2008 D&AD Awards / nominated for Entire Books

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>> TypeSHED11 – New Zealand’s first-ever and one-time international typography ‘festival’ on Wellington’s waterfront, featuring some of the most illustrious and innovative names in the design world is over. Exceeding expectation, TypeSHED11 will never be forgotten. Thanks to all who supported, participated, attended and worked towards making this event happen. Now, on to other projects ...

>> TypeSHED11 – Following is an observation made by Experimental Jetset in an interview with We Love, on their visit to New Zealand:

“To be a graphic designer in a country that is still so wide-open (we’re talking about NZ here) must be exciting. In the Netherlands, design culture is very dominant. We
like it that way, we’re not complaining, but what we mean
is this: as a design group, we know that our influence on Dutch design culture will be minimal. Even if we, as studio, wouldn’t exist, Dutch design would be going strong be small; it’s almost impossible to shape the monolith that every designer really counts. As a young designer, you have the possibility to really change national design culture, to have a voice. Young designers, such as David Bennewith and guys behind The National Grid, are really shaping the image of NZ design. There are scenes to create, standards to be set. Young NZ designers have a world to win. That’s something really special.”

From an interview with Experimental Jetset, by Joanna Alpe & Livia Lima, We Love,
for www.cheeseontoast.co.nz

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>> Read interview in Magneto, Massey University’s student magazine . . . June 2008, issue #4 – the bloke’s issue

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>> Listen to the sound of the Arctic Circle . . . In April 2008, I was invited to Alaska to give two lectures – one in Anchorage, the other in Fairbanks – at the Alaska Design Forum lecture series. The ADF is a non-profit organisation of architects, artists, and designers formed to broaden the range of discussion of the design of the built environment. There are active chapters in Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau. As an educational group, ADF presents programs which expose the community to leading edge design and art ideas and encourage discussion on the relevance of these ideas to life and design in the Alaskan state. This years theme was “attachments”, and explored 'the way materials and objects are fastened to one another . . . how the parts relate to the whole. The series also examined the state of being attached to a place; the emotional and sentimental ties that contribute to a sense of community or the creation of an ideal. How do things and people become detached from place...what are the connections that lead to attachments?’

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>> On March 5th 2008, we launched the full website of TypeSHED11 with the announcement of the first of our international stars . . . read up on who is behind TypeSHED11, and why . . .

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>> Recently published is TYPO, the beautiful world of fonts, by Fabiola Reyes, MONSA. Stefan Sagmeister, Andrew Byrom, Olga Adelantado, Catherine Griffiths, Borja Garmendia, Silvia B., Why Not Associates, Gordon Young, David Delfín and Pentagram are some of artists in this book . . .

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>> In progress: A collaboration between Typevents LLP in Europe and Catherine Griffiths. We are constructing an international five-day typography symposium for February 2009 – TypeSHED11 – to be held in Wellington, New Zealand, featuring special guests, Liza Enebeis and Donald Beekman of Typeradio. While we continue to conceptualise, design and write for this project, the syposium is taking shape as we talk with typographers, type designers, designers and those in other disciplines both professional and theory-based, with a connection to typography.

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>> An exhibition, artist’s book and short film completed the package for Bruce Connew’s latest photographic project, I Saw You. The surveillance series was exhibited at Mary Newton Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand in August, 2007. Photographs (edition of 10) $750 / Artist's book $60 / Film $75 / from Mary Newton Gallery. You can watch the film on YouTube for now. To see the full suite of 52 photographs, visit Bruce Connew.

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>> Printed by EBS, Verona, Italy, photographer, Bruce Connew’s latest artist book (Victoria University Press with co-publisher, University of Hawaii Press), Stopover, was launched in Vatiyaka, Fiji, in the shade of the mango trees in with the people who feature in the book.

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>> Fukutake House, one of the nominations in typography was awarded a yellow pencil at the 2007 D&AD Global Awards. Seven of us formed the jury – John Morgan, UK, Henrik Kubel, UK, Roger Kennedy, UK, Graham Clifford, USA, and Domenic Lippa, UK – headed by Margaret Calvert, UK. In-book entries included Talking Type poster series for Bruno Maag by The Partners, Handmade Posters – Lego/Wool/Wood/Drawing Pins by Serviceplan München/Hamburg and Grenade/Bullet/Bomb for the United Nations by Saatchi & Saatchi.

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>> Making Waves with 20 Artists, 2007, by Catherine Griffiths – a short film mixing poetry, art and music was my first foray into a different medium. Created as a backdrop to MoRST’s (Ministry of Research, Science and Technology) stakeholders’ function which was held in the foyer of the National Library, Wellington, on February 8, 2007, the film was commissioned as a one-off screening. Projected onto three large surfaces, and a bank of LCD screens, the composition played throughout the evening, filling the space with the typography of Chris Orsman’s poem, Making Waves, for Maurice Wilkins, which moved in and out of works by 20 New Zealand artists, to music composed by Chilean musician, Alfredo Ibarra. The 9- minute work makes connections through poetry, art and music with research, science and technology.

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>> “Our Stories” – a campaign for CCS, to help raise disability awareness among New Zealanders: the work, launched on 12th February, 2007, Christchurch, New Zealand, included a logo, exhibition, website, DVD and associated items.

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>> Print, America’s graphic design magazine, profiled me and my work in their September/October issue.

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>> In October 2006, I attended Fast Type, Slow Type, Birmingham, UK as a speaker. Yet another journey, self-funded, included Bournemouth Arts Institute, London, Paris, and New York. Fast Type, Slow Type, is an international type/design conference held at the Custard Factory in Birmingham, organised by Simone Wolf, Caroline Archer and Alexandre Parre of Typevents. Bournemouth >> Visited and met with the design and typography students at Bournemouth Arts Institute, organised by Sally Hope. London >> Typographic walking tour by John Voller. Paris >> Collected more material for my Club de Conversation project. New York >> Visited Peter Kruty Editions, a contemporary letterpress workshop in Brooklyn, with Paul Shaw who held the masterclass with 19 of us. Continued collecting photographs for Dressing Room.

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>> A photograph taken of the letter N has been included in Lettere Nascoste (Hidden Letters) – published in 2006 by the Typographic Design class at the Riccardo Bauer School in Milan. “Every year since 1997 students and teachers of the evening classes in Typographic Design at the Riccardo Bauer School in Milan have published a booklet in Italian that is set by hand, printed letterpress on fine paper and hand-bound. Our publications are always concerned with the alphabet – type design, lettering, and calligraphy. This year we are preparing something rather special. We are going to use cameras to capture images of letters hidden in ‘things’. Our publication will consist of an alphabet of letters made of photographs of things. A simple example might be a saucepan with a handle, which, when seen from above becomes a Q. Letters may be hidden anywhere. We might see them in clouds, satellite maps, plants, the natural patterns in planks of wood or decorations in wrought iron. Even a hairstyle can show a beautiful S!
Our project is open to all. Images can be made not only by cameras, but can also be reproduced from other photographs or downloaded from internet.” James Clough

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>> Corporate identity projects include, coincidentally, two pairs of corporate logos: REANNZ (Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand) a Crown-owned organisation, and its super-fast network, KAREN (Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network); and a MoRST initiative, The Oxygen Group, which needed also a logo for their inaugural conference, runninghot!

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>> Wonder-land A logo, poster and website www.wonder-land.co.nz formed the package for a touring exhibition that had its debut at the Fotografia Festival Internazionale di Roma in April/May 2006, followed by an appearance in Pingyao, China. The show features nine New Zealand photo artists, curated by Harvey Benge, and is to be shown at the Auckland Festival of the Arts in 2007.

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>> Exhibition catalogue for Luncheon under the ash tree; the Ian & Elespie Prior collection by Luit Bieringa and Damian Skinner, with Aratoi – Wairarapa Museum of Art and History. The catalogue won a highly commended for PrintLink’s skills in printing at the Pride in Print Awards

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>> Fran Wilde Walk – a set of 5.5m high glass signs based on the City signage project, for the walkway to the Westpac Stadium, Wellington. The graphic design won Best of Category for Environmental Graphics at the 2005 Best Awards

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>> Corporate visual identity – Ministry of Research, Science and Technology – design and implementation: stationery, guidelines and interior signage

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>> Heritage Trails signage – a comprehensive signage system of illuminated beacons for Wellington city – work in progress, with the Maritime Trail installed along the city’s waterfront

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>> Interpretive artworks – graving dock and a set of typographic windscreens for Waitangi Park, Wellington – feasibility work in progress

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>> Distance markers – a series of cast-iron numerical markers inserted into the footpath along Wellington’s waterfront to Evans Bay, marking out distance

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>> Extension to the Wellington Writers Walk, of four more text sculptures: writers: Barbara Anderson, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, Eileen Duggan and Fiona Kidman

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>> Muttonbirds – part of a story, a photographic exhibition and artist’s book by Bruce Connew with Dean Tiemi Te Au

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>> City Signage – a series of 14 way-finding information signs, constructed in glass and illuminated, in collaboration with Athfield Architects for Wellington

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>> Ponatahi – a house wrapped in literature – an idea proposed to the owners and the architects of Ponatahi House, a private residence north of Wellington, with Architecture+

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>> Launched in Sep02 and Mar03, two sets of three essays in the Montana Estates Essay Series, edited and published by Four Winds Press

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>> The Wellington Writers Walk unveiled during Writers and Readers week, at the 2002 New Zealand Festival of the Arts: a series of 11 large-scale concrete text sculptures, positioned unexpectedly around the city’s urban waterfront, celebrating writers: James K Baxter, Lauris Edmond, Maurice Gee, Denis Glover, Patricia Grace, Robin Hyde, Pat Lawlor, Bill Manhire, Katherine Mansfield, Bruce Mason and Vincent O’Sullivan

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>> A typo/sound installation – where the observer delivers the sound – constructs five vowels in steel, and lightly stacks them five metres on a first level terrace in Cuba Street / Wellington, New Zealand / more >>

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>> 10 YEARS AGO ... from the archives ... the Year 2000 Calendar I designed for Creative New Zealand, the arts council. I still like the quote by Shihad.

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>> I Must Behave by Bruce Connew / A sideways glance at behaviour / second in a series, published by Vapour Momenta Books, June 2009 / printed in Verona / NZ$85 / view : buy

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>> OLD work, but a favourite of mine – 5.5 – one of the distance markers I designed back in 2004 ...

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>> WATCH Making Waves with 20 Artists, 2007 – a short film mixing art, poetry and music, that I made for MoRST one summer ... more >> / Film copyright © Catherine Griffiths and the artists / Music copyright © Alfredo Ibarra

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>> Listen to the sound of the Arctic Circle ... In April 2008, I was invited to Alaska to give two lectures in Anchorage and Fairbanks at the Alaska Design Forum lecture series. After Fairbanks, I flew up to the Arctic on my own, and without a cellphone, protected only with a can of polar bear spray (??), and a half tank of gas, I drove as far north as I could, stepped out of the truck and filmed ... Move over BodyCartography!

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