21 FEBRUARY, 2011
20 Years Ago: Bomb the Pentagon
For a 1991 AIGA San Francisco event, Steve Tolleson asked fifty Bay Area graphic designers to create posters addressing an environmental issue of their choice. My topic? The tendency of the US military to avoid environmental scrutiny—and, at times, responsibility—by invoking the so-called state secrets privilege. According to Project Censored, “the Department of Defense is the largest polluter in the world, producing more hazardous waste than the five largest US chemical companies combined. Depleted uranium, petroleum, oil, pesticides, defoliant agents such as Agent Orange, and lead, along with vast amounts of radiation from weaponry produced, tested, and used, are just some of the pollutants with which the US military is contaminating the environment.” The design parameters were tight: one color on a recycled stock at a size of 18 x 24. A number of the posters went on to win awards in national competitions, including my poster and those designed by Doug Akagi and Michael Schwab.
I hand-inked the arrows, target, and Bomb lettering, and built the constructivist-inspired typography with an early version of Adobe Illustrator. Final art was a black and white “stat” from which the printer shot a Kodalith film positive; he then screen printed the design using black enamel ink on corrugated cardboard. For any designer who remembers the prevalence of bright white, cast-coated papers such as Kromecote in the 1980s, printing “high end” work on an unbleached and uncoated substrate was unorthodox.
Twenty years later, given our post-Timothy McVeigh, post-9/11 mind-set, Bomb the Pentagon has become both visually and politically jarring: a year or so ago I watched a young museum curator’s body literally recoil from the poster. 1991 was a moment in American history that now seems strangely distant, when calls to bomb anything were rightly understood as hyperbole. Unlike much graphic design which is subject to visual trends, the “look” of this poster doesn’t appear dated, at least to my eyes; rather, it is the message—and its stridency—that dates the piece. [MF]
25 OCTOBER, 2010
Dennis Crowe at Play
Dennis Crowe’s “Top of the Hour” :20 Spot for MTV (3:00)
The original 1994 spot and the process of making it.
“When I consider the concept of play as it relates to the many projects I have designed throughout my career, one project in particular leaps out: the ‘Top of the Hour’ spot I designed and directed for MTV. Although this project is many years old and long gone from the airwaves, with play as the theme I couldn’t resist dusting this one off from the archives.
“I immediately knew I wanted to use a clock as the central theme and play with the idea of using the numbers on the clock as letterforms to spell out the MTV tag line ‘Plug In.’ I soon realized that by using the M from the MTV logo as the 3 on the clock I could bookend the spot with this visual trick.
“The fact that the spot was going to be broadcast repeatedly every hour on the hour gave me the excuse to overload it with visual activity so that jaded channel surfers would not get bored with multiple viewings. It became an opportunity to play with the collective attention span of a generation.
“Inspired by the dark, dreamlike, imaginative art of Mark Ryden and with trademark ‘blendo’ animation style in mind, I developed the storyboards. With the support of the fantastic production, animation, and technical crew at Colossal, we combined replacement animation, stop motion animation, live action, and archival footage into a frenetically paced explosion of imagery. Colossal Pictures’ Jenny Head, the world-class producer, made sure that I got everything I wanted including a circus performer, a rocket ship, and live animals. It took us 60 days to craft the :20 spot. I never played so hard at work in my life.”
Director: Dennis Crowe; Production Company: Colossal Pictures; Producer: Jenny Head; Technical Director: Peter Williams; Animator: Trey Thomas; Director of Photography: Don Smith; Set Design Elements: John Pappas; Set Production: Jamie Hyneman.
Dennis Crowe is a Bay Area designer and educator. We invited him to share a moment of play with us.
