ÑIKO

Born in Havana, Antonio Pérez Ñiko began his career drawing for an ad agency in Cuba as one of many artists executing images of propaganda for the state. Upon the Revolution, he devoted himself passionately to his own artwork, creating what eventually amounted to hundreds of posters. Many of these were film posters commissioned by the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (founded in 1959); Ñiko also designed countless political and cultural posters, and his works are among the most definitive of the Cuban Revolutionary Style. 

Living in Mexico since 1988, he has continuously designed posters and is currently a professor of design. Among the revolutionary poster artists still with us today, he couldn't be more beloved; Ñiko has won countless awards and has had many exhibitions, programs and books published of his monumental work, including a new exhibition that appears to be currently active at the University Gallery Ramón Alva de la Canal in Xalapa, Veracruz (entitled 1/4 Century in Mexico, the exhibition features Ñiko's work from the past 25 years as well as a special series of 25 new posters based on Pablo Neruda's The Book of Questions). 

Most wonderfully of all, Ñiko prolifically updates his own personal blog, a treasure trove of personal writings on art and design, lectures, interviews, favorite records and books, cat pictures, links to his students' work as well as beautiful catalogs of Niko's work viewable in PDF form. In a recent interview, Niko described his blog "a demonstration of all that sustains me in this world."

When I began designing movie posters in pursuit of a potential career, it was a book of Cuban posters that inspired me more than anything else. Thanks to Ñiko's blog and website, as well as Carol Goodman and Claudio Sotolongo's indespensible book Soy Cuba, I've been able to identify the man behind so many of my favorite designs. I present just a small sampling of them below, all shared respectfully from Ñiko's site (where you can view so many more). I know that I am only one of many, many young artists for whom Ñiko's work-- simply, colorful, humorous and constructed around iconic ideas-- remains a huge inspiration.

  

  

OUR NIXON

I was asked by Cinedigm to design the theatrical poster for OUR NIXON, a fascinating new documentary comprised of 8mm footage filmed by Nixon's aides during his presidency. Here's the poster, the design for which references the "Nixon Now" campaign from Nixon's re-election (we are making buttons too!). See the trailer premiere at TIME and look for Our Nixon's CNN premiere on Aug 1.

HARRYHAUSEN PRINTS

And now for something different.... The Dynamation of Ray Harryhausen! 18x24 3-color screenprint, edition of 30, available tomorrow at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville. If those sell out there, I'll put APs for sale through my site and update this post. This was a fun one... Harryhausen's fantastic stop-motion creatures played a big role in my falling in love with movies as a child, as they did for so many. He passed away just this year, and the Belcourt has curated this series of seven films to honor the man. Pick up the print starting tomorrow at the double-feature of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts!

L'AVVENTURA

Here's the new theatrical poster I designed for Michelangelo Antonioni's L'AVVENTURA for Janus Films. Title treatment by Shelby Rodeffer. Visit Janus Films to learn more and see playdates for the new 35mm print, opening at Film Forum on July 12th and at Nashville's Belcourt Theatre on August 2nd. 

Update: Now available for purchase in the Criterion shop.

DOT GRAPHICS + JANUS FILMS

Up now in the Criterion Current is a new piece I put together on the fantastic poster designs produced by Dot Graphics for Janus Films in the 60's and 70's. Here's their logo from the time, and my personal favorite poster of theirs for Donkey Skin, designed by Lee Reedy. Read and see more at the Current. (Special thanks to Adrian Curry, who first featured this Donkey Skin poster in his Movie Poster of the Week column and got me started on this whole thing...)

FILM POSTERS 2

A selection of prints and theatrical posters I've designed over the past two years will be on display at the Belcourt Theatre gallery this month. Pieces will be for sale as framed single copies. Having a little reception this Sunday from 5-6:30pm. If you're in town, stop by, or check out the show through the rest of the month. 

Children's Bookshelf: The Moon Seems to Change

The Moon Seems to Change, a "Let's Read and Find Out" Book published by the Thomas y. Crowell Company in 1960, is a keystone of my imagination. My parents had it in our house when I was little, and as a teenager I cut pages from it to create collage art for my band's first cassette tape (the collector in me is flabbergasted, but would where would I be without that tape?). Not to be confused with later, paperback editions with new artwork (interestingly, the later edition of this title was illustrated by Ed Emberley), the Let's Read and Find Out books were sturdy hardbacks for kids, featuring educational topics illustrated beautifully by different illustrators working at the time. 

Helen Borten illustrated this title, along with at least three others (What Makes Day and Night, The Sun: Our Nearest Star, and Rain and Hail), using what seems to be a mixture of woodcuts, collage, and maybe some other printing techniques. She wrote and illustrated her own award-winning book Do You See What I See? and three others following that, along with between 20-30 books illustrated for other authors. Helen handled not just the illustration for this title, but the colors, type and layout of the entire book, which all retain an iconic graphic power definitive of their time and even more stunning today. Helen is still out there-- I know this from reading a great interview with her at Fishink-- so if you're reading Helen, thank you for literally a young lifetime of inspiration.

 

HOUSE PRINTS

The cat's out of the bag: For the Belcourt's encore midnight movie showings of HOUSE, a limited run of screenprints based on my original poster design will be available to Belcourt attendees. This is the first time I've been able to print silkscreen posters of the original design (the original posters were digital prints, followed by the theatrical one-sheets, then screenprints that were made in three alternate colors), and it's also likely to be the last time these will be produced. 

The 18x24" prints, made locally at Kangaroo Press, will come in a signed and numbered edition of 75 and be available beginning at 11pm Friday the 21st at the Belcourt.

On a related note, Film on Paper invited me for an extensive interview that you can read here, covering the House poster and all things poster design.

If you haven't seen HOUSE, don't miss your chance to catch it in 35mm with a great crowd and fun contests and drink specials tomorrow and Saturday night!

HAMMER CHILLERS

I was asked by Hammer Films to illustrate a cover for their upcoming audio series Hammer Chillers. Here it is! Learn more about the series here.

ELIJAH

New illustration for the Nashville Symphony, for next weekend's performance of Mendelssohn's ELIJAH. 

Process: RICHARD III

For Criterion's release of Laurence Olivier's RICHARD III, I designed the package around an incredible Janus Films poster originally designed by Lee Reedy. In these DVD menus, as well as throughout the package, I tried to respectfully adapt Reedy's illustrations and supplement some of my own to create a visual theme for the release. (Click to enlarge)

The trickiest part, however, was in carrying through the lettering style used on the original poster. After consulting with some colleagues who knew more than I did about Roman and Gothic calligraphy, I realized that the title treatment was a custom job and I couldn't easily replicate it with a font. So I set about to teach myself the basic ropes of calligraphy and then replicate the lettering style of the title treatment to create headings for the rest of the package. It was painstaking, but hopefully worth it. 

The Avant Garde typeface used in the billing was too good not to carry through, bringing a touch of modernity to a classic, folky, almost medieval design. It's always a pleasure and a humbling challenge to carry through someone else's work and create a package that holds it up with admiration. The new restoration of RICHARD III is out now on Criterion DVD and Blu-ray. 

SCORSESE

I made this set of nine Italian mini-prints for Scorsese: An Art Show Tribute, curated by Spoke Art for Bold Hype Gallery in NYC. I was able to be at the opening last weekend at it was a great time and a big success. The prints are now available for sale online in the Spoke Art shop here. They are available individually for $10 each or as a set of nine prints for only $60.

The prints are 5x7" each and I imagined them almost like a series of book covers: small, iconic and connected through a repeated motif. I was interested in how Scorsese's films are often about men and the transformations that these man undergo by way of exposure to a new world or way of life. I thought that using Italian titles would look neat graphically and would also serve as an homage to Scorsese's Italian heritage. Just something a little different!

Congrats and kudos to all the other artists and to Ken at Spoke Art for making this happen.