Museum of Typography (Crete)

Chania, Crete. The Greek word for "typography" means both typography and printing. The Museum of Typography provides a history of both. And more than that, a place to reflect on the history of communication arts across all cultures. Valuable background for young designers.

You can feel the enthusiasm here. I arrived on the first day of the AEPM conference (Association of European Printing Museums), hosted by the museum. I was kindly shown around and invited to join the opening event of the conference. In true Greek tradition, the museum has written original songs, including a poetic story of the creation of the museum, performed by a choir.

The collection covers virtually every printing/typography technology and process. Presses: Gutenburg, platen, iron, Heidelbergs, Frankenthal, cylinder, Kempkeworke. Typography: hand set, Linotype, Intertype, Monotype, Graphotype, Telex, Chelgraph, Viewsonic. Serigraphy, xerography, offset, engraving, lithography, foil, die, emboss, stamp, watermarking, book binding. And more. A historical feast for designers and shop craftsmen. 

Here the floor is delineated with a lip, and seating is shaped along the edge.

Happily, some of the equipment is alive and in use, in various ways. Tours are interactive. Open trays of ink and other supplies are left in-process on the floor, and unattended. The museum tickets are printed on an old Heidelberg. 

The overall exhibition design is boxy and heavily outlined, which gets overly busy when there are many elements. It is probably (well) inspired by the exacting registration of printing, and the orderly aspect of typography cabinets. 

3 tier displays spiral around the columns (with potentially thigh-bruising corners).

Dark stained particle board, stained canvas, and sepiad collage help convey the patience of craft and grimy joy of a printshop.

Alongside quirky old specialty machinery are reminders of the earliest computer technologies, and more recently lost arts such as four color processing, and watermark paper forms. Designers my age will find the offset paste-up display amusing.

"History of Writing" by artist Antonis Papantonopoulos, is an ambitious interpretation of visual language and mediums, across time and cultures. From cave painting and the earliest languages to the most current technologies, each display has the same configuration and components.

Sign Language 

Photo Typesetting

The last room presents a collection of beautiful local prints dating back to the 17th century. The newspaper display structure is an elaborate tree form. A pair of nearby displays have angled vertical panels to help reveal a lower vitrine.

The museum wrote this poem about typography, with a key below.

A few typography posters from museum competitions.

Museum of Typography postcards are had to resist.

The Muse of Sunscreen (Crete)

Chania, Crete. An example of the cultural influence on advertising. Veiled goddesses, protected from the sun.

Dinner in the Sky (Athens)

Athens, Greece. Gazi Technopolis Manos Hatzidakis is an industrial museum and cultural center located in the old gas works. The vast and desolate architectural landscape is appealing, made even more intriguing by the lack of any entry sign, museum reception, or wayfinding. From the direction I entered, only 2-3 stray banners could be seen across the whole cluster of buildings.

There is interpretation inside the beautiful hall of furnaces, and a few other exhibition areas.

Most exciting to me was to come across the "Dinner in the Sky" table which parks on the museum grounds. Could be another kind of exhibition?

Graphic Design (Athens)

Athens, Greece. (Mostly) poster examples

"apropos documenta" gives this typography an additive treatment on their website.

I love this footprint message, on the sidewalk

This organization had a whole poster series.

The music poster tradition is alive and well in Greece.

Street Art (Athens)

Athens, Greece. The birthplace of democracy has a lively history of political protest. With the economic crisis, times are very hard in this country. Athens is a messy, layered melange of random tagging, occasional murals, and posted political posters. (AntifaLab, tagged below, is an antifascist art group)

Street art is transitive. I was hoping to see some mural art by Fikos, but in the neighborhoods I walked through, (Exarchia +), there was only an occasional mural in the mix.

It was almost May Day in Athens. Political posters were everywhere, with predictable protest design.

The overlap between event and protest poster design can be confusing to a foreigner who doesn't speak the language and isn't sure if they're being invited to a concert or a protest event.

The repeated patterns and collage of street posters, however unconscious, can be artful in itself.

Food Drink and Inspiration (Tokyo)

Tokyo, Japan. The creative interior design of bars, cafes and restaurants is always fertile ground for creative ideas... They are often fearless and able to pull off spontaneous miracles without spending much money.

Cheesy Fashion (Tokyo)

Tokyo, Japan. The latest la Foret advertising campaign

Yayoi Kusama (Tokyo)

Tokyo, Japan. "Yayoi Kusama. My Eternal Soul" retrospective at the National Art Center. 

This was an exciting exhibition to see in the artist's country of Japan. Wrapping some of the trees around the outside of the building was a nice touch.

Design Hub (Tokyo)

Tokyo, Japan. Design Hub is the main offices for a few design organizations (JDP, JAGPA, D Lounge). The current exhibition in the shared central space, "Tokyo Design Ten", explores Tokyo city design from various perspectives. The postcard for the show is black & white. Visitors print the color themselves using color stamps. The image was made using letterpress. The meaning of it wasn't clear to me, and I couldn't stop thinking of it shrimp tempura and a chili pepper.

At the end of the long entry hall, the exhibit is made visible, around the corner, using a long angled bank of mirrors.

Theme signs, hanging over city maps, are Japanese one side, English the other

Large scale posters on display in the offices. The burnt toast is particularly good, I think.

Graphic Design (Japan)

Some (mostly) poster examples:

Maps

South Korea, Japan. Various wayfinding maps, some of them in keeping with old "perspectives"

21 21 Design Sight (Tokyo)

Tokyo, Japan. This museum is dedicated to researching the potential of design as an element that enriches daily life. The goal is to give visitors design insights and perspectives on the everyday world, it's objects and our activities. When we arrived, the gardeners were micro-weeding the lawn outside.

The current exhibition, "Athlete", focuses on the Athlete's ability to master physical micro actions that are usually unconscious, like taking a step or grasping a cup, etc. These skills, when developed, are useful in everyday life as well as the world of sports. Perhaps this is intended to relate to the Olympics scheduled to be held in Tokyo.

The exhibition begins with some human motion data visualizations, including "Hurdler", a beautiful immersive installation. The main exhibition hall, with about 10 interactives, isolates specific skills such as timing, focus, balance, gaging distance & pressure. The stations are designed with one side open and the other partially blocked with angled strips of scrim, for semi privacy.

The design of these single-user interactives is extremely simple, with minimal instruction provided on pedestal signs. There is no open-ended exploration in these interactives. Each has a single, specific target task with clear feedback, providing a learning curve for the visitor. The appearance is boring, but visitors are engaged, focused and motivated to improve their personal best skill at each one.

A few examples: Pressure, (left) and center of balance in different sports (right)

Balance (left), and timing (right).

Distance (left), Pressure (right)

The exhibition lightly explores other themes including the symbolism of medals, the role of an athlete as an idol, the complexity of planning routes for climbing, the role of making sounds in training. A display of highly designed athletic equipment is jumbled and hard to see clearly. This is a self survey station on the way out.

A ping pong area at the end of the exhibition, visible as you enter from above, is free for visitors to use. They museum is hosting an official tournament on site.

Arrows signs and pedestal stand for hand outs.

Good Museum (Tokyo)

Tokyo, Japan. The Tokyo General Manners Project was established in September, 2016, to educate and promote the practice of good manners in Tokyo (and hopefully the whole world). TGMP aims to exemplify good manners themselves, and to inspire every citizen and visitor to do the same. The Tokyo Good museum is a "virtual museum" based on "manner curation", presenting "works" of good behavior and ideas to solve manner issues. They generate and collect this "content" from both citizens and tourists, and present it "through a frame called museum".

This raises the question of how we define "museum" and whether some kind of physical component is essential to that definition. The Good Museum has a website, and lives on social media. I found this physical print piece inserted into the current TimeOut Tokyo.

"Your guidebook to a well mannered city" is a two directional (upside down) booklet featuring two Tokyo neighborhoods, in English only. 

Here, for example, drinking etiquette is incorporated into other tourist material, including quirky items such as a personal, poetic sidebar about the metro.

Center spread with more instructions on manners worked in.

Sengu Museum (Ise)

Ise, Japan. This museum is located on the grounds of one of the important Shinto Shrines of Ise, and serves as an education/cultural center about the Shikinen Sengu ceremonies. Shinto shrines are rebuilt every 20 years, a very involved and ritualized process which takes about 8 years. The Sengu museum is situated on a stunning lake where dance and music are performed on an outdoor stage.

The whole museum is beautifully designed, with a precision that reflects the Shinto tradition itself. My favorite part was a small introductory exhibition room about the cycle of rice, just off one of the narrow, long side hallways.

The room is small, only about 8 feet deep. But the use of extreme horizontal and vertical shapes gives the space an expansive feeling. Two horizontal photos face each other, and because of the tight space, the entry crops the view of these photos, looking in each direction, making them more dramatic.

On either side, matching vertical object vitrines with extreme vertically shaped video monitors.

The room is really cramped. But it has a perfect symmetry and sensitive scaling that makes it feel limitless. Sometimes the "window" effect of cropping is critical, suggesting that there is more "out there".

Food Design (Kyoto)

Kyoto, Ise, Hirayunomori, Inuyama, Japan. I think the Japanese are considered to be the undisputed masters of the art of plastic food models, used at restaurants to advertise the menu.

Amazing detail and textures

A rare find! A creative 6 bowl composition with exploding noodles, eggs and pork.

Real take-out food, wrapped in plastic, doesn't even look as good

Real produce, shrink wrapped in the market, is almost as beautiful.

Japanese graphic design of food packaging takes a few different approaches. One aesthetic references historical packaging:

Another, glitzier aesthetic incorporates food photos, and moves towards the glammor of the plastic food displays:

This spectacular lobster cracker package uses photo and shape, for content that is otherwise boring looking.

Packaging design and plastic food model displays are sometimes combined. Plex vitrines, on top of the stacks, display the plastic food models:

Sometimes the plastic food is presented inside the package, often with a cut out view of the inside filling.

These chocolate boxes have an indented corner shape.

Manga Museum (Kyoto)

Kyoto, Japan. The Kyoto International Manga Museum is a manga collection that is browsable as a public library. In that context, varied temporary exhibitions represent all aspects of the Art. The boundary between the stacks and exhibition is confusing, but in this case maybe there shouldn't be any boundary. Perhaps it's also appropriate that visitors enter through a (Manga) store (?), usually a museum taboo.

This museum is incredibly rich & interesting. For starters, visitor behavior. Reading Manga, intensely! On the fake lawn, in the corridors, on every bench, the stairs, in the cozy youngest reading room... All of the readers are SO focused, they seem oblivious to everything and everyone around them.

A fabulous collection of Exhibition posters, since their opening in 2006, is displayed along the various corridor ceilings, viewed from below.

There are so many different & passionate threads running through this meandering museum. Manga readers, who are inspired to draw (based on their favorite Manga), are formally honored on corridor walls. I saw one young visitor who couldn't wait to get home (or back to the hotel room).

The Museum is (gradually) honoring Manga artists by making plastic casts of their hands. There was a truly reverent atmosphere in this gallery.

The main exhibition is nested in a central upstairs room with stacks surrounding it. All exhibitions are bilingual in Japanese and English. The chronological order of panels, and panel content, reads from right to left. 

There are other exhibition areas, that focus on specific artists. The museum uses a simple modular metal framework based on about 1' and 1 1/2'. Vertical for signage and monitor towers, and horizontal for overhead entry portal signage, direct overhead book display books, and low or high book vitrines.

This is an impressive flip book design. Powder coated open book shape, raised on a pedestal, with a thick white "pages" area added to give support and add weight to the book. The flippable pages are bolted into the binding, as usual.

In this corridor the exhibition poster, with the edge curled on the floor, repeats farther down on the left, but in the narrow hallway, it's unreadable as you pass. 

There is a charming demo room for kids, with various drawing books laying around the space. It appears that they have guest presenters here.

The interactive animation station and mediated station with a visiting artist, are very popular.

On the way out, a bank of vending toys

The museum worked with a composer to create custom ambient music that plays continually throughout the space. They describe it as relaxing, but It gets annoying after awhile. 

Art Museum (Busan)

Busan, South Korea. This little house is part of a Children's activity area (in the basement) I wonder exactly how it is used for display, and how changeable it is.

The interior of the room uses copper taping

Inflated Signs (Busan)

Busan, South Korea. Standing sidewalk inflated signs appear to be a new variation on the traditional (hanging) paper lantern signs.

Tokyo, Japan. I came across this street level plastic sign shaped like the paper lantern

Dongdaemun Design Plaza (Seoul)

Seoul, South Korea. Claims to be the largest "atypical" building in the world, by architect Zaha Hadid. The scale is dramatic, with lots of open space to situate it.

Wayfinding is totally integrated into the surface of the building

The paving is made up of variations on parallelograms, that seem to distort as if they were all being pulled toward the huge building from every direction. A slightly rough "seam" in one area catches the light and suggests a current change in water.

Huge banners drape casually over the shoulder of the building

Outdoor art installation of LED flowers. I wish I could've seen this at night

"Fornasetti: Practical Madness" is a temporary exhibition traveling from Europe... In this venue the designer had a sliding door to play with, as well as a store window along the queuing path.

Graphic Design (South Korea)

Seoul and Busan, South Korea. A few poster examples