Taylor Quist

BRAND ARCHITECTURE — PROJECT LEAD

YouTube faced considerable branding issues after years of unchecked growth led to more than 130 offerings that leveraged the YouTube brand name, creating a clouded branding landscape. Developed on the verge of the first top-to-bottom rebrand in the company’s 12-year history, this project represents the development and implementation of YouTube’s first fully-articulated brand architecture.

The Original Landscape

The Objective

Partnering with Anomaly, the process began with a comprehensive audit of all products, features, sites, content initiatives, events, social accounts, internal teams, etc. Next we held meetings with key stakeholders across product, brand, and greater Google to understand what level of complexity would work for the brand’s operational reality and gauge comfort level regarding the use of, or departure from, existing brand norms. With that information, a proprietary decision tree was developed to help systematize decision making as well as a full and flexible branding language.


The Architecture

The Branding Language

The Results

DESIGN LANGUAGE — PROJECT LEAD

With newly implemented brand marks and architecture, the brand needed a visual language to ensure both polish and consistency in collateral. The below project, developed in partnership with Hook, represents a full visual exploration that led to the development of a gridded system that is built off the aspect ratios of digital video and can extend from site design to banners, OOH, and more. While not required for use (always a rarity at Google/YouTube) this project did lead to the output of banner templates and site design in use today.

Surveys address various work subjects

Questions are designed to capture specific data points

Infographics show other users answers anonymously

Quotes add poignance or humor

Conclusions provide personalized suggestions based on answers

Long surveys grant a type based on user answers

Josh Smith In Two

You can’t help but feel there’s something cunning about the latest exhibitions from Josh Smith, currently being held simultaneously at Luhring Augustine’s galleries in Bushwick and Chelsea. While sharing few outward traits other than color, each respective display speaks to a number of Smith’s avowed artistic interests—the presence of the artist’s hand in his work, exploration through seriality, an insistence on degrading the “preciousness” of art—and all with generous and astute hints of irony. More than that however, these exhibitions make clear Smith’s adroit understanding of how he is perceived by the contemporary art community.

In an array that shows the childlike exuberance and spirit of exploration one’s come to expect from Smith’s work, his newest exhibition in Brooklyn houses 90 ceramic sculptures and a series of 19 surprisingly gratifying palm tree paintings.

The ceramics on display, shown in installations of nine to 31 sculptures, include rough, hand-hewn icons, most of which fall in line with Smith’s symbolic lexicon of ghosts, jack-o’-lanterns, leaves, and skeletons, as well as clay bottles and cans created by molds presumably taken from detergent containers, salad dressing bottles, large tins, or the like.

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The Emotional Reality Of Taner Ceylan

There’s an impish quality about Taner Ceylan, a glint in the eye that makes it clear how much he enjoys his position as one of Turkey’s preeminent contemporary artists and historical revisionist. He’s a man that’s quick to smile, whether talking of humor or heartache, and his spectacular hyperrealist portraits resonate with a transfixing attention to details and pointed political intent. Depicting period characters with a startlingly contemporary air, his “Lost Paintings Series” aims to instill revised historical narratives that reclaim Ottoman history as well as Orientalist art.

We sat down with Ceylan, who took time out from composing a small research library in the back of the gallery, to talk about his latest series.

Your latest group of work speaks to both social and personal politics. Can you talk a little bit about the concepts behind “The Lost Paintings Series?”

TC: First I must say, that making art is a political statement. It doesn’t depend on the content of what is made. When you decide to make art this means, “I am against the system, and I want to work on my own, and I want to make what I want.” And this is a political statement. The fact that you are painting.

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Lucy De Kooning Villeneuve's Curatorial Debut At Pace

Lucy de Kooning Villeneuve’s curatorial debut was a one-night exhibition that began before setting foot inside Pace Gallery’s space at 508 West 25th Street. Stationed beneath an overpass that shields the gallery, and just above its doors, was a machine that surrounded the entrance with bubbles, a joyful gesture that Villeneuve dedicated to her effervescent mother, Lisa de Kooning.

It’s been less than a year since the untimely passing of Willem de Kooning’s only daughter, and in that time seventeen-year-old Lucy has made significant steps in solidifying her family’s artistic legacy. She has chosen to maintain the summer artist residency program her mother established at her grandfather’s studio in East Hampton, New York and with this exhibition expressed her commitment to the support of emerging artists.

Showing selected works by Aakash Nihalani and Carlos Soto, two alumni of the summer residency program at the de Kooning studio, and Alexander Massouras, a painter whose work Lucy’s late mother had instantly appreciated, the exhibition explored the adaptation of space in various mediums.

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Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

A foundational modernist work, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon forged for Picasso a confident language of Cubism that he would continue to refine. The stylistic approach of formal faceting and breakage was near revolutionary in 1907 when he painted it in Paris. Inspired by North African mask designs, forms are pared down to simple geometric shapes, distributed across the canvas to evince a challenging sense of depth made all the more poignant by the confrontational gaze of his subjects.

Holy Stool

With its solid maple seat and ultra-matte, duotone lacquered legs, it’s easy to see the rustic inspiration for François Chambard’s standard-sized Holy Stool. This friendly seat, the latest from the designer’s family of like-minded furniture, has a wide stance that creates its charming shape and prevents wobbling. Each stool is crafted in-house at Chambard’s Brooklyn-based UM Project using traditional techniques and joinery.

Marketing Collateral

L'abandon (Les Deux Amies)

As the most famous poster artist in Paris, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864­–1901) held a regular seat at the Moulin Rouge—it was his court, and the performers and patrons his subjects. Working in a casual, yet highly influenced style, Lautrec was known for capturing the most recognizable features of his models—from prostitutes to painters—in only a few deft strokes. His work is characterized by an energetic style and an outsider’s perspective that is evidenced in his playful, empathetic portraits of those living on the fringes of society.

Democrat Mascot Jumping Ball

Stressed about Romney winning? Bounce. Stressed about the “job creators” having their taxes LOWERED? Bounce. Worried about those poor polar bears being forever stranded thanks to a lack of environmental oversight? Bounce. The only drawback to the Democrat Mascot Jumping Ball is that you might have to admit it’s yours…to your dad. With a 29-inch diameter, this sturdy bouncing ball is made for full-grown people and gives new meaning to the idea of political blue-balls.

L’Oro dell’Azzurro

An artist who refuses classification, Joan Miró created paintings, collages, and sculptures that touch on a number of artistic movements. A catalyst as much as he was an artist, his mix of automatic painting, Fauvism, Surrealism, and what came to be called color field painting became a veritable breeding ground of influence for late Surrealists and soon-to-be American Abstract Expressionists. Paintings like L’Oro dell’Azzurro rely in part on a consistency shared between his various works. Rarely without a subject, Miró’s art is an experience that can also be read.

Culices

Not one for flowers, vintage calligraphy, or silhouettes? Perhaps the world of insects is more to your fancy. Whether used as a beautiful catchall or displayed on a wall, the decoupage designs by John Derian bring a touch of vintage entomology to the home. To create these decorative dishes, Derian and team select historic illustrations that are reprinted, trimmed, and adhered to crystal clear plates with mind-boggling precision. The effect is a piece of decoupage art—a functional aesthetic object that can be hung like a fine painting.

Marketing Collateral

Book Rest Lamp

Catch up on some pre-bedtime reading with the Book Rest Lamp from SUCK UK. Made of frosted glass that gives off a soft, atmospheric glow for reading, this heartwarming piece will transform into a house when you set down your book. A gorgeous piece that saves pages and adds to decor? An instant classic.

Guernica

There is no one artist who has done more to influence the modern art landscape than Pablo Picasso. His body of work not only spans almost 100 years, but also touches on or defines a number of important art movements. Created during his Cubist period, Guernica stands as Picasso’s most effective protest piece. Made in response to the horrific German-Italian bombing of the city of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, the ashen image is rightly disturbing.

Blackboard Clock

The classic wall clock is given a multi-functional reinvention in the Blackboard Wall Clock. Designed by Enrico Azzimonti for Diamantini & Domeniconi, this square clock features a blackboard face and hidden drawer that slides out to reveal a set of brightly colored chalk and eraser. With this handsome, ingenious design you can remind yourself of an appointment, write a sweet nothing to your loved one, or create the clock face you always wanted.

Ecke Flow Table

Between school projects, game night, and family dinners, flexible furniture is key. Meet the Ecke Flow Table—designed to be transformed, moved, and changed. Its five pieces connect with simple yet tight joints, which are made possible by precise fabrication. Designed by Inleven Rotterdam, each piece of the table is reversible, making it a wildly adaptable piece for the unpredictable household.

Untitled C

Mark Rothko introduced a new form of Abstractionism created to engulf viewers in his work, characterized by broad swaths of paint applied to enormous canvases. Presented with ambiguous titles to keep viewers free from influence, Rothko utilized a spare palette with the darkest shades generally placed at the top to symbolize the mental depression that plagued him, evincing a masterful use of color that conveys an intimate, intense message without the crutch of concrete subject matter.

Marketing Collateral

Campbell's Soup Box

Andy Warhol’s career was never the same after the debut of his groundbreaking Campbell’s Soup Cans in 1961. For this 32-screenprint work, Warhol reproduced 32 classic Campbell’s cans with near mechanical accuracy, creating a series that placed him at the fertile nexus of fine art and consumer design. Campbell’s Soup Box was made in 1985 — just two years before Warhol’s untimely death — and marks a return to the Campbell’s motif in an exquisitely rendered original poster depicting a box of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup.

Executed in 1985.

Perrier

Never a stranger to advertising illustration, Andy Warhol created marketing material for dozens of companies, always in his own signature style. This original poster for Perrier shows a trio of the classic bottles rendered with Warhol’s unmistakable palette and overlaid images. Commissioned in 1982 and completed in 1983, the advertising campaign was coordinated by Langelaan & Cerf of Paris and was awarded the Grand Prix de l’Affiche Française — the French Poster Grand Prix — that very year.

Rain Dance

Created for Rain Dance, a benefit for the African Emergency Relief Fund, this original poster brings together five Pop Art masters in a single design. A collaboration between Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring, Yoko Ono, and Andy Warhol, the piece shows elements easily attributed to each artist, yet comes together to form an aesthetically cohesive whole.

Marketing Collateral

Nude Male Model

An erotic exercise in exposure and composition, Andy Warhol’s Nude Male Model replaces the pretense of the classical nude with an intimate immediacy provided by the casual setting and pose.

Helmut Berger

Helmut Berger, the star of director Luchino Visconti’s most lavish films, was often called the world’s most beautiful man. In this casual snapshot, Andy Warhol captures Berger during a session that likely produced Warhol’s well-known Polaroid of the actor holding a similar white handset.

Unique Polaroid print. Executed in 1973.

Marketing Collateral

Hand and Flowers

Hand and Flowers provides an example of one of Warhol’s common motifs—flowers. Slightly uneven, with a balance of blotches and voids, Warhol’s trademark lilting line lends his prints a lightness and frivolity that was coolly calculated.

To Shoe or Not to Shoe

To Shoe or Not to Shoe can be located squarely in Warhol’s early comfort zone of the time—having created a successful illustrated campaign for J. Miller & Sons in the mid-1950s—and hints at the wry humor that infused his future works.

Fish

Fish includes the hallmarks of Warhol’s fully matured screen-printing style—from the subject matter, infused with death, to the serial nature of the original photo image, the telltale blotted line overprinting, and expert composition.

The Red Dress

Warhol’s Red Dress Polaroids are a study in texture and form. These complicated images blend red and blue hues of a gown, each line obscuring the next and creating an effect that recalls the dizzying overprinting technique Warhol employed in his screenprints.

Josef & Anni Albers: The Material Couple

The work of Josef and Anni Albers is not about a rejection of aesthetic enjoyment. And it’s not about the absolute usefulness of things. It’s about the perfect synthesis between material, form, and service, a specific approach that they helped pioneer at the Bauhaus as students and then as teachers from 1922-1928.

Josef was a professor of handicraft, including stained glass, while Anni—who shied away from the more physically arduous workshops—found herself enamored with textiles, their history, process, use, and potential. As artists both reveled in materials, but more than that, their interest was to raise the look and feel of a given material—its ‘matiere’ or materiality—to the level of aesthetic appreciation in and of itself.

For all their common beliefs however, this seemingly similar pair came to their respective understandings in different ways. Josef had received what he referred to as a “Prussian” teacher’s education—extremely rigorous and well rounded—and had taught various disciplines before finally having the means to study and teach art. Anni on the other hand, had come to learn about textiles largely on her own at the Bauhaus, citing a decided lack of attention from touted teachers of hers like Klee.

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Passion & Hives With James Victore

James Victore (b. 1962) is less a self-taught artist than a self-made man. A graphic designer whose specialty lies in poster design, he attended The School of Visual Arts in New York until receiving an invitation to…not return the following year. Never a man for school, he apprenticed under book cover designer Paul Bacon before spending most of the late ’80s designing books himself.

It wasn’t until 1992 that his true passion for poster design was reignited by a poster contest meant to commemorate the discovery of America. Called “Celebrate Columbus” or “The Dead Indian,” Victore’s now famous design was a reaction to the jingoistic posters that were chosen as winners. It was also printed and distributed with the artist’s own money in a feat that covered New York City in 5000 posters.

The graphic design guerilla method of distribution garnered Victore a reputation for scoffing at authority. It also drained his bank account. Still, the notoriety he gained lead to greater opportunities in commercial graphic design, and Victore followed them. It wasn’t until 2002 that he realized how unhappy he was as a commercial artist. “I wasn’t pursuing my dharma,” he says.

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The Art Of Espresso

Before starting at Fab I worked as a barista at a café here in New York. It was one of those third-wave places where the menu is stretched to include not just cappuccinos, lattes, mochas, macchiatos and americanos, but latte macchiatos, cortados, flat whites, long blacks and gibraltars, too. But what is it that makes these places special? How is it that their coffee needs no sugar? Why is it always perfect!? Well, working behind one mammoth (and truly beautiful) Synesso espresso maker I was lucky enough to learn the secrets of what goes into that sublime cup of coffee.

There is an art to espresso—from triple ristretto to lungo—that is enacted every time newly roasted beans reach a good and proper coffee shop. Referred to as ‘dialing in,’ multiple times a day a barista will take a moment out to calibrate or personalize the flavor profile of the espresso, taking into account everything from the beans’ origin (because like wine this always matters) to the roast date, the volume of water used for extraction, even the humidity of the given day. All these elements enter into play when it comes to extracting that delectable combination of caramel sweetness and crisp bitter finish from a little black puck of coffee.

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Show Stoppers: DJ Hoff for G-Shock

Complex Sizzle Reel

Friendly Fires: Adult Swim

Danny Trejo: How To Be A Badass

Yukimi Nagano Takes A Dip

Show Stoppers: Derek Melander For G-Shock