Jim Parkinson - AIGA SF's "Vibe, Volume and Veneer" series October 26, 2006

Born and bred in the Bay Area, Jim Parkinson has been intimate with the letterform for close to 50 years. Starting as a lettering artist for Hallmark cards in the early 60s, Parkinson has designed and refined letterforms and typefaces with pen and ink and computer. His work can be seen at the top of some of the world’s best-known publications including The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Examiner, and Esquire Magazine. Though he designs typefaces for foundries like The Font Bureau, Agfa/Monotype and Adobe, Parkinson now concentrates on refining, restoring and redesigning editorial logotypes, often resurrecting aspects of letterforms long obscured by careless variations and redesigns. His original logo for Rolling Stone Magazine is still one of the most admired and known editorial type logos in the world.

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VIBE, VOLUME, VENEER
Graphic Design from the Psychedelic Sixties

Hosted By: Watermark Press

September 28, 2006 :: Jim Marshall
October 12, 2006 :: Victor Moscoso
October 26, 2006 :: Christopher Peterson and Jim Parkinson

The time was the mid-1960s. The place was the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco. The vibe was radical, revolutionary, psychedelic—a dizzying countercultural movement of cosmic energies. The volume was up. Minds were exploding with hallucinogenic drugs and a steady flow of new music. And at the vortex of this, a new visual veneer, a new surface of sound, would emerge to redefine the aesthetic of a generation.

Although it has been estimated that more rock ’n’ roll posters have been created in the last decade than in the entire history of rock ’n’ roll, the era of iTunes and mp3s has relegated the visual expression of music to a mere smattering of sales-oriented pixels. In the mid-1960s, far from being instruments of consumerism, these visuals were artifacts that represented a generation’s relationship to its musical vibrations and they now summarize an important moment in the history of American culture.

The music memorabilia from the mid-1960s started out with references to op-art and images of solar coronas but later gave way to an Art Nouveau-inspired psychedelic style of vibrating colors and complex patterns juxtaposed with surrealist imagery. This was a groundbreaking visual language whose muse was the cosmic synergistic consciousness of the time and whose audience was an exclusive group of rebellious counter-cultural youths. While these visuals have often been assigned a subtext, many artists of the time (including Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan) denied their work contained any deeper meanings or metaphors. When questioned, they responded that the content was entirely there in the surface—it was all veneer.

Please join AIGA San Francisco for a mind-altering trip back to the visual veneers in typography, photography and design from the mid-1960s. The Vibe Is Radical. The Volume Is Up. The Veneer Is Everything. Peace Out.

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Price
Individual tickets
AIGA members: $10
General admission: $20
Non-member Students (with ID): $15

RSVP
To reserve your space with a credit card visit call the AIGA SF office at 415.626.6008. Or send a check (made payable to AIGA SF) to AIGA SF, 1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco, CA 94107. Your name will be held at the door. Admission will also be available at the door, space permitting.

Official Website: http://www.aigasf.org/events/event_watermark06.html