Miriello Grafico

BARRIO LOGAN DESCUBIERTO is a visual celebration of the working waterfront Hispanic neighborhood in San Diego, called Barrio Logan. The 88 page book is a graphic expose of the visual richness and unique creative energy of the community, featuring details of murals, typography,  sign painters, activists art and general community visual richness.
The book is designed by the team here at MG, led by Lauren English, many who have been active in the promotion and celebration of the community and it’s passionate and active creative members. The book contains a listing our neighborhood discoveries of cool, including artists, restaurants, activists, cafes, place we as designers have discovered and wanted to turn others onto.

While many work so feverishly to be wealthy, then build a fence around the property and never come in contact with the real world, the Barrio stands for the opposite. It’s a place where people share their feelings, their color, and eccentricities. The pathway to riches very much depends on how you define the riches. – RM

Preview the complete book at  http://www.miriellografico.com/mg/barriobook/. The book is available from that link for about $68.  That’s the publishers price, but they do a decent job. (We’ll even customize it with tipped-in found objects from the streets if you want to bring it in.)

Viva mejor.

My car buddy-friend Andrew Duncan, just sent me this site about a just released new cool book called Go Faster Race | Race Car Graphic Design on auto racing graphics authored by Sven Voelker. And their video is cool too. (click on the main photo for that) Racing car graphics from the 60’s and 70’s are one reason I became intrigued by graphic design as a kid growing up in Colorado. – RM

Sven says about his new book:    “Most people don’t know that racing cars from the likes of Porsche and Ferrari were given their looks not by marketing strategists or designers, but by chance. Go Faster (available here on Amazon) is a collection of over one hundred examples of race car design that documents the carefree anarchy in which they were created. In the book, each colorful racing car is featured next to a blank, white model. Thanks to this juxtaposition, Go Faster shows its readers exactly how graphics modulate the look of the vehicle. The neutral models also give readers ample opportunity to imagine their own possibilities for graphic design in motor sports. ”

When do you realize you have something important to say, something worth sharing? A good opportunity can come 35 years after you’ve left college and get an invitation to come back to share what you know. Or at least what they hope you know.

Colorado State has The Monfort Fellowship which affords them the opportunity to invite guest professors, speakers and key alumni back to share and motivate. So I’m headed back to Ft. Collins Colorado to spend several days talking to a wide and diverse audience about what I’m calling the “language of design”.  A series of antidotes and observations on how design has become more my way of seeing and engaging the world and the people in it, than a profession.  Let’s see how that plays in the foothills of the Rockies. And I want to checkout the New Belgium Brewery, the pride of Ft. Collins.

I’ll also spend a day with my professor from the 70’s  Phil Risbeck, with the International Poster Show and his graphic design students. A lot has changed in 35 years. The place, the people, the points of view. Comparing then to now could be a great perspective-giver for all of us. . .  Probably why the Monfort Fellowship was conceived in the first place-  between wise old Rams late one night over a pint of Fat Tire Ale. Probably not.  -RM

Our Aussie friend Ian McCallum created the website This Ain’t No Disco to track design trends and in particular, design office spaces. After listing the The Logan last year, he called Miriello Grafico late last year to be featured in his book coming out in April. (I’d like to actually meet Ian someday . . .)  and he put the entire project together in just a few months- a super-organized guy. Here’s what he says about his book- Where We Work – Creative Office Spaces :

Showcasing forty-five of the world’s most extravagant and inspiring work environments from internationally acclaimed and recognized agencies within the advertising, media and design industry, Where We Work explores how creative agencies transform lifeless commercial spaces into bastions of creativity, offering inspiring interiors and visual insight into the breadth and depth of each agency’s thinking. Spaces that not only inspire, but invite us to re-evaluate our lives from nine to five.

To complement the visual showcase of interior design, Where We Work provides an in-depth look at the direction and thought processes behind each agency’s work environment, giving important insight into current and future trends of creative office interior design from some of the world’s most creative companies. Whether the concepts are personal, indulgent or simply well thought out, Where We Work showcases a variety of offices where the pursuit of imagination is the driving force.

Pre-info. is up on Amazon now. The book is published by HarperCollins

When Miriello Grafico moved to Barrio Logan in 2007, it was to become a part of an authentic, emerging and vibrant community. And there are no regrets. Quite the opposite. It’s been an electric few years being a part of a community hungry to be better understood and more appreciated for what it is. A visually rich place that makes you kick yourself whenever your out without a camera by your side. A place where you see families actually walking and holding hands.

So when my friend Enrique Limon from Riviera Magazine stopped into MG this week to compare cool Barrio-finds, he one-upped me with his report that there’s now a winery starting-up in the Barrio. Time to give the Barrio Logan Winery and Enrique Limon their due. (We’re heading down to meet Juan and his Nebbiolo.) Here’s Enrique’s scoop:

Hush-Hush Crush
An industrial warehouse just a stone’s throw away from the Navy Exchange complex and surrounded by auto mechanic and upholstery shops, is about the last place you would expect a budding winery to be housed. Just don’t tell that to 62 year-old Juan Díaz; who with a zest for life and a need to help out his community founded Barrio Logan Winery . Located in the back of Díaz day operation -a construction products testing and inspecting center- it’s the up-and-coming hood’s best kept secret. “I wanted to help out local barrio charities, but didn’t have any money to donate, all I had was my wine,” he recalls. “Then a little light when off in my head…it was one of those 2am things.” The result –thanks in part to his Valle de Guadalupe imported Vitis, is a winning sulfite free/organic combination whose sales have already helped organizations like the Urban Corps and the César Chávez Service Club .

His reward? Watching ladies leave kiss imprints in the casks of his not yet open to the public tasting area for good luck, as he sips on a glass of ANP–his trademark Anglicano, Nebbiolo and Petite Sirah blend. “It’s funny–30 years ago they used to kiss me, now they kiss the barrels,” he jokes.

-Enrique Limón

A different version of this appeared in the January issue of RIVIERA magazine. Enrique Limón is a San Diego-based writer and a recipient of the 2009 Academy for Alternative Journalism residential fellowship at Northwestern University.

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Instead of having the circus come to town once a year, what if it was a monthly deal in the backyard of an old house- showing the bizarre instead of the banal? That’s what’s been happening at Bruce Cartier’s Technomania Circus a few blocks from Miriello Grafico, here in Barrio Logan.

Here’s what Cartier says about it, “Technomania Circus is difficult to explain, but easy to enjoy. You never know what you’ll find happening in the Blackyard: blacklight illusion, performance art, dance, puppetry, music, and more. Whatever you find, it’s never ordinary. From our inception in North Park’s Xanth Club in 1999, to a several-year stint in the Bay Area, to the current location at the Center for Amusing Arts in Barrio Logan, we’ve been breaking down the barriers between performer and audience, between culture and crudity, and changing everything you thought you knew about theater in the process. We strive to remain all-inclusive yet retain our edgy and experimental nature.”

I’m making it part of my 2010 entertainment plan. Gotta love the grassroots, underground energy behind it all. And besides I seemed to have outgrown the Barnum’s thing a while back.- RM

My “Creativity Is the New Currency” mantra just received it’s newest chapter, thanks to a friend and accomplished photographer Philipp Rittermann.

I’m probably averaging  3-4 unsolicited e-mail portfolios a day from photographers around the country. Mailing list providers are obviously doing well in this economy. But photographers, as my e-mail volume underscores, are not.

The demand for professional photography, both fine art and commercial, has been trending down for over a year. Even though money isn’t changing hands, that doesn’t mean creativity has stopped flowing. Just like a blocked waterway, it must seek and new route.

When Rittermann was invited to show his work at the Lishui Foto Festival 2009 in China this November, he came up with a very interesting concept to fund his travels and creative projects. Rittermann pre-sold a box collection of new panorama original photos of the China series while it was in the planning stages.  Collectors and past patrons were offered an exclusive opportunity to buy a set of 18 panoramas of the Grand Canal project from Hangzhou China – in advance of the trip, for a reduced cost. A a price of $3600 a set, 15 collectors could pre-purchase the Rittermann China project at far under their post-trip value.

Much like selling stock futures, Rittermann has created a prototype for funding new creative ventures, while also growing his market. The simple model has the ability to be a funding mechanism for many future trips.

I was so keen on the concept and the work coming back from China, I had to support the venture. I can’t wait to see the China Canal Series when it’s ready in summer of 2010.

Creativity don’t stop when currency stops flowing – they just need to take on a new form. Rittermann is pioneering his new route, via China.

It seems all over the world the economic malaise is reason for people to be more inventive and to find new ways to move ideas forward.  A friend from Milano just attended a show called LOVE DESIGN.  She said, “It is a different type of event for Milano  -conceived to help AIRC (the Italian research against cancer) rather than to just sell furniture. The idea is beautiful and smart: some of the biggest furniture business, in need of opportunity, are selling some of the best design pieces at a big discount. All the money goes to help AIRC. My only complaint is that the VIP’s bought up all the deals at their private viewing ahead of the public. Very Italian. Very frustrating!”

LOVE DESIGN was well done and well document here.

Here’s a  15 second theatre intro video created along with Alonso Creative, to introduce the 2009 San Diego Italian Film Festival (SDIFF).  To help this mighty band of passion film people reach a bigger audience, Miriello Grafico created the FESTIVALE caffe newspaper and website. The 20-page paper explains the premise of the films, with reviews in Italian and English and creates  a “Not Just Italian Films- but an Italian Perspective” platform for the festival, to attract a community of followers, passionate about foreign film. Preview the FESTIVALE  newspaper here.

Miriello Grafico wants to organize an reciprocal film festival in Italy for 2010. Probably showing  a series of American films by Italian-American directors. The likely location will be in the village of  Radicondoli (Siena). Keep you posted.

Love this TED talk by Tim Brown. It’s not the artifacts as it is the thinking! Tim gets it.

Tim Brown says the design profession is preoccupied with creating nifty, fashionable objects — even as pressing questions like clean water access show it has a bigger role to play. He calls for a shift to local, collaborative, participatory “design thinking.”