Just East of West is a book of poetry and haiku by Bil Johnson, both a marvelous poet and a close friend of the Match Factory. From a collection of random scribblings, notebooks here and there, some napkins and stapled together associations, we pulled together a strong body of words from this Midwestern poet in the most honest way we could think of; a self-published book with additional hand-done, screenprinted flare.

At its conclusion, it appeared to us to be about the Earth and its future. As much a concerning stare at manmade “progress” as hopeful nod to the beauty of what’s already out there, and what is next for all of us; love, discovery, rebirth, etc. When all was said and done, what fit in our hands was a catalog of life. We grew up on these great midwestern plains, now they lay open proudly awaiting the next troupe of angelic youth, troubadours in their own right, setting out for burning sky and bright new tomorrows.

If there’s a revelation to be made from reading the work, it’s that there is good and bad, decay and beauty in all of it. We suffer and celebrate in the gray. The idea of black and white, even right and wrong, is given far too much credence these days. The fact is both are constantly surrounding us, the gray area is where everything worthwhile lives, and you must hold the ups and the downs in your line of site as you move, steady as she goes, along your meandering path toward whatever greater truth you seek.

• This book project was conceived in the winter of 2008 on a painfully cold day on the great plains over coffee and cabinet picks. It was meant to take some of the most honest poetry I had ever read and put it together in a form that was equally as honest. Honestly concerned about our future on Earth while celebrating the love and life that people around us are a part of every day. Wherever we are on this planet, here we are indeed. Under the energy of the sun, looking up at that black canvas sky, we the little peapods are just living, trying to do the best we can. What this is, what we are, is just a song, just a touch, just a kiss of our humanity in the immense vastness. With that, we wish you happy travels.

screenprint postcards

book package

poems

jack the anarchist

just east of west
design notes: july 2009

what i see as the simplicity and the clarity of this poetry book reinforces the aspects of living within a system that isn’t all that complicated. from cover to pages to back cover, the turbulent spinning of life is there in image and tone. the constrained aspects of life in a bowl, on a tiny blue dot turning black before our eyes, offer hope for continued living. tales of the earth, love, life, planet, religion, friendship, nature, animals, all intertwine themselves, mingle, mix, dance, as the words suggest. we’re offered directions on “how to live” but upon contradiction, are left with baffled stares. the future, our sons and daughters, our culture and ideas, carry us into great unknowns, what pioneers saw as the frontier. in this case the son, and all his promise. the tiny tree in what used to be a forest, HERE. it is waiting for the son. interwoven with the part of life that interconnects, the sweet sound of poetry, the haiku, set to rhythmic syllables. what are we afraid of? not sure. nothing i guess, with such a gift of language to light our way, tell our story, advise our kids, direct ourselves, for life on this planet. is it all turning black? the sky soon to be left crisp once the fossils are emitted up into the sky blocking the heavens, blotting out the sun? the stars, trees, mountains, and waves, is all that is left, the markings of a child? sent to the future by the tomorrow? so many questions. so many thoughts. are we directionless? is there light guiding us? are we the shark in the fish bowl? too big, a relic of a bygone era, with no place else to go, hovering in the dark? or there may be a single tree, just east of west.

"i want to walk into the woods and inhale"

Just East of West

– Justin Kemerling, Designer. justinkemerling.com

Basement Studio | 20th & C, Lincoln, NE

When the Tugboat Gallery reopened in April of 2008, I enthusiastically said yes to the invitation of doing the monthly exhibition posters. One 12×18 screenprinted poster a month, editions of 60ish, for three years. Designed and hand-pulled in three different DIY studio locations over the years and put up on the streets of downtown Lincoln by the Tugboat crew.

Tugboat Gallery is an alternative gallery located in downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. It’s run by Peggy Gomez and Tugboat’s new co-captain Nolan Tredway. Joey Lynch and Jake Gillespie, along with Peggy, made up the initial force behind its creation. Located above Gomez Art Supply in the Parrish Studios, it’s part of a flourishing downtown art scene and a place to see some of the finest artwork in the Midwest.

And the spaces where the posters were printed were equally as fine. (more…)

Talk to me about (Graphic) Design, Collaboration, Activism + Projects

I’m just going to say it. This whole Work/Life balance thing, well I am struggling with it, straight up. I’ve focused a good bit of 2011 thus far thinking about the idea of Work. My work, the type of projects I do and how I want them to fit in to a larger community. And really take the time to consider what the answer to this question is: “and what do you do?”

Well, how about:

I frantically run around in circles for 16-18 hours a day until I get really dizzy and then fall into a deep trance-like state for 6-8 hours until I suddenly am jolted back into attention and then do the circle thing all over again.

Or maybe just this for my title and tagline: Constant Worker Man, Doing or Thinking about Work, 24/7.

That may sound somewhat interesting, but it can be really exhausting. Needless to say when I left my home office in Omaha to go on a weeklong travel excursion to California, I wasn’t necessarily excited to be getting away, just more tired with the thought of traveling and working from the road. But, despite having so much mindblowing information smashed into my brain, I come back to the Work/Life challenges of a graphic designer with a very satisfying feeling of having been thoroughly reset.

Thank you, TED. (more…)

Green Patriot Posters the book edited by Dmitri Siegel & Edward Morris

IMAGES FOR A NEW ACTIVISM

Green Patriot Posters the book was released at the end of 2010, a year tied for the warmest on record with 1998 and 2005. The book brings together the strongest contemporary graphic design currently promoting sustainability and the fight against climate change at a time when one of America’s political parties is looking to rewrite the Clean Air Act so that it can’t be used to fight that very same climate change.

The book showcases 50 posters selected from the project Website in detachable, ready to hang format. It’s edited by Edward Morris and Dmitri Siegel and includes text by Michael Bierut, Thomas L. Friedman, Steven Heller, Edward Morris, Dmitri Siegel and Morgan Clendaniel. In addition to the site and the book, Cleveland saw bus adverts by Michael Beirut, Dorchester was home to a public art campaign and San Francisco had bus shelter placement thanks to some successful crowdfunding.

Green Patriot Posters {dot} ORG

Bierut Bus in Cleveland

Bike Your City Bus Shelter by Jason Hardy in San Francisco

Green Patriot Posters Reinvigorate Environmental Message at Wired and the Destroy This Book excerpt can be found at Design Observer. Most People just don’t get climate change. Few grasp the need and more important, the opportunity to transform our society. So the people who do get it need to be louder, more insistent and more effective at getting the message across. Certainly a very true statement. (more…)

In late January of 2011 I had the pleasure of giving a talk for the Art Directors Association of Iowa in Des Moines. Katie and I made the trip from Omaha. We totally had a great time and it was very nice to meet all the creative folks from the area. (Thanks for listening, and thanks for buying some prints.) And damn, we went through the super impressive wind farms of western Iowa. It was like seeing the future, one where you could still breathe the air.

The gist of the talk was on Work. I’ve been an independent designer since July of last year. It’s work that I really enjoy doing and I wanted share the framework I’ve put together to help guide it as I move forward. As of now, the structure of my practice consists of four parts:

1. Project/Client Work (Traditional Graphic Design)
2. Volunteer Design (Design as Community-Building)
3. Collaborations (Design as Extracurriculars) and
4. Self-Initiated Projects (Design as Art/Entrepreneurship). (more…)

19x25" Screenprint on 140lb CVR French Paper; Smart White

Hello and Welcome!

It’s the final weeks of 2010. Holiday time is upon us. Good tidings. Great cheer. Et cetera and so on. And I for one am looking forward to a little down time. A nice bit of “slow down” if you will. Perhaps some reflection, a little visioning for the coming year and for certain some booze. Maybe even lots of booze. This is America after all. Amidst all the food, family and shopping, being driven to drink is certainly a national pastime. (more…)

HVD: High-Value Detainee

HVD #56SS / First Name: Hassan

“[W]e don’t kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them.”

A man walks down the street in a foreign city. A car stops, men dressed in black with masks over their faces jump out, grab him and spirit him away to where a private plane — usually a Gulfstream jet — is waiting. The man is shackled, perhaps hooded, perhaps drugged. The plane takes off and travels to somewhere in Poland or Romania, Egypt or Syria. The man is held captive, perhaps for months. What he endures is often physical and mental degradation and pain.

The scenario may sound like a spy thriller or a video game, but extraordinary rendition is all too real.

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The term extraordinary rendition is used to describe the practice of secretly capturing suspected criminals or terrorists without the knowledge of anyone else, including the governments of the countries in which individuals reside. They are then secretly rendered to other countries, secret detention centers or “black sites.” This way individuals can be transferred to other locations to be tortured by proxy without ostensibly violating the United Nations Convention Against Torture and without the writ of habeas corpus.

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The role of the artist is to transcend conventional wisdom, to transcend the word of the establishment, to transcend the orthodoxy, to go beyond and escape what is handed down by the government or what is said in the media. [Howard Zinn, Artists in Times of War].

Obtain Clearance Here

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DESIGN AS ACTIVISM

ATTENTION!

The Battle for Whiteclay is a documentary film project created to call attention to a tragic situation. The film, appropriately described by Indian activist Frank Lamere, “chronicles a painful odyssey that should give pause to the caring, the oblivious, and those who don’t give a damn.”

It doesn’t take long to drive through Whiteclay. In a blink of an eye, you pass four liquor stores in a town with a population of 14. Then it’s down a two-mile stretch of road to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Hot sun and blue sky overhead. Slow, stale misery on the ground. You get a sense for the centuries of exploitation and abuse. And knowing what’s at work in the community, there really is no way to go there and not be moved to act in some way.

On Saturday, June 11, 2005, at Noon there was a march from the Reservation in South Dakota to Whiteclay, Nebraska to demand that illegal sales of alcohol to Indians be stopped. Some 11,000 cans of beer are consumed every day. There’s crippling poverty. An epidemic of alcohol abuse. On the reservation the unemployment rate is 75% and average life expectancy for men is 48 and 52 for women. It’s been a decade long struggle for justice on the streets of Whiteclay to the halls of Nebraska’s State Capitol. The point of the march was to increase awareness of the situation and, hopefully, begin ending such a bold illegality. (more…)

Get your yard sign.

A COMMUNITY COLLABORATION

Here’s one for you: a designer, a programmer, a community organizer, a communications task force and a group of committed peace and justice types ranging from well-seasoned academics to bright-eyed progressives get together to advocate for a better world. It’s a collaboration of the first order with high-minded goals concerning matters of crucial importance.

The focus is how to make a peace and justice organization more effective at making peace and justice happen. In the back of a local coffee shop, huddled over the local paper with some veggie sandwiches and fair trade coffee, the plotting and scheming goes strong once a week for many months. Usually in good spirits, with lively discussion and debates about how a little non-profit organization moves forward, what has come out of the effort has been something quite remarkable. We certainly accomplished a streamlining our communications efforts, developing a new website, creating several media campaigns to stoke the political fires and training key staff members on technology that can be used to keep things current. But there’s also been a rejuvenation of the collective spirit. I saw what I thought was glowing from several people at one of the last meetings. It could be because we’ve finally seen the sun out here in the Midwest, but I like to think it’s been this whole “working together” thing that’s the root cause of the newly intense hues.

A bumper sticker for every bumper in Nebraska

Hang out in Lincoln long enough, especially downtown, and you’ll come across several deep blue bumper stickers reading “Nebraskans for Peace.” It’s probably one of the most successful bumper sticker campaigns in American history. And a nice visual mark of identity in the community. (If anybody needs one, I’m sure I can get a couple dozen by the end of the day to whomever’s asking.) In the back of that local coffee shop, a rag tag bunch of liberal peaceniks responsible for those stickers got together to grow this organization. And in between deep conversations about the sad state of affairs for America’s foreign policy, I’d say success has been had. We set out many months ago to make Nebraskans for Peace the best damn peace and justice group it could be, building on the old school tactics of political organizing while embracing some 21st century digital activism. And today, we are moving ahead as planned. (more…)

…because making is part of things.

Years ago, when Justin and I started putting together the first version of The Match Factory, we had this phrase that we used as an answer to why we are doing this. “…because making is part of things.” This awkward phrase really stuck with me. It captures the spirit of open-ended discovery without heavy-handed goals or judgments.  Why do we make stuff? Because making is part of things.

We both recognized early on that a workaday lifestyle could leave you feeling too focused on measurable goals and results. For the most part, design is about solving a specific problem. Art, on the other hand, can be more about personal expression. In an effort to walk the line between the two, I try to make time in my schedule for random acts of making. The images in this post are examples of time spent messing about. I think of them as design debris, lingering residue from thoughts and projects. Doodles and leftovers or something like that. Nothing really “good,” but then again, making something good isn’t really the point.

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