The Belle & Wissell’s team released their new website this week, presenting the studio’s collection of over 90 projects across multiple mediums including media experiences, interactives, retail & edition projects, and exhibitions. This occasion also marks a 10-year milestone since the studio began in 2003 (initially known as Gabe Kean Design).
The new website includes tailored experiences for desktop, tablet, and mobile visitors.
The film “Her Aim is True” (directed by Karen Whitehead) about 96-year-old rock photography pioneer Jini Dellaccio is being well-received in the Northwest film festival circuit and beyond including Seattle International Film Festival, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, Tacoma Film Festival, Tall Grass Film Festival, and the Gig Harbor Film Festival.
Belle & Wissell co-produced and art directed the film (production began in 2009) and included an assembled team of local production talent such as John Jeffcoat (Outsourced) as cinematographer, Ryan McMakin as director of photography, and Adam Powers on sound. The film has won the Audience Award at the Tacoma Film Festival. Learn how you can support this important film.
“Her Aim is True” film poster.
Take a look at Belle & Wissell’s brand new magazine on Flipboard for a regular smattering of creative and technical inspiration…including architecture, typography, photography, and interesting ephemera from the past.
Flip through Belle & Wissell’s magazine on Flipboard
Watch Gabe Kean and Thomas Ryun’s presentation at Creative Mornings in Seattle (2012) as they walk through some key projects and provide some insight on the Belle & Wissell process. Includes behind-the-scenes looks at “Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses” (exhibit graphic design and interactives), The Clyfford Still Museum Interactive Timeline” (interactive exhibit), “True Evel: The Amazing Story of Evel Knievel” (exhibition and arcade game design), and “Your Face is Puzzling to Me” (streetscape media installation).
Born has officially retired but with a new site that archives all the work that was produced by the boundary-breaking publication. The “facilitators” of Born, Gabe Kean of Belle & Wissell (Born’s founder and artistic director), Anmarie Trimble (editor) and Scott Benish (online curator) were all involved, and the design and development teams at Belle & Wissell, Co., brought the project to completion.
See the feature on the Communication Arts website.
Born: 15 Years of Art + Literature
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact: Gabe Kean
Belle & Wissell, Co.
206 322 7908 x300
gabe@bwco.info
Seattle, WA – September 17, 2013 – Born Magazine sprang to life in 1997, when the Internet was just beginning to unfurl as a cultural force and storytelling medium. After 15 years of publication, Born’s all-volunteer team of editors and curators has written the final chapter on the magazine’s web-based marriage of literature and poetry with visual and interactive arts.
But they are not closing the book. They leave for posterity “15 years of art + literature,” an archive of 419 projects developed for Born by more than 900 contributors at: www.bornmagazine.org
These include lauded interactive designers such as Erik Natzke and Joshua Davis, and a diverse slate of established and upcoming writers, including Edward Hirsch, Bruce Smith, Nick Flynn, and Monica Drake.
Born’s new website
The pioneering magazine was founded in the mid-90’s as a web-based ‘zine with traditional features and reviews, but quickly evolved into showcase interactive pieces. It helped set the standard for online publications and opened entirely new avenues of artistic collaboration.
“Born took the left-justified, typographically-constrained, mind-forged manacles of texts and made them visions, and gyres, and new architectures of color and shape and movement,” says poet Bruce Smith, recipient of the 2012 William Carlos Williams Award and Born contributor. “It made new dreams.”
Born’s story will also be captured in a hybrid multimedia/book project being developed in collaboration with magazine founder Gabe Kean’s Seattle-based design studio, Belle & Wissell. The book’s interactive preview was honored in the 2011 Communication Arts Interactive Design Annual and was a finalist in the 2011 SXSW Interactive Awards. The preview’s creative use of Adobe InDesign CS5 is an example of how Born has creatively leveraged technology to enable the highest levels of interactive art achievement.
Visit the book preview here: http://www.bornmagazine.org/bookpreview/
“Some of Born’s pieces were really amazing and groundbreaking because they showed the immense attention to detail you could bring to web-based interactivity,” says author and Communication Arts emerging media writer Joe Shepter. “It was hard for people to grasp the creative possibilities of the web back then, and Born was one of the earliest online publications to demonstrate its potential.”
Page from Born’s interactive book title 417•903
Born’s creators are showcasing its work as a collection to provide an ongoing resource for artists, writers, educators, and students who look to the magazine for study and inspiration. Though submissions will no longer be taken, Born’s staff expects the archive will continue to inspire new audiences.
ABOUT BORN
Founded in 1996, Born is an all-volunteer project that brings together writers, artists, and others from diverse fields to create storytelling artworks. Its name reflects the creative process nurtured by collaboration and the bringing together of traditional and new forms of art and literature, diverse media, and emerging technologies. As a non-profit organization, Born is dedicated to the emergence and continuing evolution of art forms that bring together different creative genres.
Its quarterly publication, Born Magazine, launched in 1997 and brought together creative writers and interactive artists to create experimental, media-rich literary arts experienced only through the web. The magazine retired in 2011, and in 2013 launched its complete online collection, available at www.bornmagazine.org. Born’s exhibit arm, Born Presents, was founded in 2005 and creates exhibits and special projects, including a hybrid multimedia/book retrospective of Born’s work that’s currently under development.
People admiring one of the works from Born’s 2005 exhibition in Seattle “Help Wanted: Collaborations in Art”
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Download a PDF version of the press release.
More press (from SF Gate) on the brand new flagship store in San Francisco, with large multi-touch wall and streetscape media installations (designed by Belle & Wissell). Congratulation to Umpqua and the collective project team!
See the article in The Oregonian. Store opens to the public on Monday.
Stay tuned for photos and video of Belle & Wissell’s work at this flagship store in San Francisco.
Updated with photos of integrated media experiences:
Local Experts, Ecosystem, and App Highlights interactives.
Exterior multiplex displaying local bus routes.
Exterior logo Projections.
EMP Museum’s traveling exhibition (featuring a suite of interactives by Belle & Wissell) continues to get press as it goes east.