Rachel Sumpter creates colorful otherworlds in her paintings and prints of imagined landscapes and lives.

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We did a short Twitter interview (a Twinterview) yesterday with designer and illustrator Deanne Cheuk and asked her to nominate her favourite artwork by another artist. She came back with this striking Mark Tansey painting: ‘To me’, she said, ‘it’s so full of hope and youth. I love it!’

We’ve been featuring some interesting guest contributors on Lost At E Minor over the past year, including Shepard Fairey, Ron English, Tristan Eaton, Ben Lee, Brendan Canning from Broken Social Scene, designer Deanne Cheuk, artist Sam Weber, singer-songwriter Laura Veirs, and Tegan from Tegan and Sara.

Herb Lubalin’s influence as a graphic designer is undeniable, and now his name graces the side of the new building at Cooper Union. The inaugural exhibit of the Lubalin Center just opened with the beautiful Mike Essl-curated show, Lubalin Now. I’ve been noticing recently that design exhibitions have been blowing away more traditional fine art shows and this one is no exception. It’s quite exciting to see the influence this man has had on many of today’s young top designers. Standouts for me were the pieces by Deanne Cheuk, Alex Trochut, Justin Thomas Kay and Rick Valicenti. The show continues until Dec 8.

The Redefining The Line exhibition features some of the top illustrators of the female form showing works that have been influenced by the Art Nouveau movement. If you happen to be in southern California, the decorative arts haven’t looked this good since the days of Alton Kelley, or perhaps even Gustav Klimt. Redefining the Line: Art Nouveau and the Female Figure, featuring Deanne Cheuk, Aya Kato, Pomme Chan and others is at Cal State Fullerton Main Art Gallery until October 2.

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Trip out with Sparrow Vs Sparrow’s retro illustrations, I love their aesthetic, color use and sense of humor.

I recently gifted a desktop wallpaper pattern design to readers of the Design*Sponge blog. You can download it for free for your computer now.

We checked in with sometime Lost At E Minor contributor and all the time brilliant designer and illustrator, Deanne Cheuk, and asked her what had been keeping her busy of late: ‘I’m curating an issue of Theme magazine; designing some prints for Sue Stemp and Something; and working on new drawings for a show in January 2010 at the Monster Children Gallery in Sydney. In terms of the next big project I have coming up, I have sunglasses that I designed with Colab coming out later this year. Yay!’

New York-based, Australian art director Deanne Cheuk — an occasional contributor to Lost At E Minor — is one of the most adventurous and creative designers around. Her work on Tokion magazine, in particular, for which she shaped the visual direction over several years, was inspiring, pushing the boundaries by incorporating illustration, offbeat color touches and avoiding the straight portrait shots which seem to dominate the front window of every inner-city newsagency.

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There’s been an interesting trend recently in print and advertising work in particular away from the perfect symmetry and airbrushed cleanliness of vector art and back towards a looser form of hand-drawn illustration. I see it everywhere, from the middle pages of highbrow pop culture publications to the style sections of local broadsheets. And yet, it’s unexpected, especially so soon after the wave of vector art which swamped the print world just a few years back.

New York-based Australian designer Deanne Cheuk, who for so long was responsible for the beautiful artistic vision of edgy culture magazine Tokion, is one who noticeably shied away from embracing vector art during her tenure as the magazine’s art director. Which is not to say that she never used it, but rather that she always seemed to have a real appreciation for the subtle rawness of hand-drawn fonts and ink rendered design touches.

In many ways, her art direction veered towards classicism, which in turn encouraged countless of younger art directors to look back again for their artistic inspiration. Many of the better European, Australian and American magazines, for instance, are now dominated by more abstract, hand-drawn work, while vector art is finding its footing amongst CD packaging and gallery prints.

And yet, there are exceptions to this trend.

Vector artist Autumn Whitehurst, whose work is not only phenomenally good but also hanging on my apartment wall, is one obvious example. Her luminous, sub-realistic pieces are in demand, her style is immediately recognisble, and she’s never felt compelled to compromise her artistic techniques in order to get work.

She gave Web Esteem magazine an insight into how her beautiful vector pieces fall into place: ‘I have to use a photo reference to comprehend how light falls on a three dimensional form but the figures in the illustration rarely look anything like the photographs because myself and my friends are not such lean sleek glowing forms. It’s one of the biggest challenges but is also really enjoyable and is probably the bit that I have to get most creative with.’

So Whitehurst embraces the artistic freedom that vector art enables, whilst many seem restricted by the potential it offers to strive for perfection in every shape or object that they create.

Personally, I love the looseness and sense of absolute freedom that someone like Fernanda Cohen’s hand-drawn illustrations convey. She is getting a lot of work in major international publications, in a time when so many of their art directors are looking for that less realized style.

It’s wonderful to see too that personality has again been revived in print work. That a perfect rendering is not necessary to convey form. And that we’re looking within to interpret what, for many years, has been made all too apparent.

Whitehurst sums up it up nicely when she says. ‘There’s too much work out there that lacks the artist’s personal vision, stuff that’s being done because it’s a popular style used in marketing. The pitfall in working that way is that they’re taking part in a trend which will eventually die off.’

Very true words indeed.

New York-based designer, and sometime Lost At E Minor contributor, Deanne Cheuk visited Beijing prior to the Olympics as part of the New Grand Tour. We touched in with her to see how she found the experience of being over there: ‘we visited some really modern art galleries, which seemed to be on par with with the best galleries in New York City’.

‘We also visited a cultural district where there were artists’ studios that had been built to give to artists to work in for free as a type of grant. It felt very cultural and advanced to me’.

How does the scene there differ from that elsewhere in the world?
‘China is growing like crazy, especially when we were in Beijing in the months leading up to the Beijing Olympics. I feel like the art scene there is just getting bigger and better’.

Do you feel that ‘art’ always had a unifying effect across cultures or does it actually accentuate differences?
‘I don’t think it was always unifying, but it has perhaps always been a way to cross some cultural barriers. I think it is one small way to unify cultures that is easily accessible’.

Until recently, Australian-born, New York based designer and illustrator Deanne Cheuk was the creative force behind the stunning and progressive visuals in art and culture magazine Tokion. We spoke to her recently about her eclectic work schedule. Many people know you through your art direction of Tokion. You really pushed things on that magazine. It must have been fun to work on? ‘It was great, especially to come from a history of self-publishing. I didn’t have to deal with the stress of funding and content, I just got to have fun with the design and typography. I was really bored of the design of other magazines at the time, and I felt like there was a lot of opportunity to do something different, so I just went with it. As far as pushing things visually — at the time I was developing my illustration style too so that really influenced the design of Tokion’. What projects have you been working on this past year? ‘I’ve been working with the fashion designer Sue Stemp on prints for her collections, and also working in my studio on new paintings and drawings in preparation for an art road trip to China in October with Jose Parla, Ro Starr and Young Kim’. Ever pine for the beaches and fresh air of Perth? ‘Never. I pine for my family and friends there, but I don’t miss Australia. I love New York!’ What state of mind do you need to be in order to really create something special? ‘I usually work on a few jobs at a time but I spend as much time as I can on each before I move to the next. Ideas generally come for one job while working on another. I guess my mind is wandering while I work. Maybe that’s why I can’t work with music on — I like to work in silence’. What was the last piece of work by another illustrator or designer that totally blew your mind? ‘I just saw the cover of Beautiful Decay the other day that Alex Trochut did, I thought that was incredible!’ [read Deanne Cheuk's posts for Lost At E Minor] [ more about Deanne Cheuk]

It’s been a while since we featured the illustration work of Australian born, New York based designer and art director, Deanne Cheuk. The former art director of Tokion magazine has a dynamic illustration style with patterns, shapes and colours colliding in a million tiny pieces. [see also Mushroom Girls]

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The Wall Spankers project has had more than fifty international artists submit black & white work for the first issue. The submission deadline for the first issue is June 30th, so there’s still time to show them what you’re made of. It will be available as a free online PDF zine. Check it all out at the Wall Spankers website. Meanwhile, the Zaishu Project is an ‘international collaborative event, recording patterns, designs and cultural texture from around the world on sheets of plantation grown veneer. This visual information ‘artwork’ is then cut by laser into smaller components that slot together without nails, screws or glue to create a small portable seat, table, or box called a Zaishu’. Treated like a project and not a product, the Zaishu was first launched – with stencilled street artwork – at Melbourne’s Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in July 2004. Having since travelled to Japan, Seoul, Milan, Sydney, and Stockholm, the Zaishu project in 2006 will work with artists in India, Stockholm and Berlin. Check out their website for more information. And Enfant Terrible is an all girl art show by ‘those who’ve left, stayed and arrived in Australia’. It’s on now at the Monster Children Gallery in Sydney and features the work of Deanne Cheuk, Lilly Piri, and Ainslie Fletcher amongst others.