AisleOne. A visual journal on design, photography, film, music and culture.
Josef Albers was an American artist and teacher widely known for his paintings and his book on color theory, but I personally love these album covers that he designed in the late 50’s and early 60s for Command Records. The covers were featured in an exhibition at Minus Space in Brooklyn, NY.
It’s finally here, after months of on and off work I’m proud to present the new AisleOne. Before I jump into some of the new features I want to give a MASSIVE THANK YOU to Emil Olsson for all the development work and for making this possible. Without him this new site wouldn’t exist. Words can not express how grateful I am for all his help. Not only is he ridiculously talented, he’s a super nice guy. So now onto the new features.
This site utilizes keyboard navigation to enhance the viewing experience. Use the up ? and down ? arrow keys to scroll through the site, which takes advantage of a nifty infinite scrolling feature. The site also has two viewing modes that can be accessed by pressing the (g) key for grid mode and the (l) key for list mode. And finally there’s a dashboard that can be opened and closed by pressing the (d) key. It contains other goodies like Twitter Hastags, inspirational links, featured articles and more.
For the design I wanted to keep it very simple, pushing site interface in the background and making the content the focus. I didn’t want to over do it with design elements that distracted you from the content. Based on the site stats over 85% of A1 viewers have screens larger than 1024 × 768 and 96% have a window width of 968px. Armed with that data, I decided to move beyond a 960px width to 1202px. Having an extra 242px to play with makes a big difference. The grid is made up of 10 columns, each 96px wide with 22px gutters between them. I usually build my grids based on the rule of thirds but this time I didn’t follow it. Mainly because I wanted to work with an image width of 450px since the previous design made use of that size.
You’ll also notice that AisleOne is now part of the Thinking for a Living Network, which will be launching a new site very soon. The Network is an alliance of like-minded individuals who are experimenting with publishing and education through a series of topic specific sites, conferences, workshops and publications. The Network includes Thinking for a Living, The Grid System, AisleOne, The Design Manifesto, Design Facts, More Substance, and Thought & Theory and is organized by Shane Bzdok, Antonio Carusone, Frank Chimero, Ian Coyle, J. Ellis and Duane King.
So that’s the new site. Please look around and let me know if you see any issues or if there’s anything you don’t like about the site or you want to see improved. This site is for you so I want to make it the best it can be.
Designer Morgan Smail sent me an email about an exhibit called Pre-Postmodern Swiss Posters that was held at San Jose State University from November 17-December 18, 2009. The posters are from the private collection of designer Aaron Marcus and feature some real gems. Morgan was kind enough to snap some photos of this wonderful exhibit, which I’ve uploaded to my Flickr page.
While doing some research for the exhibit I found this blog post by Aaron Marcus that goes into the history of how he assembled this wonderful poster collection. There’s also a PDF of Aaron’s presentation at the exhibit opening.
The students that attend San Jose State are sure fortunate! This was the same school that held the Spiele: Otl Aicher’s Olympic Graphic Design exhibit two years ago.
League is a Geneva-based design studio with an exceptional portfolio. Each piece is an exercise in simplicity. The poster shown here reminds me of this excellent poster by Robert Büchler.
Here’s some lovely work by Dutch designer Roger Willems. I’m particularly fond of these covers for the architectural publication, OverHolland. The bold colors, obvious grid and solid typography give these covers a classic feel as if they’re right out of the 60s era.
I’ve been a busy bee lately.
I’m pleased to announce that the 39 longboard I designed for Buddy Carr is now a reality.
When Buddy contacted me almost a year ago, I knew right away that our collaboration would produce work that would make us both happy. Designing the Hello skateboard and the 39 Longboard have both been the most satisfying projects I’ve ever worked on and I’m pretty happy with the results. Working with Buddy has been an absolute honor and pleasure.
When we began thinking about the 39, Buddy told me that he wanted it to be a mix of classic surf graphics with a modern touch. I did some research and I was really inspired by the simple, two-tone surf designs from the 50’s and 60’s. The shape of the board also takes its queue from the same era, featuring a classic pintail shape. For the type, I wanted to use a typeface that had a mix of both classic and modern, so I decided on Modern No. 20, which I think works perfectly. Also, believe it or not, I used a grid system for this design. Worked like a charm, even on a shape like this. Overall, I think it’s a nice package, but most important, it rides like a dream.
You can grab one over at the Buddy Carr site. Enjoy, the ride.