AisleOne. A visual journal on design, photography, film, music and culture.
I love finding gems like this.
Anton Stankowski was a Germany designer and teacher who pioneered constructive graphic design and is probably best known for designing the wonderful Deutsche Bank logo, which makes excellent use of a grid. I also love how he used basic geometric shapes to create the visuals.
David has some hi-res images of Stankowski’s work. Beautiful.
While searching for who knows what, I found these vintage Ravensburger Travel Series games from the 70s. What immediately struck me were the beautiful package designs and the stunning color palettes. Simple, straight to the point graphics with the name of the game set in Helvetica.
It goes to show how graphic design for consumer products has lost its way. Just compare these wonderful package designs to one of their current games. Terrible.
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 have a thing for well-designed calendars and letterpress printing, so this year I tried to combine the two into a single project.
Now available to order is this Limited Edition 2010 Letterpress Calendar. The print features a calendar with the year printed in English, Italian, French and German. The 2010, the days of the week, and the edition number line are all printed blind, and of course, the type is set in Helvetica. Each print is numbered and signed.
The size of the calendar is 16.5″ x 23.5″ (A2) and printed on Crane Lettra Fluorescent White 110# (300gsm) paper, which is specially made for letterpress. The quality of the paper is superb and gives the print an extra special feel to it.
The printing was done by the fabulous Coeur Noir of Brooklyn, NY. I used these guys for my son’s baptism invites and they also printed all the Helvetica Film posters, as well as the Objectified poster. They simply rock.
This run is very limited, only 50 prints were made, so order one now for $70. You can check out more detailed photos here.
If you’re looking for an affordable framing option, I recommend picking up a good-looking, but inexpensive, IKEA Ribba Frame (19.75″ x 27.5″) and have a custom matte cut to fit it. This setup will run you less than $50.
