Dan Reisinger is an Israeli graphic designer who’s work includes posters, calendars, logos, corporate and environmental day. He’s probably most known for his work for EL AL Airlines, which includes a beautiful series of destination posters that were designed from 1968–72.

I love his style and his work is probably the only example I’ve ever seen of good design that uses Hebrew letters.

Reisinger also designed this lovely perpetual calendar for MoMA in 1987.

I’ve been meaning to post about this for a month now and finally got around to doing it.

Experimental Jetset recently designed this lovely poster, for architecture firm Shepley Bulfinch, announcing their 2010 fellowship. The design is based on the Roman numerals ‘MMX’ represented with geometric forms that relate back architecture. A brilliant piece.

You can read more about the design process on Shepley Bulfinch’s blog and get a peak at an early sketch EJ did for the poster. It’s always interesting to see how a design evolves from a sketch to the final piece.

In celebration of their 10th anniversary, Method has released the 10x10 series, which will focus on game changing topics that will
fundamentally impact today’s brands and their search for new revenue streams. The series includes essays, salons, and speaking engagements by industry leaders.

The first issue of the series, “Cable’s Lost Generation”, takes a look at the future of television and digital communications. A downloadable PDF of this issue is available on the site.

When my boss dropped a copy of the first issue on my desk a few weeks ago and I was immediately impressed by the stunning design. Well done in my book, but coming from Method, it’s expected.

The fine folks at Grafik Magazine asked if I we’re interested in doing an interview for their blog about my blog. Since I’m so fond of their little magazine, I couldn’t say no. You can read the full interview on their site. Enjoy.

A new and improved site for Thinking for a Living has launched! The site, in my opinion, is at the forefront of interactive design. It’s a great example of why Flash isn’t the only means of creating a dynamic interactive experience.

The site was designed by BBDK and Frank Chimero and built by Jedi Knight Ian Coyle. It features keyboard navigation, a fine grid, and a ton of original and inspirational content.

I’m super excited and proud to be a part of this fine network of people and sites. TFAL is a must read for any creative type.

Awesome new poster by data-viz king Peter Crnokrak titled Everyone Ever in the World. The poster is a visual representation of the number of people to have lived versus been killed in wars, massacres and genocide during the recorded history of humankind.

Screen printed by K2 Screen using gloss transparent ink on 650mm X 920mm GFSmith Plasma Polycoat 700 micron Jet Black plastic.

It was commissioned by, and available exclusively from Counter-Objects.

When I first saw Tom Balchin’s work, it blew my mind. This talented designer has a certain style that just seems perfect to me on every level. Tom uses only the minimum amount of elements and colors and organizes them on a solid grid. Perfect.

An awesome collection of work by Korean graphic design studio Workroom. Definitely check out their designs set in Hangul letters.

Elegant work by French designer Carine Collin. Simple and clean but yet very detailed. I also love the website.

To celebrate the launch of the new site, and my 1000 post which will happen any day now, the Limited Edition 2010 Letterpress Calendar is on sale for only $30. There are only a little over 25 calendars left so grab one before they’re all gone.

The calendar measures 16.5″ x 23.5″ (A2) and is printed on Crane Lettra Fluorescent White 110# (300gsm) paper that is specially developed for letterpress printing.

Each print is numbered and signed.

Buy Now

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.

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.

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.

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.

I want to switch it up a little today with the excellent illustration work by Matthew Lyons. I almost never feature illustration work, that’s because it’s rare for me to find good examples that fall within the “minimalism” and “modernism” categories. Matthew’s work does, on so many levels. His style is very minimal, he uses a lot of simple geometric shapes to form the elements and his subjects have a retro-modern-minimal 60’s feel to them that I absolutely love. The colors and shading are also very simplistic, not too much detail, just enough to get the idea across, but at the same time the illustrations have so much depth.

Brilliant work by an artist who’s still in school. Amazing.

Via ISO50

The Warfare of Deception is the work of Ryan Katrina and consists of 7 posters, which form a Basic Field Guide made up of 6 sections: Survival, Objective, Protocol, Safety, First Aid, and Communication. Each poster is 12″x18″ and printed on generic brown school paper using archival inks.

Lovely typographic work.

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.

Even though I’ve never done it, I love magazine design. Something about seeing a well-designed spread get’s my creative juices flowing. It’s unfortunate that the magazine industry is hurting because I’d hate to lose all the great creative.

Some of the best magazine designs I’ve seen are by Swiss graphic designer, Anouk Rehorek. His use of black and white color along with serif type is stunning and the way he integrates imagery really creates a perfect balance.

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.