History Of Graphic Design
August 25th, 2008I found this little site on the history of graphic design. Pretty good read. It’s unfortunate that the design of the site isn’t all that great.
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Super Rare Design Books On Ebay
August 5th, 2008Category: Books, Design, Grid Systems, International Typographic Style, Typography
Comments: 18
I was just doing some ebay searching and found auctions for two VERY VERY rare graphic design books.
Publicity and Graphic Design in the Chemical Industry* (Chemie Werbung Und Grafik) — Published in 1967.
Moderne Werbe Und Gebrauchs Grafik Published in 1980.
Both are part of the ABC Verlag series of design books and are authored by Hans Neuburg.
I own both books and dropped a nice chunk of change for them, but they’re so worth it. You almost never find these two books anywhere so this is a super rare opportunity for some lucky person. I wanted to give you guys the heads up so one of you could grab them first. No bids on them yet so you can probably get them for a good price. And no, I have nothing to do with these auctions. Just wanted to spread the love.
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Don’t Forget Jacqueline Casey
August 4th, 2008Category: Books, Design, Grid Systems, International Typographic Style, Typography
Comments: 6
Usually when people talk about the International Typographic Style, Müller-Brockmann is the first person always mentioned, and rightfully so. He was the master of the style and still is. But one designer that almost never gets mentioned in the same conversation is one of my all-time favorite designers, Jacqueline Casey. It’s unfortunate that she doesn’t get some of the attention because her work is simply magnificent and does an amazing job of representing the style. As of right now, there are no books readily available (unless you can find this super rare book) that catalogue her work so until then this online gallery will have to do.
Eye Magazine has posted a nice little write-up on Casey and how she was the foremost US practitioner of the International Style.
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Blanka Flickr
May 30th, 2008Blanka has created a Flickr page displaying vintage posters and prints by Wim Crouwel, Josef Müller-Brockmann, Otl Aicher and many other great designers of the past. Absolutely amazing.
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Brauer Neue
April 17th, 2008Brauer Neue is a beautiful typefaced designed by the talented Swiss studio Elektrosmog. Brauer was originally designed by Pierre Miedinger (a nephew of Helvetica designer, Max Miedinger) for a Zurich based brewery called Brauerei Hürlimann. Below are two posters designed by Josef Müller-Brockmann in 1978 that feature the original typeface designed by Miedinger. Elektrosmog took this lost typeface and extended it into a full character set which includes Regular, Bold and Black weights.
You can purchase Brauer Neue from Lineto.
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Soulellis Studio
March 5th, 2008Soulellis Studio is a design firm based in New York City that does an exceptional job with Helvetica. Their work is reminiscent of the masterpieces created by such legends as Brockmann and Vignelli.
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Intervista: Experimental Jetset
February 4th, 2008Experimental Jetset is an Amsterdam graphic design unit founded in 1997 by Marieke Stolk, Erwin Brinkers and Danny van den Dungen. Focusing on printed matter and installation work and inspired by modernism and rock culture, Experimental Jetset has done work for clients such as the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum (SMCS), Purple Institute, Centre Pompidou, Colette, Dutch Post Group (TPG), Réunion des Musées Nationaux (RMN), Le Cent Quatre (104), De Theatercompagnie and t-shirt label 2K/Gingham. Since being formed, Experimental Jetset has emerged as one of the most respected studios in Europe.
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There
January 31st, 2008You have to respect any studio that has Brockmann and Crouwel posters on their walls. There, an agency based in Australia, has compiled an excellent body of work.
On a side note: I don’t like how their site functions. It’s pretty and all but it becomes very annoying when I have to wait for a new piece to load in Flash. It ends up taking forever to see all of the work and I quickly lose interest. I also don’t like that you can’t easily see all the work at once, even in thumbnail form. All the work should be right there and easy to view rather than having to explore the site in the dark. A good portfolio displays all the work at once, clearly and organized, so it makes viewing faster and more exciting. Area 17 is a great example of this. Flash is definitely the biggest cause for this issue. I think it’s being used more and more in a way where it’s become a barrier between the user and the work. In my opinion a simple CSS site works so much better for portfolios.
I’m not trying to trash There, they do awesome work, it’s just something I’ve been bothered with for some time now and needed to vent.
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Another New Theme
December 22nd, 2007So I thought about it for a while and I was growing tired of the look of the site. The theme was based on an Upstart Blogger theme that is great, but I was in a rush and it really didn’t come out looking how I envisioned it. So once I decided that it needed to change my initial thought was to create a whole new theme from scratch using Sandbox. I designed the theme is Photoshop and started to implement it into the Sandbox platform but I ran into the same problems as I did on my last theme quest. After some frustrating hours, I came to the conclusion that it would take too long for me to create a theme from scratch, I just don’t have that kind of patience. So I ended that and began focusing on finding a theme that was very simple, easy to customize and was built on some kind of grid system. Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy.
After some searching I finally found Marber by Apt Studio. It’s based on Romek Marber’s 1961 grid for Penguin Books, which is a huge plus, and when I looked at the CSS it was all clean and easy to understand. In no time I was on my way to creating a theme that I think represents my style as well as the content of this blog. I wanted a simple, clean design that payed homage to the modernist era and I think I accomplished. What ya think?
I’m going to be tweaking it in the next few days so pardon me if the site is down for quick changes. I haven’t tested how it looks on a PC so if those of you who do use a PC could give me some feedback that would be great.
I want to thank the folks at Apt Studio for creating such a wonderful theme. It might not be a theme with the most “eye candy” but it sure has a lot of underlining meaning to the form and structure that makes it so valuable. You can read a bit of the background to the theme here.
Here are some features:
- A simple, two-column theme.
- Six colour schemes, easily changed via the backend.
- Three layouts, for 800px width, 1000px width, and fully fluid, again easily switched via the admin panel.
- Widgetized sidebar.
- WP 2.3+ only — includes tags.
- Typographically set to a baseline grid.
- Author comment highlighting.
- Cross-browser compatible, with subtly different layouts for Mozilla, Webkit and IE browsers.
- Integrated microformats.
- Fully valid XHTML and CSS.
- Integrated Wordpress.com stats (with no smiley!).
- Custom 404 page.
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Josef Müller-Brockmann Tribute Video
December 6th, 2007[qt:http://dvblog.org/movies/04_2006/josefmullerbrockmann.mov 360 304]
Here’s a great motion graphics piece by Gary Butcher in tribute of graphic design legend Josef Müller-Brockmann. The video was made for the Forty Eight Posters exhibit.
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Peter Seitz: Designing a Life
December 5th, 2007Along with Brockmann, Crouwel and Aicher, Seitz is one of my biggest influences. His work has influenced many and is considered to be some of the best of our time. Design Observer has a great article on Seitz by Andrew Blauvelt, who also designed a book with Ryan Nelson called Peter Seitz: Designing a Life, a book featuring his work for the Walker Art Center. You can read about the making of the book on Ryan’s site and you can purchase the book from the Walker Art Center bookshop.