Naoto Fukasawa
March 12th, 2010I’ve been obsessed with furniture design, specifically chair design, for some time now. My all-time favorite chair designer is none other than the brilliant Hans Wegner. If you’ve never heard of the name, you’ve probably seen one of his classic chairs.
Recently though, I’ve become obsessed with the chair designs of Naoto Fukasawa. Fukasawa is best known for his MUJI CD player, Plus Minus Zero Humidifier, and au/KDDI INFOBAR and Neon phones, all of which are part of MoMA’s permanent collection.
Since 2008, Fukasawa has designed a furniture series for Japanese company Maruni Collection for their Hiroshima line. The collection includes a dinning set and a living set, all constructed with beech and oak wood. The entire line is simply stunning, but what stands out for me are the small dining chairs pictured here. The simple, streamlined design, the mix of sharp and rounded edges and corners, along with the choice of wood make for a beautifully designed chair. Too bad it costs an arm and a leg or I’d fill up my apartment with them.
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Tom Balchin
February 19th, 2010When 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.
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Workroom
February 17th, 2010An awesome collection of work by Korean graphic design studio Workroom. Definitely check out their designs set in Hangul letters.
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Carine Collin
February 10th, 2010Elegant work by French designer Carine Collin. Simple and clean but yet very detailed. I also love the website.
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1970s Ravensburger Travel Series
February 2nd, 2010While 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.
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Pre-Postmodern Swiss Posters Exhibit
January 21st, 2010Category: Design, Events, Grid Systems, International Typographic Style
Comments: 2
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.
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Matthew Lyons
January 19th, 2010I 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.
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League
January 12th, 2010Category: Design, Grid Systems, International Typographic Style, Typography
Comments: 1
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.
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This Studio + Twenty Ten Poster
December 16th, 2009Category: Design, Grid Systems, International Typographic Style, Typography
Comments: 4
It’s that time of the year again and the uber-talented David Bennett has released his mouth-watering 2010 calendar poster. The poster is set in Europa Grotesk and printed one color on a 80gsm stock. I just received one in the mail and it’s stunning in person. If you ask him nice enough he might send you a copy.
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Experimental Jetset CAPC Catalog & Poster
December 16th, 2009Category: Design, Grid Systems, International Typographic Style, Typography
Comments: 7
David over at SeptemberIndustry spotted this gem on Experimental Jetset’s Myspace page. A gorgeous set of print work EJ did for an Heimo Zobernig exhibition in Bordeaux. The work includes an A2 folded to A5 Invitation, A4 Catalog and a massive poster.
I love how the minimal design really makes the poster stand out in a public environment. Exceptionally strong and stunning visual.
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Dieter Rams
December 7th, 2009
Image courtesy of September Industry.
Seems like there’s a ton of stuff going on around Dieter Rams and his legendary work.
There’s the “Less and More — The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams” exhibit at the Design Museum in London.
To coincide with the event, a book with the same name will be released by Gestalten this month which features all of Rams’ products as well as selected sketches and models. They also have a video interview with Rams on their website.
The excellent design agency Bibliotheque has created two stunning posters dedicated to Rams’ legacy. The first, which is pictured here, is titled “Dieter Rams’ Ten Principles” and features his ten principles for good design. They were commissioned by Vitsœ to create the poster, which is currently available on their site.
The second lovely poster they designed is titled “Dieter Rams T1000″ and features an illustration of the Braun T1000 shortwave receiver. It will be screen printed and should be available this week.
And finally we have the retrospective book “BRAUN – Fifty Years of Design and Innovation” that celebrates 50 years of the Braun brand. The book is slated to be released in 2010 but you can pre-order it now through Amazon.
Wheew! That was a lot! Enjoy.
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Herbert W. Kapitzki
November 17th, 2009My jaw dropped when I saw the work of Herbert W. Kapitzki over at Grain Edit this morning. Never heard of him before today but I’m glad I stumbled upon his work.
Kapitzki was a former student of Willi Baumeister, conceived and designed exhibitions for the state industrial inspection board (Landesgewerbeamt) in Stuttgart in the 1950s and the early 1960s. He later invited by Otl Aicher to teach at the Academy of Design in Ulm.
His poster work is exceptional and I also love his logo and pictograms. What an excellent collection of work but unfortunately the quality of the images are poor. I really wish all of this classic work was better archived. Too many great pieces from great designers are getting lost.