Pan Am Destination Posters
June 16th, 2010These beautiful and mysterious Pan Am posters were designed in 1971 by Chermayeff & Geismar. What’s remarkable about these posters — other than the minimal design and the use of Helvetica — is the power of the photography. The simple, sometimes monocromatic, images make a clear statement about the location and inspire the viewer. You can see a few other examples here and here.
DCrit student Frederico Duarte did a little digging and discovered some interesting info about the posters. You can read the story on the Eye Magazine blog and in a feature.
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Mitsuo Katsui
May 25th, 2010Extraordinary collection posters by Japanese designer Mitsuo Katsui.
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New Posters on Blanka’s Flickr
April 2nd, 2010The stuff that gets added to Blank’s Flickr page always leaves me amazed. I have no idea where they get all this vintage work from. They’ve recently updated their page with a ton of posters by Hans Neuburg, Herbert W. Kapitzki, Armin Hofmann and Josef Müller-Brockmann, many of them I’ve never seen before.
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Anton Stankowski
February 8th, 2010I 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.
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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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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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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.
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Carl B. Graf
November 13th, 2009Carl Bernhard Graf (1926 – 1968) was a Zürich based graphic designer that not many people know about. But the work that he left behind is just as good as the well-known designers of his time.
There isn’t much information on Graf (hence the terrible quality of the photo above) but Jonathan Turner has put together a Flickr set comprised of his work. You can also see more of Graf’s work in the classic design books “Graphic Design in Swiss Industry” and “Publicity and Graphic Design in the Chemical Industry”.
If you have any extra cash laying around, you can pick up an original Graf poster for $350.
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Hans Gremmen
October 19th, 2009Category: Design, Grid Systems, International Typographic Style, Typography
Comments: 3
Amsterdam based designer Hans Gremmen’s work is clean, beautiful and extremely well designed. He’s has an exceptional skill for composition and typography that make his designs shine. The poster pictured here is set in the lovely Franklin Gothic.
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OK-RM 2009
September 28th, 2009The fantastic studio OK-RM updates their site with new work from this year. They’re responsible for the Barbican identity system, one of my all time favorites.
Pictured above is some print work for Beyond These Walls, a group exhibition at the South London Gallery.