Made In Italy

Why does the UK get all the great design exhibits? Damn it all to hell! If you’re in London this Friday and Saturday, you’re going to want to check this one out.

Paper company Fedrigoni has partnered with design studio SEA, and Aiap to bring us Made In Italy, an exhibition and limited edition booklet celebrating mid-century Italian graphic design. Made In Italy will feature work from Giancarlo Iliprandi, Franco Grignani, Heinz Waibl, Mario Dagrada, Mimmo Catellano, and more.

The exhibit will be open from Friday, June 12th to Saturday, June 13th at Protein: Studio 2 gallery in London.

You can purchase tickets to the event from here.

Made In Italy

Made In Italy

Made In Italy

Made In Italy

Made In Italy

Made In Italy

L’Esigenza Della Velocità

velocita-longboard.jpg

Buddy Carr Skateboards just released L’Esigenza Della Velocità, a new longboard that I designed for them. The board features an innovative flush mount truck system that lowers the deck height, giving the rider better stability and control.

In Italian, “L’Esigenza Della Velocità” means “The Needs for Speed”, and that’s were I pulled most of my inspiration from. I’ve always been inspired by the beautiful graphic design and gorgeous color palettes present on racing cars from the 60’s and 70’s, and I tried to pay tribute to that minimal aesthetic is this design. It represents a time when graphic design was simpler and not bloated like it is today.

For the colors, I’ve been wanting to use a fluorescent Pantone for sometime now and the color Pantone 805 seemed to make sense for this piece. Coupled with a dark gray, I think it created a nice modern touch to the retro design. 805 is stunning in person.

For the layout, I composed the elements using the Golden Ratio. Might seem like overkill for something like this but it presented a pretty interesting composition that felt balanced to me. Here’s a screenshot of the guides in my Illustrator file that I created using the Golden Ratio. Because of the limited space on skateboards, I usually end up cropping elements to create a more interesting visual. I tried layouts where all the elements lived within the space, but that felt too unnatural and claustrophobic. Having elements bleed off the skateboard gives a sense of openness that I prefer. The checkered flag graphic and 805 color are continued onto the wheels to give the package a unified look.

When it came time to think about the typography, I knew that I wanted to design a typeface myself. Taking inspiration from vintage racing graphics, I designed a sans-serif that exhibits contemporary features, but that still retains that vintage feel. At least I think it does. My plan is to create a full typeface out of this, but we’ll see how that goes.

As with the other boards I’ve designed for Buddy, this was blast to do and I’m looking forward to creating some new designs for the lineup. We’re already in early phases of a new deck that continues this retro race aesthetic. Stay tuned!

For more pictures of the Velocita board, and to buy one, head over to the Buddy Carr site.