Mash Creative 2011 Limited Edition Calendar

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Mash Creative have released a 2011 version of their beautiful limited edition ‘minutes’ calendar, a successor to last years successful 2010 ‘seconds’ calendar. This one has been printed with glow in the dark ink so you can enjoy it at any time of day.

When I posted about last years version, it stirred up a small debate about the design and function of the calendar, so here’s an excerpt from Mash on their thought process:

The human race seems to be obsessed with time, it’s the one thing we never seem to have enough of. The year ‘Twenty Eleven’ (2011) is made up of five hundred and twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes, that’s an average of around fourty three thousand, eight hundred minutes a month. Our calendar has been designed to be a typographic representation of the year, each month has been broken down into minutes which have been listed below each month name. The jumbled title text at the top of the poster continues the theme from last years calendar and has been influenced by old analogue flip clocks. The calendar has been printed with glow in the dark ink allowing the design to take on a completely different look at night. Using the idea of sidereal time (star time) the highlighted months glow like a constellation of stars.

Expertly screen printed by Bob Eight Pop – each poster has been printed in white and glow in the dark ink and printed onto high quality 160gsm Raven Black Kaskad. Each poster is hand numbered and signed by the designer.

You can grab one of these beauties from Counter Objects.

Edits by Edit

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Edits for Edit is a project that features very limited edition posters by select designers that were asked to pick a genre of music, and create a design using only one element and one typeface. The A1 posters are screen printed on French Paper Pop Tone and for sale on the site.

The New Wave poster featured here is by my good friend Duane King.

Limited Edition Helvetica Poster

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Sorry for the lack of posts this past week, I was under the weather.

Swiss Dots, the producers of the Helvetica documentary, have create this new limited-edition screenprint for the film. The print is inspired by a 1960’s design that has been seen on D. Stempel AG brochures, type specimens and posters — which has been making an appearance on the TV show, Mad Men.

The poster is hand screenprinted on archival 300gsm paper, A2 size (16 1/2? x 23 1/2?) in a numbered edition of 100 copies, each signed by director Gary Hustwit. You can order one here for $150.

L’Esigenza Della Velocità

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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.      

Everyone Ever in the World

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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.