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Give yourself an award, courtesy of Jessica Hische
“Are you a creative person that constantly submits to competitions but never gets in? Are you over 30 and bummed that you missed your chance to be a 20 under 30? or a 30 under 40? or some other random number under some other random number? Well here’s an award for you. If you think you deserve an award, fill in your name and your job title and you’ll be given an award. Then you can put “award winning designer” or whatever on your resumé.”
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Loving these new business cards for Studio Moross, which was set up by graphic artist / illustrator / art director Kate Moross. I always like a colorful system like this, lots of variety!
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The Smithsonian Libraries have an online ‘galaxy of images’. One of the collections is Book Arts & Design which has some really fascinating typography and book covers from the modernist period, as well as pre-modernism such as the selection above. Love it, so rich especially the Jules Verne cover!
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I apologize in advance for this post if you are a fan of typograpy and lack free time…
Letter Cult have posted their Custom Letters, Best of 2012. Which is over 60 pages of amazing type and lettering. A real feast for the eyes, but it will take a while to get through. It’s split into 3 parts;
The pictures above are some of my favorites from their selections, and are by; Mary Kate McDevitt, Jessica Hische, Darren Booth, Mary Kate McDevitt (could have posted way more of her work), Dan Cassaro and Craig Ward.
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Maricor/Maricar, the studio of Australian twins Maricor and Maricar Manalo, updated their website in February with a new design and lots of new work. Just realised I’ve had this post in my drafts since then!
Big fan of all their work, very original. I especially love the embroidered and colourful typography. Think they have posted about their process in the past on their blog, or pictures on Instagram. Looking forward to perhaps seeing some embroidery in person at Pick Me Up this year.
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Easter Sunday seems like a good time to post chocolate packaging! Always been a fan of the design of Mast Brothers chocolate, which is made in Brooklyn. Love the simplicity of the patterns, bet the paper is nice and thick too.
You can read about it here;
“We originally just wrapped our chocolate in butcher paper, in hopes of doing anything we could to communicate the message that chocolate is food — not candy,” Rick Mast told me by e-mail. “We soon realized that the packaging needed something more so we tried to retain the feel of butcher paper but with beautifully designed patterns.” Every chocolate bar they create is hand-wrapped in specially designed patterned paper, one pattern for each of their many flavors. Although understated, the packaging, in its simplicity and thoughtfulness, alludes to the nature of the product it contains.
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Illustrator & designer Jim Datz has launched a new website (http://jimdatz.com/) and online shop (http://www.neitherfishnorfowl.com/). Big fan of his work, especially the 4 images above that make up his city series. A lovely mix of map, illustration and typography, with a very mid-century feel about them! As has much of Jim’s work.
Shame the London print is sold out, very high on the list of posters I’d want framed on my wall!
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Winter Warmer by Exeter based creative studio Buddy.
“Each year we send out a festive ‘Mulled Wine’ to clients and friends. Mulled wine is a traditional winter drink served warm, making it the perfect tonic to banish those winter chills…This year saw the birth of BUDDY’S ORIGINAL WINTER WARMER. The only sure and trusted way to ward off the icy claw of winter, and survive the manifold strifes of the festive season.”
Bit late for a christmas related blog post but couldn’t resist sharing this, so beautiful, definitely up there with Stranger & Stranger’s christmas projects (1,2 & 3). -
Happy Birthday Massimo Vignelli! He is 82 today, and definitely one of the great living designers. A modernist and a purist, as well as graphic design he has also been involved in many other disciplines including product and furniture design, which is lucky considering he is famous for saying among other things; “If you can design one thing, you can design everything.”
You can find more of his work here, plus lots more about him in this excellent post on Brain Pickings. But most of all you should read The Vignelli Canon, a free E-book published online back in 2009.
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I saw someone tweet about Jessica Hische’s new font Minot today, and had a quick look at her website for the first time in ages. I was quite surprised to see a lot of work I didn’t recognise, since she is so popular I’d usually expect to see all her new work somewhere or other online ( although I’m definitely not looking at as much stuff now I’m working all the time). This advertising campaign for Bing is one such project that is new to me;
“Bing put together a really fun campaign this year that I was pumped to be a part of—each day they had a letterer create a search term, something you would do in the summer. For a week, my lettering was posted one day at a time, but it was really fun to see what some of the other letterers did for the project!” jessicahische.is/doingthingsthissummer
Her website is looking excellent as ever, I think I once blogged about it’s Teen Girl Mode, pleased to see it has now been joined by Swiss Mode and Field Notes Mode (hint: click the heart in the top right corner), quite a fun feature!
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I first saw Cardon Webb’s new cover for The Invisible Man on Pinterest with no info below it, totally didn’t realise it was a contemporary cover! Being a lover of Mid-Century Modern (see my other blog), especially Lustig, Rand and Jazz album covers, I’m obviously going to think these are amazing (and I most definitely do). But personal preference aside they are also very vibrant and eye catching with excellent lettering. As well as having a good reason behind them;
“Ralph Ellison, one of the foremost African American authors of the literary canon, fell in love with music before he focused on writing. That’s why designer Cardon Webb researched record art and type from the mid-century jazz era to create fresh new covers for six of Ellison’s seminal works.”
I’ve been meaning to blog some of Cardon’s work for ages since he launched his new website, but whittling it down proved pretty difficult since I love all his work. Very talented designer, worth looking at his portfolio. Plus his excellent other websites;
- http://www.cardonuncovers.com/ for rejected cover designs ( I like these a lot).
- http://www.cardoncopy.com/ a project you may have seen before where he takes down hand-done flyers in his neighbourhood and replaces them with his own designs. Which is simultaneously interesting, hilarious and great design as well.
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Levi’s X Seb Lester
Amazing work, love the packaging. Seb Lester always does great work, very luxurious lettering. If you managed to miss this lovely video about his work when he released some new prints recently, now would be the time to watch it!
And he once wrote my name in calligraphy, which was very nice (pic here), keep an eye on his facebook for that, he does it from time to time.
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“Typographic headline made of photographed wire and copper, illustrating the issue of copper wire theft.”
Nice typography for Wired magazine (US) by Sawdust, a London based creative duo who mainly specialise in custom type. More pictures and development sketches can be found on their Behance; www.behance.net/gallery/Wired-Magazine-Typographic-Illustration/6015931
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Book designer extraordinaire Jon Gray (aka Gray318) has a nice new website where you can see lots of his work; http://gray318.com/ . The 9 book covers above are just a selection I like and don’t think I’ve posted before. That Capote must be one of my favorite covers!
His newest book jacket, for The Yellow World, is lovely. But best not seen as just a front cover! Luckily you can see the whole design on The Dieline in a post from today; http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2012/11/6/yellow-world.html
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The Guardian - ‘Magazine cover design - in pictures’
Some real classics here! Including some brilliant designers who are maybe lesser known, such as Ken Garland, Ladislav Sutnar and Lester Beall (first 3 pictures above). Not sure how they didn’t include one of the George Lois Esquire covers, but I think that gives me an idea for my next blog post…
The gallery goes with this article about The Phaidon Archive of Graphic Design, which looks like a really great (if expensive) collection of design history.
