The Olympic Collectors Commission of the The International Olympic Committee in Lausanne has compiled an incredible online collection of posters relevant to the games and the surrounding events. The design influences, which come from both the time period and the geographical location, provide a wonderful glance into the cultures that expressed them.
Alex Cornell’s work is classy. The time-bending effects used (photo cross-processing, yellowed paper, and other grungy “flaws”) look nice, but type selection and layout style are what I really like about Cornell’s designs. For example, on several of his projects, Futura is used in a way which is reminiscent of Mid-Century museum signage; centered and tracked out. You can see more examples of Cornell’s work on his Behance page and on Scott Hansen’s ISO50 blog.
Maraid has quite an array of vintage matchbook labels from Eastern Europe on Flickr. It’s fascinating to see the effects created by the bleeding inks and the unpredictable registration associated with printed materials of this scale.
Delicious Industries has a wonderful collection of Which? (The Consumer’s Association Magazine) covers ranging from the 1960’s to the 1990’s. The covers were designed by London’s Banks & Miles (Colin Banks and John Miles). Check out the Flickr group.
Bruce Black has an enormous collection of scanned colophons from the 1940’s & 50’s on his website. Each of these marks utilizes a limited color palette and overall shape simplicity. I particularly appreciate the “common” aesthetic found in these marks. They weren’t created to be pretentious or high-end, but to appeal to the average reader who is simply looking for entertainment.
Via Design Observer.
Npgraphicdesign has a vast collection of vintage London Underground posters in a Flickr set. It’s a wonderful glance into the stylistic evolution of a culture.
David Levine has an extraordinarily large collection of international travel ephemera from the 20’s and 30’s. There are some extremely inspiring graphics featured on some of these brochures, and it is quite humbling to imagine that more than 80 years ago someone thought of these great ideas and executed them without the use of a computer. Be sure to check out the brochures from Switzerland.
McFaul Studio creates the kind of client work that a lot of designer/illustrators aspire to produce. The studio does a lot of work for large, corporate clients, but their fun, youthful style is always present.
Letman (Job Wouters) has some great illustrative and hand-lettered work in his portfolio. It’s refreshing to see that many of his projects do not contain any digitally-rendered typefaces. I also really like the video project, ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ, in which Wouters has a lettering session with his nephew. It’s really interesting to see how children interpret the letters that they see.
Experimental Jetset is an incredible design studio in Amsterdam. Most of us recognize their work from Gary Hustwit’s documentary, Helvetica. This podcast, filmed at The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, reveals the backgrounds of the designers and some of the processes behind some of their iconic pieces (I had no idea that Experimental Jetset was behind the John&Paul&Ringo&George t-shirt designs until I saw this lecture).
Sites worth viewing
For your ears.
Found Footage
The History of The Amen Break
Objectified Trailer
The Dot And The Line
The American Look - 1958
Cold War Modern - Dieter Rams
If Mos Def Were President
The Archive
Children of The Clone - by superbrothers
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLUFound images
Josef Müller Brockmann Flickr Set by Blanka
Dusty Summers
Gebrauchsgraphik via Flickr
Evan B. Harris poster for Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
James Joyce
Planet Propaganda via Street Anatomy
Valero Doval
1950's-70's Flickr Set
Si Scott Studio
Overnewsed But Uninformed via Lightgreen