Project Thirty-Three is a collection of vintage record covers, all of which feature minimal shapes and flat colors combined with simple typography.

The talented folks at antrepo4.com are giving away a beta version of an all-caps font family that is, in their words, “A little industrial, little vintage, little condensed, little bold.” Public Gothic has a great old-school look that falls into the same category as typefaces like Univers Ultra Condensed, Trade Gothic, and Tungsten.

Download it here.

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.

J.R. Geigy was a Swiss chemical company in the  50’s and 60’s. Their in-house designers played an integral role in the history of the Swiss International style. The company’s designs recently received quite a spotlight, via an exhibition at the Design Museum Zurich and the publication of Corporate Diversity : Swiss Graphic Design by Geigy. One would think that designs like these would require the use of Helvetica, but the Akzidenz Grotesk typeface was undeniably successful in many of the designs. 

A short film was also created regarding the exhibition.
Via AisleOne

I was immediately attracted to the use of clean type and noisy photography in the album art for Brian Gossett’s, The Heist Series. However, the series goes deeper than just the pretty covers, it also has a great concept. Gossett’s love for the heist film genre becomes apparent through his vast knowledge of the films’ scores and his ability to compile the compositions in a cohesive manner. Check out his site, where you can download the mixes and read his wonderful accompanying descriptions.

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.

Via Sci-Fi-O-Rama

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.

I’ve seen several “design remix” projects (including the video game/book covers by Olly Moss) but Logan Walters’s Wu-Tang / Blue Note Record covers manage to breathe some new life into the trend. Walters did a great job of capturing Blue Note’s design style and the application succeeds in looking like Wu-Tang’s music sounds, gritty and bold.

Bonus: Check out the latest Wu video: New Wu