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.
Dark Night of The Soul, an upcoming collaboration from David Lynch, Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse, Flaming Lips, Gruff Rhys, Iggy Pop, Suzanne Vega, Black Francis, Vic Chesnutt, Julian Casablancas, Jason Lyttle, Nina Persson, and James Mercer, is set to release this summer. The album will be accompanied by a book, featuring 100 photos by Director David Lynch.
*5/15/09 – The entire album is now streaming on NPR Music.
Via Pitchfork.
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.
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.
Micah Lidberg has a wonderful artist portfolio, full of illustrations, patterns, and hand-rendered type. The artist uses a variety of media, including digital, to produce these incredibly detailed works.
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.
The latest series of ads for Nike’s SB Custom series have tons of style. The photos, by Jon Humphries are both simple and complex. Each of the riders coordinate with the car that they are skating, not just using the color from the riders’ shoes, but their overall styles as well. The composition of each photo is individualized for the rider, but the series as a whole holds together perfectly. I also like the design of the “label” on the side of the ad. It feels scientific, and it makes each photo look like a specimen, which is a wonderful concept.
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.
Lou Dorfsman was the Creative Director at CBS for more than 40 years. One of his many contributions to the CBS working environment, Gastrotypographicalassemblage is an incredible work of three dimensional typography that occupies a large wall in the cafeteria. I’ve seen quite a few photos of the work, but I recently viewed this interview, which features images of the process, as well as commentary by the late Lou Dorfsman.
Click through the link below to view the video.
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