Essential Graphic Design Literature

PingMag's choice picks for essential graphic design literature: a great list of titles that "add to design history, criticism, and discourse." Be sure to read the comments—inevitably, arguments and additions arise.

The Personal Project

Over at Speak Up, Armin Vit mulls over the tricky territory that is the personal project. "I admire the tenacity and desire they represent but I also question their relevance..."

Next Industrial Revolution: Design Nutrition

A clean, stylish little video for Next Industrial Revolution presents "technical nutrition" as a solution to the environmental issues surrounding recycling and resource depletion... "Start the next industrial revolution—design your products to be nutrition." [via JS]

Ray Harryhausen Creature List

Emphasizing his work in feature films, the Ray Harryhausen Creature List is a brilliant little resource for animators and fans of Harryhausen's pioneering stop-motion animation and groundbreaking visual effects. Pick your creature (or you can sort via film), get a little QuickTime clip. I recommend a few hits of anything from Clash of the Titans. [via Drawn!]

AdGoodness on YouTube

The newly formed AdGoodness YouTube group has been created to share ads and videos—if interested, join the network and posts ads of note. Pictured above, a featured ad for the Wii.

What is up at the ADC?

There is some commotion at Be A Design Group over the Art Director's Club latest poster for the 2007 show—there was fury over last year's poster too, causing some to speculate that the ADC is just trying to get a reaction. Check things out for yourself (and be sure to read the spirited comment session).

Walton Ford at the Brooklyn Museum

This is the last weekend for Tigers of Wrath: Watercolors by Walton Ford at the Brooklyn Museum. Ford is one of my absolute favorites—underneath those Audubon-esque surfaces lie various commentaries on violence, colonialism, politics, social evolution and more. Academic, meticulous, disturbing, beautiful. [via the Village Voice]

The iPhone, Conan Style

Fun for Friday: Conan O'Brien's recent spoof of the iPhone. It's a phone and so much more... Perhaps we are indeed starting to expect too much from our ultra-designed gadgets.

100 Top Typefaces

A nicely put together collection of the 100 Top Typefaces (the site is in German, but don't be deterred). [via Jason Santa Maria]

The Heads of State

Design duo The Heads of State create beautiful posters, logos and illustration for major publications and the music industry (and beyond). Wonderful silkscreened prints make great use of minimalist imagery, negative space, visual concepts, atmospheric color and grungy illustrated type. [via 37signals]

Coudal's Dear Cell-Phone User SHHH Cards

Why not express your frustration with noisy cell phone users by distributing a nicely designed SHHH card [pdf]? Fun idea from Coudal Partners... yet they do suggest "handing one out and then leaving the immediate area." They also admit in this Wired article that they don't know of anyone who has actually used the cards—perhaps people prefer the adrenaline charge of verbal confrontation over diplomatic typographic messages (which recalls a recent Overheard in New York, where someone's attempts at creative insults were thwarted by a man who calmly said, "This is New York, son. A simple f*ck you will do.").

Akira Kobayashi on FF Clifford

Type designer Akira Kobayashi's essay on the making of FF Clifford is available to read at FontShop. "A wonderfully personal story about the struggles and discoveries of a five-year journey in type design..."

Ariston Aqualtis Ad

This tv spot for the Ariston Aqualtis washing machine is dreamy, imaginative and just plain fun. It's not a new ad (video sites have it showing up last summer), but it's new to myself and the majority of my design cronies—we've been emailing it around and enjoying it for the last few days. The ad was done by Leo Burnett (Milan) and the music is by Vangelis (people keep asking). All in all, it's a great little creative pick up here in chilly January. [thanks Yuthi!]

ALSO: There is a slightly different version of the ad available on Ariston's home Italian site.

Every Card For a Year

Interesting idea (and one that could be conceptually hijacked and put to use for self-promotion or other projects): a boxed set of illustrated cards designed to get you through a year's worth of major holidays and occasions, including birthdays and anniversaries: Every Card For a Year, available from Elsewheres. [via Outblush]

Architecture for Humanity Contest: UPDATE

Want to see how the logo competition is going over at Architecture for Humanity? Check out the final round via Flickr. Details on the contest were previously featured here.

Rothko and Simplification

The paintings above were done by Mark Rothko. What? Yep, that's the early work of Rothko. 37signals has a great post about Rothko's artistic progression and how he gradually simplified his paintings in an attempt towards clarity.

This would be the familiar Rothko. Now, not everyone buys the simplification angle, it seems, and things heat up a bit in the comment session. Regardless of how you feel personally about Rothko, a less-is-more focus can often result in an extremely effective design process and it's interesting to compare the potency of these different styles.

Color Swatch Fans

The Creation Gallery in Tokyo has challenged designers to reinvent the fan as a response to growing awareness of global warming. Featured: a fan made from a swatch featuring "cool" colors.

Litmus Journal and Litmusphere Online

Each issue of the Litmus Journal features the generally enigmatic work of emerging Australian writers, artists, illustrators and photographers—and now they've got an online version... [via Cool Hunting]

Etsy Labs: Potentially Awesome

Springwise reports that popular vendor site Etsy (which some have called the "eBay of crafting") is setting up Etsy Labs in Brooklyn. What does this mean for designers? The Etsy team is all about handmade goods and so will be setting up the lab as a community resource—members will be able to shop, attend classes and workshops, and use communal equipment for silkscreening and letterpress... what a great development!

Type Rocks: the Brighton Typeface

You know you're truly type obsessed when you immediately see the alphabet in the rocks displayed above. These stones make up the Brighton Typeface: "In the summer of 2004, on a day trip to Brighton, I found a stone in the shape of the letter B. We spent the rest of the day searching for the rest of the alphabet..." [via Coudal Partners]

Design Elevates Experience Tee

Wear with pride: the Design Elevates Experience t-shirt from Artefacture (makers of several other design-themed shirts, including the previously featured I Will Pay For Good Design shirt. [via Preshrunk]

Persepolis the Film

Marjane Satrapi's landmark non-fiction graphic novel Persepolis is being made into an animated film (featuring the vocal talents of Catherine Deneuve, no less). More info:
New York Times article on the film and Satrapi
Official Film website
GDBar's previous feature on non-fiction graphic novels

Logo Design Trends 2007

The LogoOrange Design Group puts forth their estimates for the 11 trends that will define logo design in 2007 (do most people really call those things hot dogs??).

Target: Hello "Goodbuy"

Target's new ad, which puns Beatles' lyrics into "Hello, Goodbuy", is causing a commotion—people either laud it as brilliance or decry it as an unclever and banal misstep. Decide for yourself:
The ad on YouTube
Discussion at AdFreak

Running from Camera

More Fun for Friday: the Running from Camera blog features photos of people doing exactly that. The rules: put the camera timer on 2 seconds, push the button, then RUN. [via Photojojo, who feature several other goofy photo collections]

Personal Annual Report 2006

The internet is all a-buzz for Nicholas Feltron's latest personal annual report. His 2005 report was previously featured here.

Pantone Predicts Color of 2007

The HOW magazine blog reports that Pantone has predicted that Chili Pepper will be the hot color of 2007 (closest PMS equivalent: 201C, paints & interiors: 19-1557). I guess we'll have to wait and see...

Readymech

Fun for Friday: the Readymech series combines a designer's love of plans and folds with good old fashioned toy geekdom. Practically endless (and FREE) fun awaits—just select a creature, download the pdf, print it out (the better the paper, the better the result) and assemble (true design nerds have a trusty range of adhesives at the ready). [via Cool Hunting]

Veer 365 Screensaver

Veer has a new "happy moments" screensaver called 365 that combines a daily stock photo and a sort of moments-of-our-lives caption (example: "Shelby pulled her chair closer to the fireplace and watched the flames flicker across the ceiling.") The sentiments are way too cheesy for my taste, but I'm a sucker for the photography.

Massimo Vignelli's Helvetica Outtake

In an outtake from the upcoming Helvetica documentary, Massimo Vignelli compares his 1972 subway map with the "junky" map of today and confesses that, if he had things to do over, he'd correct a mistake. [via DO]

Clemens Kogler: Le Grand Content

Muse on the meaning of it all via graphs and charts in Clemens Kogler's animated infographic Le Grand Content. Kogler is a student of illustration and digital animation based in Linz, Austria. [via kottke]

Top 100 Ad Campaigns of the Century

AdAge lists the top 100 advertising campaigns of the (last) century. "Only seven employ celebrities, and only eight of them invoke sex, and only four of them play on consumer fear and insecurities in the way the industry is constantly decried for doing..." [via 37signals]

COLOURLovers on Prickie

COLOURLovers can now wear their favorite palettes: buttons are available at popular badge site Prickie (you'll have to hunt for COLOURLovers alphabetically). COLOURLovers was previously featured in September.

Quipsologies

The Quipsologies posts over at Speak Up are always chock full of interesting links and tidbits. So much so that they've now overflowed into their own Quipsologies site. Check it out, and perhaps add a quip of your own!

Studio On Fire Letterpress Calendar

Cool Hunting features Studio On Fire's 2007 Letterpress calendar. Studio On Fire is the firm of Minneapolis-based designer Ben Levitz, who features the work of five different designers in his annual calendars. 2007 starts off with Levitz's own Phoenix rising and also includes the work of Colorblok, Brian Gunderson, Rinzen, Plain Gravy and Faile.

Citi Loses the Red Umbrella

Citigroup is rebranding and ditching the trademark red umbrella that has been part of their logo since the merger with Travelers Insurance in the late 90s.
Full article in the NYTimes
Citigroup on Wikipedia
R.BIRD on Paula Scher's infamous tweak on the Citi umbrella

New iPhone embraces Helvetica

Subtraction's Khoi Vinh (a diehard Helvetica fan, no question) waxes rhapsodic about the use of Helvetica on the upcoming iPhone. "Digital devices have rarely been exemplars of excellent typography, and the fact that the iPhone team took the time to address such a subtle but significant aspect of the design is meaningful..."

Whitespace

Mark Boulton examines how whitespace impacts branding and legibility in an interesting article on A List Apart.

Old Masters, New Fonts

Allan Haley spotlights the recent achievements of Hermann Zapf and Adrian Frutiger in his article Old Masters, New Fonts for HOW Magazine. Zapf is pushing 89 and Frutiger is just ten years younger, but these masters are still going strong.

Taschen Warehouse Sale

The TASCHEN store in Soho is having a big warehouse sale January 19-21. Thousands of slightly damaged and display copies from their collections will be priced between 50-75% off.

Doug Aitken: Sleepwalkers at MoMA

Video artist Doug Aitken’s Sleepwalkers, a series of large-scale film sequences, will be projected nightly onto seven outer walls of the MoMA from January 16th through February 12th. This "unprecedented, site-specific, public project" features an eclectic cast that includes Tilda Swinton and Donald Sutherland. Looks very interesting—the MoMA building come to life in a new way.

Studio Pin-Ups

Like a little sex with your typography? Then Taylor Lane's Studio Pin-Ups, winner of the 2006 Epica Award in the Publications category, are for you. Featured: Miss Bodoni, an "Italian stunner" with "voluptuous curves" who "always looks best well leaded"... [via Alex Jones]

Endless Landscapes & Polyoramas

The Drawn! illustration blog spotlights artists Alice Angus and John Ralston, who create panels of interchangeable elements that can be arranged to create many different possible scenes—they call them endless landscapes and polyoramas, respectively. I'd love to see a typographic take on this idea.

New ICA Boston

Next time you're in Boston, be sure to visit the new Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) building at Fan Pier. Designed by NYC architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, it's an exciting space (arguably more interesting than the exhibits within). Highlights include the theater, where the transparency of the walls can be adjusted, and the cantilevered-by-a-cantilever mediatheque room that hangs suspended above the water. More info about the design can be found on arcspace (unfortunately, plans for the intriguing lenticular glass front wall were thwarted by the client, but the panoramic view of Boston Harbor helps to take the edge off the disappointment).

I heard Elizabeth Diller speak about this building at Semi-Permanent 2005 and it was a great presentation. If you can make it up to the ICA, the architects will be giving a lecture there on January 17th.

13 Photographs That Changed the World

One of the things I hear most from fellow designers is that they want to learn more about photography—here's a good place to start: Neatorama spotlights 13 photographs that changed the world. Iconic shots from Robert Capa, Dorothea Lange, Man Ray, Matthew Brady, Ansel Adams and others are featured with explanatory paragraphs about why these images made an impact. Jot down the names of these photographers, hit the library (or Wikipedia) for a little research, and you'll soon have built a nice foundation of photographic history knowhow on which to build. [via kottke]

Wonder

The design word for January over at Speak up is Wonder.

Lounge72 2007 Design Calendar

The Lounge72 Design Portal has a cool free 2007 pdf calendar "representing the contemporary global design scene", downloadable by month. [via Poppy]

Pet Shop Boys: the Brand

Fun for Friday (at least, for PSB fans): Adrian Shaughnessy over at Design Observer examines the brand image of the Pet Shop Boys. PSB are celebrated at the National Portrait Gallery in London in an exhibition highlighting their "sustained production of a 'look' suffused with style, wit, art-world sensibility and pop-culture savvy." As someone who was a young artist in the 80s, intrigued and influenced by the covers of my collection of PSB cassettes, I find this unexpected (but well-deserved) honor pretty exciting (the diehard PSB fans come out of the woodwork in the DO comment session).

Websites that use Illustration

Design Meltdown has an interesting collection of websites that use illustration to elevate their online presence above the norm. Part 1 of the collection appeared back in June, Part 2 just surfaced. His choices favor character-based illustration, but there are also several with wonderfully drawn page elements such as column borders and backgrounds.

Design Details: R.BIRD's Patterns

The Patterns series from the design team at R.BIRD are reports full of "professional observations about package design practices within specific product categories." For example, what is the energy of CRUNCH? How do you say CRUNCH with type? What background textures seem to sell CRUNCH? Other reports (each available as a free pdf download) include juices, energy drinks, cold medicines, lo-carb lifestyles... the list goes on. [via 37signals, who quote Charles Eames: "The details are not the details. They make the design.”]

Tribeca Film Festival Loves Threadless

The Tribeca Film Festival is the latest cohort in the themed "Loves" competitions over at Threadless. Design a t-shirt celebrating "Passion through storytelling" and you could win $1,500 cash, a festival package (including airfare, hotel, various swag, passes, etc.), and also a bunch of Threadless goodies. If you've never submitted a design to Threadless before, consider it—your design is open to comments during the week that it is being scored, which is a little like being thrown to the lions but generally toughens your designer skin.