The year I discovered Sagmeister

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London Design Festival promo by Pentagram

From a London Design Festival (LDF) retweet promoting their show I have now found a really great blog from Melanie Kimmett. Double promo here – firstly of the great work by Pentagram  – Dominic Lippa, Jeremy Kunze, Lucy Groom – for the promotional materials and second for LDF retweeting Melanie, who’s site I now will need to pour over for hours!

The theme for this year is the phrase Design from all angles “echoing the desire of the organisers to expand the list of events and disciplines taking part…The team created the look by printing text on pieces of paper and then folding and photographing them from different angles. The differing angles enable the 2011 festival to have a flexible identity across the whole gamut of events whilst maintaining a consistent look and feel. Once more the identity leverages its ownership of red in order to create maximum impact.” Words and pics via Pentagram.

Reminds me of the (hand rendered!) work Alan Fletcher did for Pirelli back in 61 (below) – which is still stunning…

The show itself runs from 17-25 September 2011

Filed under: Design, Exhibition, Graphic, , , , ,

Show RCA 2011

Show RCA 2011 starts from 24 June – 3 July 2011.
(11am – 8pm daily) Check here for all the visitor info.
Note to self – go this year, its been a while…

“At Show Battersea, Fine Art students exhibit in the Painting and Sculpture buildings at the RCA’s SW11 campus and in the Testbed 1 Gallery nearby. Applied Art, Architecture, Communications, Design, Fashion & Textiles and Humanities come together at Show Kensington in a remarkable gathering of design talent. Show Fashion – when graduates present their final collections in two catwalks shows – took place on 1 June, to great acclaim.” Words from the RCA site, image from their twitter feed.

Filed under: Design, Exhibition, Graphic, , , ,

Geekhearts a day – Rebekah Lock

Awesome daily online sketch book by my mate Becky. She has set herself the challenge of creating a heart shaped ‘design’ every day for 2011. Each heart that is created has a lovely story with it. Check it out here.

Filed under: Blogs, Graphic, , , ,

Carlton Brewery by Cornwell


Cornwell
 – seen some other work by these guys on 1983, checked out their site and really like the look of this work they did for Carlton Brewery. Words and pic from their site.

“The Carlton Brewery is one of Melbourne’s largest urban renewal projects. It features commercial, residential and retail environments. As Grocon’s brand and communication advisor, we set up the nomenclature and a brand identity system to support all phases of the project. Our New City Living campaign came out of the project’s Pixel building, the first totally carbon neutral building of its type in Australia.”

Filed under: Design, Graphic, , , , ,

Betty & June – Ryan Feerer

Seen via Graphic Exchange – then checked out Ryan Feerer’s site. Really nice stuff, all the way from Abilene, Texas.
Love the work, but also the quality of the photography of the work – the fact that they are great shots and also the graininess of them.
Words and pics from here.

“…branding and packaging for my (Feerer’s) friend’s boutique here in Abilene, Texas. All of the bags, tags, and business cards were hand stamped. Its quite a bit of work but feels more personable this way. Also, its more cost effective in the long run. Its pretty hip for Abilene… which is a wonderful thing!”

Filed under: Design, Graphic, Photography, , , , ,

JAQK by Hatch – 2

GrainEdit interview with Hatch founders (check –1) for full links and context.
Selected words from the interview. Selected images from GrainEdit + Graphic Exchange.

What sort of reference material did you dig up for JAQK ?
Where to start! We have been combing antique stores, finding some incredible vintage gaming ephemera, including hand-painted 17th Century playing cards, old dice games, books on gambling, domino sets, and other incredible treasures. They provide great inspiration and will make nice displays at the JAQK winery someday!

We purchased every book on card collecting, which became inspiration for Soldiers of Fortune. We researched antique derringer decoration, which inspired the Pearl Handle label. The “Her Majesty” queen is our own, but inspired of course, from countless decks of cards we looked at for reference, etc.

We finally landed on the collection of 8 that you see here based on making sure we cover a broad range of style – from more fun, graphic directions like 22 Black and Her Majesty to the more serious labels like Soldiers of Fortune and Black Clover. We also tried to cover different kinds of “play,” – whether craps, poker, cards, luck, etc. so that as we grow, we’re set up to grow in many different directions.

Filed under: Design, Graphic, Packaging, , , , , ,

JAQK by Hatch – 1

Two reasons to love Hatch are: the quality of work (stunning) and their really exciting + ‘distinctive’ business model. Saw this work for JAQK on Graphic Exchange an age ago but today there is an update and some links to interviews with Hatch founders Joel Templin + Katie Jain with Iso50GrainEdit.

Hatch hail from San Francisco (founded 2007) – (selected) words from an interview with Iso50 back in 2009. Images featured on Iso50 + Graphic Exchange.

“Our original intention, the philosophy of the design firm, was to do this 80/20 split; where 80% of our time is focused on client work, building brands for other people — which we’ve always done and always will do — but then use 20% of the time to give our design team creative freedom to explore ideas for new products that we can hatch on our own. Take all of our creative exploration and put it into a product that we release once a year. Here we are, two an a half years later and JAQK is just growing, which is great, but it will be our only hatchling for a while.”

Their process:
“Internally we meet with the client and develop a creative brief together. We always have that creative brief, either they supply it with their marketing dept, we collaborate on it, or we interview them and we make it. It’s a document that states all the goals for the project and puts everything on paper. It takes the subjectivity out of the design, gets everyone on the same page.

From there we pull reference material. We used to collect old things, old books, scan stuff in, photocopy stuff etc. We used to spend hours at the photocopier. Now, with the web and everything else, everyone has folders full of stuff, so we start there. People pull reference material based on the internal creative brief and where we think it’s going to go. Everyone gets the opportunity to talk about why they pulled what they did, and then collectively we try and figure out ways to put it in silos — like all this stuff feels like an avenue we could go, this type, this color, here’s a illustrative thing we could do etc. Within those, there are still a gazillion things you could design, but at least it’s a little more focused. Then they go to town and start designing and we’ll do the same thing; everything gets pinned up and we talk about it, edit it.”

Online interviews: Part 1 + Part 2

Filed under: Design, Graphic, Illustration, Packaging, , , , , ,

johnson banks blog

Stumbled across this site when I was doing some research about branding – took me to a post from back in 07. Anyway always great to find new inspiration blogs out there esp from a pretty cool agency –

johnson banks Thought for the week blog here.

And for good measure here is a pic of their V&A map that is going to be included in Creative Review’s Annual – featured here on their blog. Have to say – love their work…

Filed under: Blogs, Design, Graphic, , ,

Birdwatching

Can’t quite remember how I stumbled across this site – but anyway – awesome work on a blog called Birdwatching.

“Our common aim is to connect, support and promote female graphic designers everywhere. We do this through concrete actions such as initiating dialogue, curating showcases and arranging participatory activities.”

More to follow in the coming weeks.

Words: Birdwatching
Illustration: Julia Schonlau featured here.

Filed under: Blogs, Design, Graphic, Illustration, ,

Type Shed 11 Map – The International Office

I just like the elegant format of this map…

“Our international guests, who included Stephen Banham, Donald Beekman, Walter Bohatsch, Paul Elliman, Experimental Jetset, Masayoshi Kodaira, Indra Kupferschmid, Christian Schwartz and Leonardo Sonnoli, were here, in Wellington, for five days – three of presentations and two of workshops – all under the one roof at Shed 11 and Site 7 – encircled by satellite events, forums and panels for discussion and debate, evening projections and entertainment. Typeface: Akkurat, Courier. Stock: Chromalux

The International Office again! Words and pics from their site…

Filed under: Design, Graphic, , , ,

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