Articles by Dave

Being an avid collector of records, I’m looking forward to getting my hands on Unit Editions most recent release.

From the website:” Ronald Clyne at Folkways is a 64 page ‘newspaper’ devoted to designer Ronald Clyne’s record covers for the Folkways label. Ronald Clyne (1925 – 2006) designed over 500 album covers for Folkways and is largely responsible for the famous label’s striking visual appearance. His distinctive use of two-color printing on matte paper and his deft use of modernist design strategies, created a body of work that gave the Folkways label its distinctive aroma of integrity and purity.”

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It all goes down tonight. The fun starts at 7pm. More info here.

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Mi Diccionario Ilustrado - Illustrations by Acosta Moro

Mi Diccionario Ilustrado is a fun little dictionary for kids. Each page is filled with colorful illustrations of animals, musical instruments and various modes of transportation.  I was able to get my hands on a couple copies of this hard to find book from the 1970s. If your interested in purchasing a copy, stop by the grain edit shop.

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Awesome collection of posters for Shell Oil Company dating back to 1964. The series was created by Australian designer Frank Eidlitz.

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If you are in the London area, Kemistry Gallery is currently showing works by the warsaw-based design studio homework (Joanna Górska and Jerzy Skakun). On display is a selection of over fifty of their prints including classic cinema and modern Polish theatre posters. The exhibition runs from March 5th through the 17th of April.

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I love this set of ads put together by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners for the HP Retail Publishing group. The illustrations were created by Ryan Meis (also of Lab Partners fame) and later rendered in 3d by Australian design firm Electric Art.

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Chronicle Books has just released Ramayana: Divine Loophole the latest book from Pixar animator and illustrator Sanjay Patel. As one of the core legends of Hindu mythology, Ramayana recounts a tale of Rama, a god-turned-prince, and his quest to rescue his wife Sita after she was kidnapped by a demon king. Sanjay is able to breath new life into this 2500-year-old epic tale with over 150 pages of lush, detailed illustrations.

In this interview, he gives us a glimpse into the making of the book and some of the challenges he faced along the way.

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2010 California Design Biennial - Call for Entries

Between now and April 2010 Louise Sandhaus and Derrick Schultz will be seeking graphic/communications design projects to include in the 2010 California Design Biennial that will be held at the Pasadena Museum of California Art in the Summer of 2010.

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Naive: Modernism and Folklore in Contemporary Graphic Design

If you are into the artists featured on grain edit, I think you will appreciate today’s book. Naive: Modernism and Folklore in Contemporary Graphic Design documents the recent wave of design work inspired by Classic Modernism. I received a copy in the mail not too long ago and was impressed by the roster of artists featured in the book. We’ve covered many of the artists including Matte Stephens, Helen Dardik, Scotty Reifsnyder, Spike Press, Tes One, Adrian Johnson, Doublenaut, Darling Clementine, Andrio Abero, Methane Studios and Tad Carpenter on grain edit over the last couple of years, but there were still many I was unfamiliar with. My only complaint is the lack of a proper introduction as it would be nice to know more about the selection process. There are several artists in the book that seem out of place. I had a hard time seeing a connection between their work and modern design from the 1940- 1960s. But overall it is a solid addition to any designer’s library. More info + pictures available at the publisher’s website.

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In the fall, we featured Portland, Maine based artist and designer Josh Brill’s Flora Fauna series. The series included a colorful collection of bird illustrations, and was well received on grain edit as well other sites across the blogosphere. So, what’s Josh been up to lately? I traveled to Portland over the Christmas break and had the chance to catch up with Josh. We talked about living in Portland, his awesome collection of records from the Blue Note label as well as projects he’s currently working on.

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Strolls through time and space - Michael Johansson 2009

Really cool found object installations by Swedish artist Michael Johansson.

Michael has this to say about his work, “I am fascinated walking around flea markets finding doubles of seemingly unique, though often useless objects I have already purchased at another flea market. Despite the fact that I did not have any use for them even the first time, the desire to own two of these objects becomes too strong to resist. The unique and unknown origin of the object increases my desire to want the double – the unlikelihood of this sensation repeating itself produces an attraction that is too strong to resist.”

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This Week’s Poster Pick is The Books/ Boston, MA poster designed by Dirk Fowler.

You can pick up a print at the Poster Cabaret.

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Callahan Residence, Birmingham, Alabama 1965 - Rendering by Paul Rudolph

Architect Paul Rudolph (1918-1997) was known for his much-loved (and loathed) Brutalist yet spatially complex buildings. As one of the pioneering figures of the ‘Sarasota School of Architecture’ in the late 1940s, Rudolph gained a worldwide audience with his innovative design for the modern American home. His best known architectural masterpieces are the Yale School of Architecture, the Boston Government Center and the Crawford Manor. By the late 70’s and into the 90’s, Rudolph who was unmoved by the Post-modern dominance in architecture, steadfastly continued to design powerful Modernist structures now gracing the urban skylines of the Far East.

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Just got word of an awesome giveaway over at House Industries.

Win an Exclusive Eames House Sunset Tour
Tours by Eames Demetrios and Lucia Atwood, grandson and granddaughter of Charles and Ray Eames.
Date: March 11, 2010
Time: 5:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

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I just received some sad news. Edie Harper, the wife of the late Charles Harper passed away last week. Edie, a talented artist in her own right, was known for her beautiful illustrations of biblical stories.

The official announcement from the Harper Estate after the jump

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Grain Edition #01 - Limited Edition Grain Edit T-Shirt designed by Invisible Creature

We are excited to announce the Limited Edition Galaxy Blue Grain Edit T-Shirt is now available. The shirt was designed by Seattle’s own Invisible Creature. We love the design and hope you do too! The 5 color t-shirt features a gaggle of cool creatures sitting down for story time (my favorite is the little guy with the red and blue eyes). Each shirt is lovingly screen-printed by the guys and gals over at Blue Collar Press right here in the good ole USA.

You can order the Limited Edition Galaxy Blue Grain Edit Shirt here.

For More Details:

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There’s some new job listings over at the Grain Edit Job Board. You can also follow the listings via Twitter.

1970 Self promotional calendar designed by Terzostudio (Giorgio Tramontini)

Two weeks ago we posted some of our favorite calendars for 2010. Today lets look at some calendars of the past.

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If your in the Bay Area, there’s a cool exihbition over at Gallery 16. The exhibition celebrates the 25th Anniversary of Emigre, and will present artwork from Emigre as well as the new Gingko Press publication Emigre No. 70: The Look Back Issue – 25 Years in Graphic Design. The 512 page book covers the best of a quarter century of Emigre magazine.

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I love the cover of this Europe by Car brochure. The roads make for a nice grid structure and give the piece a Mondrian-esque quality. The business model for the company was pretty interesting as well. Europe by Car offered services for Americans interested in traveling around Europe for extended periods of time. Using their services you could purchase a European car to use on your travels. At the end of your vacation, Europe by Car would also help ship your new car back to the U.S.

The brochure includes prices for cars from Porsche, Austin Healy, Citroen, Jaguar etc. I just wish their price sheet was still valid. A Porsche for $3700? sign me up!

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I’m excited to announce that I will be writing for Herman Miller’s Lifework blog from time to time. The blog which recently launched in December, explores issues that arise around working from home.  For my first contribution, I spoke with artist Matte Stephens about his inspiring workspace. You can see the full piece here.

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Guns Pattern 2 - 17″x22″ Designed and Illustrated by Jonny Wan

Really loving the work of Sheffield based illustrator Jonny Wan. His portfolio is filled with interesting explorations with shape and color, plus the dude can draw some guns! If I had cartoon hand, I would ask Jonny if I could take a few of these heaters out to the local hand-drawn gun range to squirt some rounds!

You can catch Jonny over at Twitter and for those interested in purchasing a print, you can pick one up in his shop.

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The Swiss are known for their well designed watches. Franck Muller, Rolex and Omega are just a few of the manufacturers with established roots in Switzerland. I’m sure more then a couple people visit this country each year just to check out luxury timepieces. Can’t say I fall into that crowd, but I’d be more then willing to go  if someone wants to front the bill! For those that can afford a watch buying trip and happen to have a time machine laying around, this map could prove very useful. The map, which dates back to the late 1940s(?) helped guide tourists visiting the Lucerne area in search of well respected watch merchants.  It includes recommendations from the Swiss Watchmakers Guild, so you know its golden. I think.

I love the teal, and the orange accents, but the pale yellow is a little too much for me. I have a feeling whoever designed this map has a hankering for crusty mustard, word up.

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The Catton house designed by Arthur Erickson and Geoffrey Massey in 1967

More amazing work from the late great Arthur Erickson.

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Identity for Ohio Arts Council designed by Noel Martin

Noel Martin was a self taught graphic designer who taught at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and served as the in-house designer for the Cincinnati Art Museum for many years. He was one of the first to modernize art museum exhibition catalogs. In an article at the New York times Steven Heller also notes, “With the ubiquitous branding and expert merchandizing of museums today, it is easy to forget that graphic design was once a low priority for them. In 1947, when Mr. Martin became the Cincinnati Art Museum’s first graphic designer, most museum publications were staid and musty.”

The Container list has a nice post on a self-promotional piece titled, Identity Programs, that presents some of Noel’s iconic minimalist logos.

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Jez Burrows - Walden (Part of the Kitsune Noir Poster Club)

Over the next several months, several design blogs (including grain edit) will be collaborating with the stellar art & design social network Society 6. First up is the Kitsune Noir Poster Club. Bobby of the excellent Kitsune Noir asked five of his favorite artists to interpret books they really enjoy into a print that will be a lasting work of art.

The project includes:

Jez Burrows - Henry David Thoreau’s Walden

Mark Weaver -  Herman Melville’s Moby Dick

Frank Chimero - Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter House Five

Cody Hoyt - David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest

Garrett Vander Leun - Cormac McCarthy’s The Road

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The Grain Edit Holiday Giveaway Bash ends at 5pm (PST) today. It’s not too late to enter.

Sanna Annukka Limited Edition Wooden Soul Birds

Sanna Annukka recently launched a new portfolio and online store. I love these solid brown oak Soul Birds which are now available for pre-orders in her shop. I’ll have to add these to my Christmas list!

On her website, Sanna shares this bit about the the Soul Bird which stems from Finnish mythology. “In Karelia there was an ancient belief in the Sielulintu or Soul bird. The Sielulintu was thought to deliver the soul to newborn babies and also to transport the soul to the afterlife at the moment of death. It was believed the Sielulintu protected a persons soul at it’s most vulnerable; when dreaming, and it was tradition to keep a carved wooden bird by the bedside to keep the soul safe during sleep.”

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Grain Edition #01 - Limited Edition Grain Edit T-Shirt designed by Invisible Creature

We are excited to announce the Limited Edition Galaxy Blue Grain Edit T-Shirt designed by Seattle’s own Invisible Creature. We love the design and hope you do too! The 5 color t-shirt features a gaggle of cool creatures sitting down for story time (my favorite is the little guy with the red and blue eyes). Each shirt is lovingly screen-printed by the guys and gals over at Blue Collar Press right here in the good ole USA.

The shirts will be $20 till this Friday at Midnight (PST). After that the price jumps up to $25. Also for every t-shirt you purchase you will receive 1 entry in the 2009 Grain Edit Holiday Giveaway Bash.

*** Please note this is a PRE-ORDER. We will be receiving the shirts at the end of Dec and shipping orders the first week of January. ******

You can PRE-ORDER the Limited Edition Galaxy Blue Grain Edit Shirt here.

For more details + pictures etc.

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Introducing the grain edit job board. For job seekers, we already have some listings posted plus on the main page of the job board you can sign up for job alerts or subscribe to the job listings RSS feed. We’ve also created a twitter account for the job board , so you can follow listings there as well. We’ve added a link to the new section in our top navigation, so you can easily access the listings whenever you want.

For companies interested in posting a listing to our job board, we offering a special discount. Use the coupon code ‘promo’ to receive 50% off.

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Hybrid Design was formed by the husband and wife design team of Brian Flynn and Dora Drimalas. The San Francisco based firm has worked with a diverse body of clients including Nike, Upper Playground and Vans. The dynamic duo are also the brains behind Super 7 and Hybrid Home.

In today’s interview Brian reveals some of his influences, shares insights on managing a design firm, and even manages to squeeze in a somewhat obscure reference to Cameo.

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Giveaway is Now Closed

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Just found this vintage Audi poster over at AisleOne. Looks like it was created sometime between 1968 and 1972 by Armin Hofmann. Simple and elegant.

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Pen Pencil Stencil is the online home and physical workspace of Mark Giglio. Mark is an amazing illustrator/ designer who’s worked on projects with a diverse mix of companies including: 2k by Gingham, Apple, Dwell, GSP, Nike, Tolleson Design, and others. Recently I had the pleasure of hanging out with Mark at his Oakland based studio.

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Poster for Instal 09 music festival

New site + work to boot from grain edit favorite Jez Burrows.

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Have a great holiday and we’ll see you on Monday!

Outtake for Junior Bazaar, early 1950’s

Absolutely stunning photographs from Tom Palumbo. Tom got his start working under the art direction of Alexey Brodovitch at Harper’s Bazaar. He later went onto shoot for Vogue, and many other publications.

The photos seen here are part of an extensive archiving project with New York’s Wonderbred.

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Beautiful tourist map from Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) dating back 1966. I love the bold colors and simple line work. I’m guessing that the illustration inside the red square on the left side is a beer. Look at that foamy top! Sweet mother of beverages!

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J’adore by Heather Amuny-Dey

If your in the San Francisco area this Saturday (11/21/09), this looks like it’s going to be a good show.

Details:
Super7 is proud to present the follow up to 2007’s blockbuster show “Birds of a Feather” with the new aptly titled show “Birds of a Feather 2″ featuring artwork by Dora Drimalas, Heather Amuny-Dey and Shay Ashley-Ometz. This show features three original new prints from each artist (nine in total) as well as a sampling of older, out-of-print and rare prints from each artist’s personal archive to create a whimsical and wonderful reflection on their lives.

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Cody Hudson for Bodega - CH5 Wall Decal

We’ve been seeing some good things happening in the world of wall art within the last few months, first with Poketo’s Spacetime Collection and now with Arkitip’s Bodega Collection.

Bodega is a curated collection of large scale, eco-friendly, temporary indoor art. The concept is to make the art of emerging and established artists alike, affordable and available to the public. Each piece is delivered as a complete package for the consumer and includes ready-to-apply art piece and tools for installation. Obsessed with process, Bodega creates high quality, layered die-cut vinyl art editions; representing some of the most captivating artists of our generation.

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Posters for the International Design Center Berlin (IDZ)

Herbert Kapitzki, a former student of Willi Baumeister, conceived and designed exhibitions for the state industrial inspection board (Landesgewerbeamt) in Stuttgart in the 1950s and the early 1960s. He developed a distinct language of forms modelled on constructive forerunners, and campaigned for the popularisation of functional graphic design. His own groundbreaking work was exemplary in this respect.

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lisez, jouez et decouvrez La Scandinavie avec Andersen -by Paul de Roujoux, Pamela Labonnelie and Mireille Ballero. Illustrations by Martine Bourre c1975 editions des deux coqs d’or

La Scandinavie avec Andersen is a beautiful children’s book about Scandinavian culture. The book is filled with stories, games and activities.  Just think, your child could be making his/her very own Nils Holgersson costume right now! For the budding young history buff, there’s a section on the Drakkars and Vikings. If your child is too scared to look at tough guys with helmets, head straight to the fuzzy Nordic animals in chapter one. Have a four year old that’s into logging? No problem, this book has you covered. There’s a section on the Scandinavian timber industry in the middle of the book. Soon your young one will be able to turn raw material into fine Danish furniture!

More pictures after the jump.

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A Colt is My Passport (1967) - Directed by Takashi Nomura

If your into classic + cult films it would be worth your while to check Shannon Maldonado’s I Love Hot Dogs.  Several times a week Shannon curates a selection of stills from a particular movie. I appreciate her selection process as she sometimes includes typographic/design details that can easily go unnoticed (think street signs, window lettering, etc.). For fans of the art of film title design, there’s plenty of that stuff as well.

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I had a chance to check out Visual Acoustics this weekend and I highly recommend it. The documentary is about the life and work of Julius Shulman, a brilliant architectural photographer whose photos captured the history of modernist architecture in Southern California. During his prolific career he worked with nearly every modern architect since the 1930s including John Lautner, Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, PIerre Koenig, Charles and Ray Eames, Craig Ellwood, Raphael Soriano and Gregory Ain.

The release of this film seems especially timely, given that Julius recently passed away. If you are unfamiliar with his work, you are in for a real treat.

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1. Come to Africa - Designed by Gerard van de Voort - c1975

How about virtual tour around the world to start off the week?  I dug up a handful of travel related posters from 1950s -1970s for all the desk jockeys that are itching to get out of town. Enjoy!

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Hell yea. Cool logos on trucks + vans! It doesn’t get much better then this. The Autografik flickr group is set to serve as an archive for modern design applied to motor vehicles. Thanks to Jonathan Turner aka insect54 for setting this bad boy up.

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Brionvega rr126 Turntable/ radio brochure c1970

Beautiful brochure covers for the Milan based electronic company Brionvega. Design by Bob Noorda.

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1972 Munich Olympics Plate : Pictograms designed by Otl Aicher

Now all your favorite 70’s stick figures can hide underneath your food. Spotted this gem on Ebay a few days back.

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A few days ago Twitter rolled out a new feature called “lists”. This feature is still in Beta, so it appears it’s only available to a small group of users right now. Lists are a way to organize the people you follow and to discover new and interesting Twitter accounts. We set up a handful of lists in different catergories, so you can easily find new designers & artists to follow.

Our lists include some of our favorites to follow in graphic design, typography and illustration. We also set up lists for web design, blogs and stores, but these lists need alot of work. You can find all of our lists on the right hand side of our Twitter profile page. These lists are far from comprehensive, so if you have any suggestions of people to add please let us know in the comments.

Graphic Design Referenced by Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit

I recently got my hands on a copy of Graphic Design Referenced. This is the latest project from the dynamic  design duo of Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit, who also happen to be the brilliant minds behind the UnderConsideration network of sites. As the official press release states, “Graphic Design, Referenced is a visual and informational guide to the most commonly referenced terms, historical moments, landmark projects, and influential practitioners in the field of graphic design. This is a very ambitious project to say the least, but I’m quite impressed with the final result. I’m amazed at the amount of information they were able to cram into this 400 page book.

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Beautiful brochure for a chain of hotels in Portugal.

From the inside of the brochure: “From the oldest times, “pousada” in Portuguese has meant “resting place”"inn”. Quiet isolated situations by the sea shore, in the mountains or on the plains. Lovely views, wealth of history, traditional culture.

The Pousadas make up a network of hotel establishments built by the state, housed in historic buildings, castles, palaces, and monasteries or specially built.”

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The girl on the end is seriously hating on the little dude. Ride on bro!

I came across this ad in an old Italian design magazine a few years back. I scanned in the image and quickly forgot about it. In my haste I forgot to write down any relevant information. Now I’m stuck without a clue as to who made this super cool kids toy.

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Most articles I see related to Russian poster design tend to focus on the film and propaganda posters of the 1920s and 30s. Works by Alexander Rodchenko and El Lissitzky as well the Stenberg brothers often come to mind.  This post is dedicated to an era of Russian poster design that seems to get less coverage. The 1970s.

Don’t miss this one!

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Lubalin Now: The inaugural exhibition in the newly re-located Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography.

On view in Cooper Union’s new gallery, the installation includes recent posters, publications, and motion graphics by internationally recognized graphic designers that spotlight an emerging trend toward expressive lettering and typography. Original sketches, magazines, logotypes, and posters selected from the Lubalin Center Archive will illuminate Lubalin’s influence on contemporary graphic design.

Featured artists include Herb Lubalin, Justin Thomas Kay, Non-Format, Marian Bantjes, Markus Eriksson, Brett MacFadden and many more.

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I had a blast speaking at Chronicle Books’ 555 event last week. Huge thanks to Suzanne LaGassa and the rest of the Chronicle crew for the invitation. The theme of the night was centered around blogs/design communities. Lauren Smith and Derek Fagerstrom from the Curiosity Shoppe and Smarts and Crafts, David from BoingBoing, Joe from Typophile, and Suzanne from the Chronicle Book’s blog also presented that night. Each of us we’re given five minutes to speak about our process and inspiration. It was great to meet everyone and I hope this series continues!

You can see pictures from the event here.

wedding invites designed by Katie Kirk

I love these wedding/reception invites designed by Katie Kirk of Eight Hour Day. The invites are for Katie’s sister who plans to get married in Mexico and then have a giant pig roast in Wisconsin. I hope the pig on the front of the invite enjoys his last days of freedom! He’s on his way to being ham nugglets.

Last time we checked in with Katie she was wrapping up work on her first children’s book. The book, which is titled Eli No!, tells the story of a mischievous dog and his journeys. At the time, the book was lacking a publisher. Since then, the book has secured a deal with Abrams. Looking forward to the release!

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Will over at the excellent Journey Round My Skull posted an amazing collection of Polish book covers. There is some seriously wacky stuff going on these book jackets. Whats up with beard face?

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If you haven’t signed up for our Photo-Lettering Alphabet Blocks, Prints & T-Shirt Giveaway it’s not too late. Giveaway ends today at 6pm PST.

Enter now - It’s quick, easy and free.

I’ve been a fan of Werner Design Werks for a few years now, so I was excited to hear about their recent release of alphabeasties: and other Amazing Types. This beautiful children’s book features animals crafted out of typefaces. How about an alligator set in Volta EF? You got it! There’s even a dachshund made out of “d”s set in Bauhaus. Gary fans rejoice!

In the same vein as Bruno Munari’s Alfabetiere, alphabeasties achieves a perfect balance of fun and well-executed design. Pick up a copy for your your kid, but don’t be suprised if you end it keeping all to yourself.

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Dick Bruna- Book covers

Lets start the week off right. How about a dose of Dick Bruna book covers.

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Celestino Piatti + dtv: The Unity of the program - Edited by Jens Muller

Two weeks ago we featured the Philips-Twen book from Lars Muller’s new A5 series. Celestino Piatti + dtv is the third title to be released in the series and my favorite of the bunch.

Celestino Piatti was born in the little Swiss village of Dietlikon on January 5,1922. Early on his parents recognized his talent and secured him training at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts) in Zurich and later a graphic design internship with fellow Swiss designer Fritz Buhler. After four years with Buhler he left to start his own studio and eventually landed the job of a lifetime. In 1961 Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (dtv) hired Piatti to design their bookjackets. A comission that lasted up to his death in 2007. For over thirty years, he endowed the books published by dtv with a singular and unique look. He became the most productive book designer of all times, producing covers for over 6300 books that sold in a total print run of over 200 million copies.

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Last week I had a chance to stop by the 45th Annual San Francisco Book Sale which was held at the Fort Mason Festival Pavilion. The place was filled with books.  According to the event’s website it is the biggest book sale on the west coast. The five-day event features 300,000+ books in over 50 categories.

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Back in June we posted about the launch of House Industries’ Photo-Lettering website. I knew it was just a matter of time before some of those tasty Photo-Lettering typefaces ended up on a slab of wood. That time has come. Last week House announced the release of the Photo-Lettering (Plinc) alphabet blocks as well as a new House Industries serigraph series.

To celebrate the new line of Photo-Lettering products we’ve teamed up with House Industries for a special giveaway.

One lucky winner will win:

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Being a fan of Monocle magazine, I’m excited about our next guest. Ken Leung is a London based freelance designer who helped launch Monocle magazine and until recently served as it’s art director. In today’s interview, Ken shares his love for Textas (marker pens), some of his influences and a few of his favorite books.

Ok, here we go..

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K.P. Jorgensen & Son Logo - Part of 1960s & 70s Scandinavian Logos Set

This made my day. Vancouver based designer Oliver Tomas uploaded an amazing collection of Scandinavian logos from the 1960s & 70s to his flickr account. Thanks Oliver!

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Western Tanager 5″x7″ - Designed by Josh Brill

Cool bird prints from Josh Brill. Josh is the man behind Lumadessa, a little art and design label out Portland, Maine. The prints are from his Flora Fauna collection which catalogs the design identities of plants and animals from around the world. The collection also examines the visual character differences and similarities of species. It’s a field guide of discovery, beginning with birds.

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Philips-Twen: Realism is the Score - Edited by Jens Muller

Just got my hands on a few of the Lars Muller A5 titles and they don’t disappoint. I’ll try to get photos of all three titles up on grain edit within the next week or so. Unfortunately these titles are unavailable in the U.S right now, but should be available soon. Amazon has a release date of October 1st.

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Pitfall (Activision) circa 1982

Nick Dart recently launched a cool resource for vintage game graphics. Art of the Arcade features game packaging, advertisements, logos, etc. from the golden era of arcade gaming, the 70’s and 80’s. I miss Pitfall!

On a related note, if you ever find yourself in Portland,OR, you have to stop by Ground Kontrol. The place is filled with classic games like Q-Bert and Pac-Man.

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Geoff Mcfetridge and some of the concepts for the final credits for the upcoming “Where the Wild Things Are” film.

I know i’m not the only one excited about the upcoming Where the Wild Things Are film directed by Spike Jonze. The film is based on a book of the same name published in 1963 by author/illustrator Maurice Sendak. I remember staring at the book for hours when I was a kid. It’s still one of my all time faves.

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Sonic Youth Concert Poster designed by the Little Friends of Printmaking

After our interview with the Little Friends of Printmaking we decided to make their Sonic Youth print our Poster Pick of the week. If you haven’t seen the interview yet, it’s worth checking out. Melissa and JW break down the process of creating the Sonic Youth poster from the initial concept to the finished product.

You can purchase the Sonic Youth - Milwaukee concert poster at Poster Cabaret.

James Birrell - View of the elevated restaurant, Centenary Pool, Brisbane’ (via Paige Modern)

Many thanks to Paige Russell for featuring us in her “Meet the Maker” series. Paige is a product designer with a passion for hunting vintage modern. Her blog’s (Paige + Modern) mission is to celebrate both vices and be home to all other great things she find along the way; inspiration, cheekiness, smart-pants thinking, sharp design, eye candy, & tales of great explorers.

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Celestino Piatti and dtv: The Unity of the Program - Edited by Jens Muller

I can’t wait to get my hands on these books.

Lars Muller has just launched the A5 series of books. The series is intended as a growing archive on graphic design. Each volume introduces outstanding personalities and important themes from the history of international graphic design, with numerous illustrations, essays and interviews. The series kicks off with books focused on Celestino Piatti, Philips-Twen and Hans Hillmann.

I’m really excited about the Celestino Piatti book. For more than 30 years, he endowed the covers of books published by dtv with a singular look. With more than 6300 covers to his credit, amounting collectively to a total of 200 million volumes, Piatti was one of the most productive designers of all time.

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Fresh air and the open road!

The fine folks at Random Collective designed a unique website chronicling New York based singer-songwriter Orba Squara’s journey across some of the United States. Commemorating his second album, Orba Squara’s site boasts a beautiful visual diary complete with photos, custom maps, and neat type treatments. Its layout is a 430 ft long lateral scroll, which translates the daily findings of the trip appropriately.

Orba Squara’s website is Random Collective’s first project. Founded by Jose Cabaco, Random Collective is all about connecting people from different disciplines, to work on a variety of projects. As its name suggests, it can be anything; a band of 2 or 20, writers or art directors, designers or photographers, architects or webcoders…even all of the above!

Check out Orba Squara’s website, and stay tuned for their website.

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Television graphics

Absolutely stunning work from Stefan Kanchev (1915-2001) who was a Bulgarian graphic artist. During his prolific career he designed hundreds of logos, posters, stamps, book covers, labels as well as graphics for TV. Much of his work is inspired by Bulgarian folklore and traditions.

In 1994 Stefan Kanchev was recognized as one of the top ten designers of trade marks in the world along with Paul Rand, Saul Bass and etc. The title was awarded by the International trademark centre in Ostend, Belgium. His logo work will blow your wig back.  I highly suggest you spend a few minutes browsing his archives.

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Thanks to everyone who took part in our giveaway! It was great to see all your comments.

We randomly selected our winner in the  HunterGatherer Laptop Sleeve Giveaway this weekend.

Our winner will be listed at the bottom of the Grain Edit Email Update and Grain Edit RSS Feed.  For those of you who subscribe to the email updates, the email should arrive soon.

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Many thanks to Incase for sponsoring the giveaway. You can see all the latest Incase happenings at the Incase blog.

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Keep an eye out for the next grain edit giveaway and enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Beautiful collage work from Lisbon based designer Cristiana Couceiro.  As Steve Mehallo puts it, “When one thinks of collage, it’s usually something  . . .  scrapbooky. Not always the case.”

In a recent issue of Moloko, she talked about gathering source material. “On Saturdays I like to go through the flea market collecting memories. Feira da Ladra as we call it here in Lisbon. That means Thief Fair, which is funny collecting other people’s memory to build a new one”. Her source material comes from a variety of modern sources including: record covers, Canadian logos, 1960s paperback books, Latvian magazines, Swiss posters, as well as work from the Bauhaus.

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15″ HunterGatherer Laptop Sleeve

For our latest giveaway we’ve teamed up with Incase. Incase recently released the HunterGatherer Laptop Sleeve and iphone slider case. This is a part of a series of projects curated by Arkitip. To celebrate we’re giving away a 15″ Hunter Gatherer laptop sleeve to one lucky winner.

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JAQK Cellars wine shippers designed by Hatch

This is part 2 of a 2 part interview. You can view part 1 at the excellent iso50.

Hatch is a San Francisco design firm founded by Joel Templin and Katie Jain. In part one of our interview, Alex spoke with Katie and Joel about the firm and their design process. In part two we take a look around the studio and talk with Katie about the packaging for JAQK cellars.

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Olivetti Lettera 22 Manual

I’m blown away by this Olivetti Lettera Manual Ed Cornish posted over at the excellent we made this (blog). Absolutely stunning! You can see the full manual at Ed’s Flickr account.

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Le Vaillant Petit Tailleur - Illustrations by E. Probest c1963

I’d like to thank Burgin over at Vintage Kids’ Books My Kid Loves for inviting me to guest post on her wonderful blog. If you haven’t been to her site before your in for a real treat. She often features kid’s books from the 1950’s-1970’s and from some of my favorite illustrators including Abner Graboff and Ed Emberley. For my post, I decided to share a french book entitled Le Vaillant Petit Tailleur. You can see all the mages here.

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The Whimsical Works of David Weidman - Published by Gingko Press.

David Weidman’s name may not be familiar, but his work certainly is. Weidman began his career as an animator in 1950s Los Angeles, painting backgrounds for Hannah Barbara and setting the standard for the look of cartoons of that era. However, like a true entrepreneur he soon began to work for himself, and went on to establish a style that is today instantly recognizable and iconic. A printmaker, ceramicist, font designer, painter, cartoonist, and silk screener, Weidman never stopped experimenting as an artist. Today at age 87 Weidman’s staggering body of work is just as modern and visually stunning as it was forty years ago. His graphic sensibility and expert use of saturated color palettes evoke the vintage modern look while remaining completely relevant to contemporary designers.

If you don’t have a copy of this book yet, it’s seriously worth picking up. You can purchase a copy here.

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People are dying for blogs y’all

Blog Wars? What the heck is going on in Chicago? People killing each other over raw RSS product? Naw, turns out Blog Wars is a gathering of Chicago’s top dance music DJs—who all happen to run successful blogs.

The poster was created by talented designer and all around rad guy Mig Reyes. I love how Mig breaks up the rigid grid with streams of folkadelic type which parallel the flow and feel of vinyl records. It slightly reminds me of Lance Wyman’s identity work for the 1968 Mexico Olympics which played off traditional Huichol Indian art. I hope Mr. Reyes printed up extra copies of this poster, because I know some people will want to get their hands on this war-torn gem!

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Simmelkiaer Grotesk - Grafisk Compagni

I found this type specimen sheet when I was digging through a printer’s collection last summer. Anyone have any info on Simmelkiaer Grotesk or Grafisk Compagni?

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This weekend the grain edit crew headed over to the Renegade Craft Fair. The event was held at the giganticle Fort Mason Center Festival Pavilion. The place was packed with Men of the Yarn and friendly Thimble Queens all carefully curating their collections of handmade goodness. I’ve never seen so many t-shirts and pillows in my life! It was a palace of soft joy!

We had a blast meeting everyone. Handshakes & hugs to the following people: Frank Chimero, A. Micah Smith A.K.A My Associate Cornelius, Lorena Siminovich & the crew from Petit Collage, Sasha Barr and Meagan Claire Hall of Wonder Thunder and Klover Kim (Please don’t break my arm, if you don’t win the next giveaway!)

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Jazzin the Black Forest - The Complete Guide to Saba/MPS Jazz Records -Published by Crippled Library c1999

Jazzin´the Black Forest is the story of the SABA/MPS jazz label. It was established during the early 1960s  and is considered to be Germany´s first independent label. From the label’s beginnings up to its sale to Polygram in 1983, SABA/MPS released over 700 LPs. This book features full color images of all the LPs, a complete index as well as poster reproductions.

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For the Herb Lubalin fans out there, Justin Thomas Kay has just uploaded a slick collection of images from a recent visit to Lubalin’s archive at the Cooper Union in NYC.

In addition to Justin’s Flickr account, you can find photos from the Lubalin collection at 12oz Prophet + So Much Pileup.

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Bang! by Blanca Gomez printed on archival giclee, measures 16″ x 20″

This week we’d like to transport you to the wonderful world of illustrator and graphic designer, Blanca Gomez. Gomez is an artist living and working in Madrid, Spain.  Her designs are neat, simple, and often amusing.

Bang! is a great example of the simplicity Gomez offers up in her work. This selection is playful and can’t help but bring a smile to your face. The gentleman is drawn simply and elegantly, while the red heart offers the perfect pop of color in an otherwise somber scene.

Bang! is available for purchase at the Poster Cabaret.

Corporate Diversity: Swiss Graphic Design and Advertising by Geigy 1940-1970

A few months ago we featured the book Corporate Diversity: Swiss Graphic Design and Advertising by Geigy 1940-1970 on grain edit. At the time the book was only available in Europe. We’re excited to announce that it is now available for purchase in the U.S. I highly recommend this book. Don’t sleep on this one! Lars Muller and the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich did an excellent job presenting the material.

You can purchase the Book here. Get it before it sells out!

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Mr. Angelo by Marjory Schwalje - Illustrations by Abner Graboff c1960

Ward Jenkins has an excellent interview with Jon Graboff over at the Ward-O-Matic.  Jon is the son of the uber talented Abner Graboff, an American artist who illustrated a slew of amazing children’s books during the 1950s and 60s.  In one part of the interview Jon mentions that his brother informed him that their dad had designed the CBS “eye” logo but didn’t receive credit for it. The credit went instead to the chief art director at the network. That art director would be William Golden. Is it possible that Abner Graboff designed the CBS eye logo?

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Hermann Eidenbenz - grafa international poster 1936

Beautiful poster from Swiss designer Hermann Eidenbenz. Hermann also designed the Clarendon typeface. Brings back memories of delivering newspapers as a kid.

Mike Cina - Spirit Edit Jazz Mix

In this 4th installment of grain edit mixtapes, we caught up with design nut and all-around awesome guy Mike Cina. When Mike isn’t manning the helm at YouWorkForThem he’s digging through your grand pa’s record collection. Today we’re excited to present an exclusive jazz mix he created for grain edit readers.

Before we get to the mix, I had a chance to pick Mike’s brain on record collecting, typography and album cover art.

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Mountain Town archival giclee print 16″ x 21.5″

This week’s poster pick features another amazing print from Andrew Holder. Mountain Town features a trippy farm scene complete with a gushing river flowing uphill and a mountain cut like a gemstone. I can’t get enough of Andrew’s work. Someone needs to loan me a boat filled with cash, so I can buy all his prints.

Mountain Town is printed on 100% cotton rag archival fine art paper. Hand signed & numbered edition of 100. Available exclusively at the Poster Cabaret.

The print is also available in blue.

Incase and Arkitip have launched the latest installment of the Curated by Arkitip project with New York-based HunterGatherer. The HunterGatherer 15” Sleeve for MacBook Pro and HunterGatherer Slider Case for iPhone 3G S and iPhone 3G are available today at goincase.com and arkitip.com with availability following shortly in select Apple retail stores and better boutiques.

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The new documentary about Milton’s life and work, To Inform and Delight, is being released in a number of cities throughout the US this summer. Upcoming locations include:

June 27: ALBUQUERQUE / Guild Cinema
July 2: BOSTON / MFA Boston
July 7: WESTHAMPTON / Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center
Aug 12: AUSTIN / Alamo Drafthouse, AIGA Austin
Aug 27: ORANGE COUNTY / Orange County Museum of Art
Aug 27: ATLANTA / AIGA Atlanta

I’d like to thank Rena Hopkins of the Charley Harper Art Studio for passing on the good news that a lost trove of original Charley Harper paintings have been rediscovered. These paintings were commissioned for the Ford Times and Lincoln Mercury Times Magazines and include many pieces from Charley’s beloved bird series. You can find out more info at the studio’s exciting new blog. Original Harper prints for Ford Times magazine are available for purchase here.

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Will Kane has been laying down quality posts since 2005, which in the world of blogging would make him sort of a legend. His blog is a visual buffet of vintage design, cult film, modern architecture, cute french girls and fashion from the middle of the century. All the good stuff we love. If you haven’t been to his site before, you need to do it now. Enter the World of Kane.

Here’s a small taste of some of the tasty bits Will has been cooking up…

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Maria Rehm - Katzchen im Zoo c196?

It hard times being on lockdown. As the Lifers Group once said, “your living in the Belly of the Beast“. Sometimes you just need a homie to talk to. In this loveable children’s tale, a little black cat goes to visit his crew holding it down at the local zoo. He chats it up with some birds, an elephant and even some silly seals.

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Daniel Lewandowski has put together a wonderful tribute site to Paul Rand. The site is filled with examples of Paul’s work including posters, logos, packaging and more. There’s even a gallery section with slick photos of Paul hanging out with Bradbury Thompson, Will Burtin and his cat.

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If you haven’t signed up for our Kevin Dart: The Yuki 7 Screen Gems Giveaway it’s not too late. Giveaway ends tomorrow at 5pm. We’ve teamed up with Kevin to giveaway an advanced signed copy of Seductive Espionage: The World of Yuki 7, A complete set of signed Yuki 7 prints and a t-shirt.

Enter now - It’s quick, easy and free to enter.

Kaufmann House designed by Richard Neutra in 1946

This looks like its going to be a must see flick for modern architecture fans.

Filmmakers Michael Bernard and Gavin Froome have created a documentary that will take you on a journey through three generations of modern architecture on the West Coast of North America.

This film speaks with the architects and their patrons, and asks if Modernism’s time has finally come or did it ever really go away.

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Innovations - Illustrations by Syd Mead

The last time we mentioned Sam Grawe on grain edit we were drooling over his collection of ceramic owls. Sam is the Editor-in-Chief of Dwell and member of the ultra cool nu balearic cosmic disco band Windsurf. Here for grain edit readers Sam shares pictures of some of his favorite books and the stories behind his finds. Enjoy!

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Buddy Carr Skateboards teamed up with Antonio Carusone of Aisle One to create this beautiful board. Now you can Ollie and say hello at the same time.

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The Poketo studio will hold a silent art auction titled, “F%#k Cancer! We Love Justin” to raise funds for the medical treatment of artist Justin Van Hoy. Over forty important Los Angeles artists will be donating their work, with more artists added to the roster daily. All proceeds will go directly to support Justin Van Hoy’s recovery. Those unfamiliar with Justin might not be as distant from him as perceived. As the art director for SWINDLE Magazine, and contributor of works for artists and brands such as OBEY, Roger Gastman, Cobra Snake, and more, Justin’s distinct and captivating work has been feeding our creative hunger for years. All are welcome to the event to acknowledge Justin and those who have been affected by cancer.

Friday, June 5th
7 - 10 PM

Poketo Studio
510 S. Hewitt St. #506 (5th floor) Los Angeles, CA 90013

Auction will be from 7 - 9 PM, winning bidders receive art by10 PM. Cash or check only. No credit cards will be accepted.

Artworks generously donated by : Chris Bettig, Shepard Fairey, Zach Gibson, Jeana Sohn, Amanda Visell, David Weidman and many others.

Visit Poketo for more details.

Mumbai Smoke silkscreen poster-18″x24″

Awesome new prints from Pardon My Hindi. All three limited edition prints are signed/numbered and hand screened on archival paper.

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Pollyn album cover

There’s a cool interview with the talented Noah Butkus over at Matthew Newton’s site . Dig into Noah’s surreal landscapes and haunting characters.

Noah recently designed the cover for the L.A based band Pollyn. Keyholes, tiger heads, and cool type…..it’s all there.  You can hear Pollyn’s music here.

The Deck Ad Network survey.  Answer a few questions, have a few laughs and enter to win some goodies.

Photo Lettering website

Photo-Lettering was a mainstay of the advertising and design industry in New York City from 1936 to 1997. PLINC, as it was affectionately known to art directors, was one of the earliest and most successful type houses to utilize photo technology in the production of commercial typography and lettering. It employed such design luminaries as Ed Benguiat and sold type drawn by the likes of Herb Lubalin, Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast as well as countless other unsung lettering greats. The company is best known by most of today’s graphic designers for its ubiquitous type catalogs.

House Industries purchased the entire physical assets of Photo-Lettering and is carefully digitizing select alphabets from the collection and plans to offer them through the new Photo Lettering website.

To celebrate, I thought it would be nice to dig up one my Photo Lettering catalogs. Here for your viewing pleasure is Alphabet Thesaurus Vol.2

Alphabet Thesaurus Vol 2 - A Treasury of Letter Design

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Thanks to everyone who took part in our giveaway! It was great to see all your comments.

We randomly selected our 2 winners in the  Human Empire/Andreas Samuelsson t-shirt giveaway earlier this evening.

Our winners will be listed at the bottom of the Grain Edit Email Update and Grain Edit RSS Feed.  For those of you who subscribe to the email updates, the email should arrive soon.

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We’d like to thank Soundscreen Design for sponsoring this giveaway. Please consider signing up for their email newsletter to keep up with all the latest product releases and giveaways.

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Stay tuned for our next giveaway, coming soon and have a great weekend!

If you haven’t signed up for our  Human Empire / Andreas Samuelsson T shirt Giveaway it’s not too late. Giveaway ends at 5pm today (05/29/09).

The Ben Rose home designed by A. James Speyer and David Haid

Anyone have 2.3 million dollars I can borrow? The mid-century modern home featured in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is now for sale. If we all chip in $5 we might be able buy this house in 10 years. Maybe they accept trades? I hope the red 1961 Ferrari 250 GTO comes with the house.

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We’ve teamed up with Soundscreen Design to give away a few t-shirts. It’s quick, easy and free to enter. See our Human Empire / Andreas Samuelsson T shirt Giveaway post for all the details. Giveaway ends Friday.

Enter now>

Vacation home designed by Bay Area architect Henrik Bull - illustration by Bob Wandesforde

The image above is from a promotional booklet entitled Second homes for leisure living. The booklet was produced by the Douglas Fir Plywood Association and features floor plans and dimensions for 18 vacation homes built with fir plywood. Included are plans for homes designed by modern architects such as George Matsumoto, Frederick Liebhardt, David George and Henrik Bull.

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TM Nr. 12, 1956, 75. Jahrgang

Typografische Monatsblätter is a Swiss magazine that focuses on typography and photography. Over the years the magazine has played host to an all star cast of contributors including: Herbert Matter, Emil Ruder, Max Caflisch, Wolfgang Weingart, Jan Tschichold, Adrian Frutiger, Jost Hochuli, Walter Cyliax, Helmut Schmidt, Atelier Eidenbenz, Hans Rudolf Lutz and many others. Flickr user Berlintypes has assembled an amazing collection of these magazines from the 1950s -1990s. Enjoy them all here.

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted any stamps, so I figured it’s time. This stamp commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Alliance Cooperative Internationale. It was issued on the 27th of June, 1970 and was designed by J.Malvaux.

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Human Empire - Vinyl is Forever T shirt

Soundscreen Design is a product design company inspired by music. They are curating, manufacturing and distributing a line of t-shirts, hoodies and tote bags featuring artists’ iconic interpretations of the phrase “Vinyl is Forever”. Inspired by iconic visual slogans such as “I (heart) NY” and “Virginia is for Lovers”, and referencing music obsessives’ everlasting love of vinyl records, the series will appeal to music, art and fashion fans alike. For avid music fans, vinyl has become both the format of preference as well as a badge of honor. The wearables are designed to be a badge they can wear proudly.

To celebrate the release of the Vinyl is Forever product line we’ve teamed up with Soundscreen Design for a special giveaway.

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We have a few t-shirts up for grabs. See you on Monday. Have a great weekend!

If your in the L.A area, Gallery Nucleus is throwing a party for the release of the second installment of the Ancient Book Series “THE ANCIENT BOOK OF SEX AND SCIENCE”. The show will run from 7pm to 11pm with all artwork for sale, and all the artists (Nate Wragg, Lou Romano, Don Shank and Scott Morse) will be on hand at the gallery the whole night.  The book will be available for $20 dollars, and there will also be some new prints for sale as well. I have the first book in the series and it’s really good.

Thanks to Greg Bennett of WORKtoDATE for sending us this poster he created for the So-Cal Fire Poster Project. The destruction of the wildfires is portrayed by physically making, photographing and then compositing various textures such as burnt paper, water stains, ash and grit. The poster is for available for purchase here. One hundred percent of the proceeds will be given to the Salvation Army, for the 2007 California Wildfire fund.

You can see more of Greg’s work at Worktodate.com. He has a new blog as well!

It’s here! Long rumored, leaked, and made into products, Neutraface Slab is available now. Neutraface Slab features five display weights, four text weights with italics plus a unique stencil style.

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We tallied the votes in our Loto de Socorrismo caption writing contest and #5 is the winner! Congratulations to Emily D ! She will be receiving a hard to find kid’s book that we will soon be featuring on grain edit.

You can catch Emily at her blog and twitter. She has an Etsy store as well.

Thanks to everyone that contributed captions! New giveaway coming very soon.

Olivetti / Charter Hall Nairobi 1966 Offset 84×59.5 cm

Stunning poster by Anna Monika Jost. I’m guessing all the circular shapes are either gumball’s or typewriter keys. I’m betting on the later (secretly wishing it’s the gumballs though). I wonder if all the letters and numbers spell out some sort of code. Wait a minute, Olivetti is in Italy. Maybe its a code prediciting the release date of the Davinci code part 15 starring Tom Hank’s son. Whoops, sorry I got sidetracked. Back to Jost. Anyone have any info on her? I couldn’t find much online.

In our previous post on the kid’s board game Loto de Socorrismo we asked our readers to create captions for the images. We’ve selected our five favorite captions, but we need your help in picking our winner. Please list your favorite caption (only pick 1) in the comments. The caption with the most votes by Tues May 12th, 2009 5pm PST wins!

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Boac Timetable Jan1,1969-Mar 31,1969

I’m a sucker for vintage airline ephemera and this BOAC timetable doesn’t disappoint. Huge thanks to Stuart Hobday and Stephanie for sending in these pictures.

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Teenage Engineering DIY Styrofoam Turntable Kit

I’m fascinated by this turntable designed by Teenage Engineering. It’s lightweight/portable and the whole unit is made out of high density Styrofoam (even the tonearm). I could really use one of these on my record digging trips. Unfortunately it will not be produced and only one unit was built for research purpose.

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#1 Loto de Socorrismo produced by didacia - Made in Spain

Umm not sure what to think of this one. This has to be the craziest kid’s board game I’ve ever seen. Someone has to translate the text.

WE NEED YOU. HELP US WRITE CAPTIONS FOR EACH IMAGE

In the comments - write a caption for one or more of the images. Include the picture # with your caption. We’ll pick our favorites and one lucky person will WIN A PRIZE.

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Brasiliana - Munchen Deutsches Theater Poster

Really beautiful work by Almir Da Silva Mavignier. He was born (1925) in Rio de Janeiro Brazil and later studied at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm under Max Bill. In additon to his graphic design work he was also an accomplished painter.

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12pm PST (2pm central) today I will be providing live commentary for the epic Layer Tennis match between Aaron James Draplin and Chris Glass. Post your comments about the match to Twitter and include #lyt in the message and they’ll show up right here on the Crowd Page. Plus you can follow the official LT Twitter feed.

Catalog Design Progress: Advancing Standards in Visual Communication by K. Lonberg-Holm and Ladislav Sutnar - published by Sweet’s Catalog Service ©1950

Really excited to present today’s book. It’s a classic by the highly underrated designer Ladislav Sutnar.

Ladislav Sutnar was born in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia on november 9, 1897. He was educated in Prague. In 1939 he traveled to New York as an exhibition designer for the Czech Pavilion at the World’s Fair. Due to the war he ended up staying in New York and was later hired by Sweet’s Catalog Service. It was here along with Sweet’s research director K Lonberg Holm that Sutnar would produce a body of work that would help to lay the foundation of information design as we know it today. One of the books to spawn from that partnership was Catalog Design Progress. The book chronicles the pair’s thoughts and experimentations with the layout and organization of information.

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A twibe is a group of Twitter users interested in a common topic who would like to be able to communicate with each other.  On each twibe’s page, there is a list of twibe members.  There is also a tweet stream that lists tweets from twibe members which contain key word tag.

We created a twibes for grain edit, mid century modern and graphic design.

Join the graphic design twibe here.

Join the mid century modern twibe here.

Join the grain edit twibe here.

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Catch us on Twitter @grainedit

Rilla Alexander is a member of the well known and respected art and design collective, Rinzen. The group’s posters and album covers have been exhibited at the Louvre and their large scale artwork installed in Tokyo’s Zero Gate and Copenhagen’s Hotel Fox. Today she gives Grain Edit readers a sneak peek into her studio and shares some of her favorite objects.

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You may have noticed our new poster picks section in the right column. We’ve teamed up with our friend Lad at Poster Cabaret and every few weeks we will be highlighting a piece from the the online store’s collection of limited edition gig posters and hard to find art prints. Poster Cabaret carries posters by many of the artists we feature on grain edit including: The Small Stakes, Aesthetic Apparatus, Matte Stephens, Vahalla Studios, Delicious Design League, Doublenaut, Invisible Creature and more.

Our first poster pick is the Beck Concert poster designed by Jason Munn of The Small Stakes

Mein Erster Brockhaus - Ein Buntes Bilder - ABC c1963 Published by F.A Brockhaus Wiesbaden Germany

What young German boy wouldn’t want a book filled with Spargel, Spatz, Specht and Schwable? (most of those were birds..but one was asparagus. I’ll let you guess which one.) This alphabet book is filled with those little dudes. If I ever go to Germany, I’m taking this book with me. I’ll be name dropping German nouns all day. This is the OG way to learn a language. Watch out Rosetta Stone!

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“Druzhba Holiday Center Hall” (Yalta, Ukraine, designed by Igor Vasilevsky 1984)© Frederic Chaubin

Fascinating photos from Frederic Chaubin. Many of his images feature strange buildings from the former Soviet Union.  Most of the structures were built during the 1970s and 80s and look like something straight out of Sci-fi movie.

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Poster for Vysoka Zed’ (The High Wall) c1964 Directed by Karel Kachyna

Stunning posters from the Czechoslovakian designer Zdenek Ziegler.

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Hotel Aranyhomok - Kecskemet, Hungary

Beautiful luggage label for Hotel Aranyhomok. The hotel still exists. Read the rest of this entry »

If you haven’t signed up for our House Industries/ Alexander Girard Giveaway it’s not too late. Giveaway ends at 5pm today (04/10/09).

Thanks to the wonderful folks over at DaWanda for inviting us to curate a collection of our favorite items from their website. DaWanda is a European based marketplace for artists and designers to sell their work.

Check out what we picked here.

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Europa-Bergmeister 1966 designed by Volz

Typography at 200mph. Amazing Porsche posters designed by Erich Strenger and Volz.

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If you haven’t signed up for our House Industries/ Alexander Girard Giveaway it’s not too late. Its quick, easy and free to enter. Giveaway ends soon though, so sign up before we cut off the entries.

Click here for all the details of the giveaway.

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Corporate Diversity- Swiss Graphic Design and Advertising by Geigy 1940-1970. Published by Lars Muller +Museum fur Gestaltung Zurich - Back cover image of Acaralate canister designed by Markus Low in 1967

The fine folks at Lars Muller have just published an excellent book titled Corporate Diversity: Swiss Graphic Design and Advertising by Geigy. I know alot of designers (myself included) that are extremely excited over the release of this book. It chronicles the work of the design studio J.R Geigy AG which was a launching pad for one of the great periods of Swiss graphic design, in the 1950s and 1960s. It’s amazing to see the quantity and quality of the designers associated with Geigy. Under the leadership of Max Schmid for many years, the studio employed Roland Aeschlimann, Karl Gerstner, Jörg Hamburger, Steff Geissbuhler, Andreas His, Toshihiro Katayama, and Nelly Rudin, among others. Freelance designers such as Michael Engelmann, Gottfried Honegger, Armin Hofmann, Herbert Leupin, Warja Lavater, Numa Rick, and Niklaus Stoecklin were also used. In the 1960s, the Basel office, most especially George Giusti and Fred Troller, was involved in developing the studios of the subsidiaries in the United States and the United Kingdom, placing more emphasis on advertising. This is the first comprehensive presentation of Geigy design, an important Swiss contribution to the international history of design.

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Four bold types to build dense word images c. early 60s?

Beautiful type specimen booklet produced by Typefoundry Amsterdam and imported by Amsterdam Continental. Includes samples of Egyptian Bold Extended, Annonce Grotesque, Egyptian Bold Condensed and Old Gothic Bold Italic.

From the intro of the Booklet:

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Flyer design: Mike Schofield Resource Room Productions

Deejay OM is a long time friend of mine. We used to roll around Northern California hitting busted record shacks and dirt malls while bragging about our latest private press lp scores. The man has an insane record collection. He’s the guy with the Og PI-R Square 45 you wish you had. Make that 10 copies you wish you had. Every first Wednesday of the month at the Attic in the Mission district of San Francisco OM along with DJ MAKossa lay down some seriously rare grooves. For tonight’s show (April 1st 2009) they will be showing the 1978 Brazilian Psychedelic horror flick Hallucinations of a deranged mind to accompany the music.

Today for grain edit readers OM and MAKossa have prepared 2 special live sets. They drop everything from raw American psych to spaced out funky electronics ala Pierre Henry. OM starts off his set with a classic psych cut by Animated Egg and eventually works into a track off his Reheated Naan and Curry lp that is so hard that it will break your face. MAKossa serves up a killer Turkish track, Jamaican chatter and drums thicker then a hippopotamus covered in maple syrup.

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One of our favorite illustrators from the Pacific Northwest is Ward Jenkins. He has to be one of the busiest guys in the biz. He creates amazing illustrations, chats it up on twitter, contributes to Drawn!, maintains several flickr groups (here and here), runs a fantastic blog (his blog is one of the first blogs I started reading) and on top of all this he just completed his first children’s book, which will be published by Simon & Schuster in June 2009. I’m starting to think that Ward is not one person, but rather a small organization with one heck of a cool name.

Ward just released 7 new prints in his Ward-O -Matic Etsy Shop (I know, he has a shop too, where does get the time?) To celebrate he’s holding a giveaway. To enter you have to leave a comment on this post by 11:59 midnight PST on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009. The winners will be announced on Friday, April 3rd.

Visit Ward’s blog to enter the giveaway.

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House Industries is not your typical type foundry. Unlike most foundries that strictly focus on type design, House take things one step further. Their fonts become springboards to new ideas and products that are often integrated into themed experiences complete with lush packaging and slick catalogs. A great example of this is their work on the 2004 release of Neutraface. They created a reproduction of Richard Neutra’s Boomerang chair and pillows to coincide with the release of the font collection. In addition, they created limited edition packaging (with die cuts and metallic inks) to accompany the hard copy of the fonts. In an age when people more and more seek cheap and immediate goods,  I cherish these premium experiences.

House Industries most recent project pays tribute to the modernist designer Alexander Girard. In my opinion it is their most impressive collection to date. It includes a Type Family, a Nativity Set, t shirts, alphabet blocks, lettering, Marilyn Neuhart designed Casa dolls and more. We spoke with Andy Cruz (Co-owner and art director) about the research and development of the products.

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To celebrate the new Alexander Girard line of products we’ve teamed up with House Industries for a special giveaway.

Sounds great, but how do I enter?

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Yep its true, we love you guys (or maybe we’re just desperate for attention) so we’ve put together another giveaway for Monday. I’m really excited about this one. If you missed out on our last giveaway, heres your chance to take home some goods. Make sure you sign up for the Grain Edit RSS or email updates so you can be involved in this giveaway. Visit us on Twitter as well @grainedit.

The Swiss-born modernist graphic designer Erik Nitsche created some amazing posters for General Dynamics including the well known Atoms for Peace series. This poster for the Convair 880 commercial jetliner is one of the harder ones to find. I wish I had an extra $1000 laying around the house because one popped up on ebay last week.

Huge thanks to Ebay seller gbs4783qxq for letting me use this image.

Also worth checking: Erik Nitsche Subway poster & Erik Nitsche General Dynamics Annual Report

For those of you who want to bookmark grainedit on your iphone, we now have an icon thingy. Note to self, I need to update my apps.

For the LOST fans in the house. Adam Campbell put together these mock vintage/retro ads inspired by the tv show. Fun stuff…..Get “lost” here.

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I’m big fan of Evan Hecox’s work. I have the two Tokyo Fishmarket prints hanging in my office. I love how he’s able to capture the subtle and beautiful moments in everyday life. The latest addition to his body of work is inspired by his travels in Paris. He was particulary fond of the hand lettering found on the signs of the street vendors.

The Paris Sketch Print drops in April, but is available for preorder now.

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So, I’m hanging out my with friend and fellow book nerd Sean Flores a while ago and he’s breaks out these incredible posters designed for Bally in the 1980s. My jaw drops! He tells me they were created by French designer Jacques Auriac. Who the heck is Jacques Auriac?  I’m thinking.  Then Sean mentions that a Paris based publisher produced a catalog of his work. Ahh crap!! just what I need, another expensive import book to track down. A year later and a trip to Tokyo I finally got my hands on this thing.

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We’ve shut off the comments for the Grain Edit Design Stimulus Package Giveaway. We will now prepare for the drawing and select our winners. We will announce the winners later tonight.  The winners will be listed at the bottom of the Grain Edit Email Update and Grain Edit RSS Feed. For those of you who subscribe to the email updates, the email will arrive sometime between now and tomorrow morning.

Thanks everyone for taking part in our giveaway and have a great weekend!

If you haven’t signed up for the Grain Edit Design Stimulus Package Giveaway, It’s not too late. Giveaway ends at 6pm Pacific standard Time.

Huge thanks to Sam Grawe and the rest of Dwell for featuring Grain Edit in their Blog Round up. I’m a long time Dwell fan so, this is a huge honor for me.

You can see the post here.

In addition, to the Grain Edit Facebook group we’ve created a fan page. This will not replace the Facebook group, but we do plan to use it to announce special events and giveaways.

Join us at the Grain Edit Fan Page.

Also catch us on Flickr and Twitter.

Designer Music #1 - A Special Music Mix for Grain Edit Readers

Once a week I look forward to receiving a hot dj mix from my friend Freddy over at Props Radio. Sometimes it’s funk, other times it’s Soul, Disco, Jazz or Hip Hop. Two weeks ago, he blew my mind with his 3 FEET HIGH AND RISING turns 20 mix. The mix paid tribute to this classic De La Soul album (easily in my top top 5 Hip Hop albums of all time) and included many original songs that Prince Paul sampled to create this masterpiece. This week Freddy serves up not one, but 2 special mixes especially for Grain Edit readers!

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I want to thank Michelle Mccormick for inviting me to contribute to her wonderful blog Inspiration Resource. I’ve been a fan of her site for a while, so I was excited when she asked if I would be willing to share a few pictures of how I organize and collect inspiration. I happily agreed and broke out the camera. In the post you’ll see a few pictures of the folders I use to store labels and the mylar envelopes I use to store brochures and maps.

You can see all the pictures here.

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New Prizes in the Grain Edit Design Stimulus Package Giveaway!

1st up is the 2009 Studio On Fire calendar courtesy of Studio on Fire.

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I want this chair! It was designed by Jupp Ernst and manufactured by Polstermobelfabrik Eugen Schmidt Gmbh during the 1950s. If the chair wasn’t cool enough, Helmut Lortz nailed it on the design of the AD. Someone needs to buy me this chair along with a Robin Day Form Unit Sofa. Please?

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We’re super excited to present this wallpaper designed exclusively for Grain Edit by one of our favorite illustrators…. Maxim Dalton. We approached Maxim about the wallpaper a few weeks ago and was thrilled when he agreed. Since he is based in Buenos Aires, I asked if he would include the Buenos Aires National Library in the illustration. This beautiful, spaceship looking, brutalist beast was designed in 1961 by the architectural team of Clorindo Testa, Francisco Bullrich, and Alicia Cazzaniga. The library is the large building on the left hand side of the illustration.

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New Prizes coming…

If you haven’t signed up for the Grain Edit Stimulus Package Giveaway it’s not too late! We’re giving away over $1000 worth of goodies. So What are you waiting for? It’s quick, easy and free to sign up.

Click here to learn more about the giveaway.

Exclusive new desktop wallpaper coming later today.

After we posted this cityscape by Sigrid and Hans Lammle we received a few emails from readers that wanted to have the image as a wallpaper. We thought that was a great idea, so we loaded the image into Photoshop and lovingly chopped up some new sizes.

You can download the cityscape at our new Designer Desktop Wallpaper Page.

We’ve mentioned Andrew Holder on grain edit before, but I just got word of a cool interview with him over at Defgrip. In the interview he discusses some of his recent work for arkitip. He also shares some of his favorite artists. I was suprised to see David Weidman on the list.

After you read the interview, check out the rest of Defgrip. It’s a great site that covers BMX culture, photography, art and design.

Not signed up for the Grain Edit RSS yet? Give it a try. Its free and yummy.

We’re proud to announce a new addition to our Grand Prize in the Giveaway. Along with the $150 gift certificate from 2k Gingham and collection of goods from You Work From Them, one lucky winner will be walking home with a limited edition Chinatown Summer print by Evan Hecox courtesy of the rad folks over at Arkitip.

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Keep checking in!  We’ll be announcing a new addition to the Grand Prize in the Grain Edit Stimulus Package Giveaway!

Chum mach mit 1962 poster designed by Jorg (jurg) Hamburger / Photograpphy by Hans Peter Muhlemann for Eidg Drucksachen und Materialzentrale - Bern Swirzerland

Beautiful poster by Jorg Hamburger. Swiss minialism at it’s finest. I love the kids climbing in the background and how the poles make for a perfect natural grid.

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The US Economy is falling apart and people are down. We came up with the “Grain Edit Design Stimulus Package Giveaway” as a way to cheer people up during these rough times and to thank our amazing readers for their continued support.  For the giveaway, we contacted some of our favorite illustrators and designers that we’re featured on Grain Edit within the last 6 months and asked if they would be willing to participate. Thanks to all our sponsors for helping to make this happen!

Sounds Great, but how do I enter?

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Grain Edit is now in the Wordpress Showcase Gallery. Please vote for us! Thanks Guys!

You can vote for Grain Edit here.

The Giveaway launches later today. Keep checking in.

Read Between the Leading is a wonderful new weekly Podcast that features Aaron Heth and Matt McInerney discussing issues related to design and typography. For episode 5 they invited us on the show to discuss how Grain Edit got started, the skittles website and Modernista’s site, and a bit about typographic terminology.

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For those of you who missed out on our last giveaway we’ve got another one big one lined up for this coming monday. Goodies from Steven Harrington, 2K Gingham and many more. You won’t want to miss it.

Don’t want to miss the giveaway? Sign up for the Grainedit RSS Feed or Grain Edit email updates. Catch us on twitter as well @grainedit

We’re big fans of the art and design blog Booooooom,so we’re super excited to see that they’ve included us in their list of 17 creative websites to bookmark (unless you are dumb)! Make it 18! add Booooooom to your boomarks! It’s a great site.

Objectified Movie poster 27″ x 39″, metallic silver and black, lithograph.

Beautiful poster design from Michael C. Place and his studiomates at Build for the upcoming Objectified documentary. The poster features drawings of dozens of objects from designers in the film and more. I like how the word “objectified” is subtly placed within the contents of the objects.  Clean, minimal and modern. I love it. Should be available in the shop soon.

I knew the sun had a mustache! Great new work from the guys at Wink for a recent lecture with the Columbus Society of Communicating Arts. If they ever recreated this mobile in real life it would be interesting to see if the bird poop gets its own string.

You can hear excerpts from the lecture here.

On a side note I love their signature. Wink script sometime soon?

Drive Less Walk More by Brian Michael Gossett

Lots of fun work over at Quality Goods inc. The online shop features work from George Katz, Stephen Kelleher, Justin Blyth, Evan Di Leo, Bran Dougherty-Johnson and Brian Michael Gossett. These guys have some serious middle name action going on.

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Ok so we are twaddling, twapping, twerding, twoahbowing, whatever it is we’re on Twitter now! You’ll find random musings, extra credit links, and eventually even some giveaways just for our twitter homies.

Catch us on Twitter @grainedit

Beautiful Cityscapes designed and illustrated by the German couple Sigrid and Hans Lammle. These illustrations were for a calendar published in 1957. Really amazing details and the colors are super bright and saturated. I need more of this! Any guesses as to what city this might be?

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Black Sabbath designed by Stefan Kjartansson

I’ve been receiving emails in regards to the similarities between the Akimoto typeface (featured in our previous post) and Black Slabbath. I think its only fair that we feature Black Sabbath here as well. You make the call.

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I’m so glad that Finnish based designer Ossi Gustafsson emailed me about his typeface Akimoto. I’m all about the fat slab typefaces and this is my new favorite. Thin spearheads jut into the characters and define the negative spaces. This makes for a nice contrast against the thick slabs. I gave it a test run and it looks great.  Akimoto comes in three flavors and is available for purchase at Myfonts.com.

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We’d like to officially welcome Grace Danico as the newest member of the Grain Edit team.  You might of noticed her name popping up on the site over the past few months as she’s been digging up lots of goodies for us.

We asked Grace to mention a few things about herself:

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Herbert Spencer was the editor and founder of the highly coveted Typographica design journal. A total of thirty two issues were published between the years of 1949 and 1967. The journal was known for its high standards in design and production and eclectic mix of subject matter.

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Really fun illustrations found in this brochure for the USSR pavilion at the 1958 World Fair.

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Many thanks to the good people at Madison, Wisconsin based design firm Swink for sending me this awesome promotional piece. Swink put this together as a way to invite people to reconsider the way they’ve been marketing themselves and to believe in the power of a good story — their story. It comes with two plaid lawn chairs (so you can invite a friend), a fire and your very own dinosaur. To top it off, the whole thing comes packaged in a mailer with a giant smiling hot dog! That’s what I’m talking about!

The piece was letterpressed by the always top notch studio on fire.

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Dan Reisinger: Zurich - 125 years Perpetual Calendar.

I’m drooling over these pictures of the Perpetual Calendar that Barry of the Studio Smith blog just sent me. The calendar was designed by Dan Reisinger for the Museum of the Modern Art in New York. Great score mate!

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Recently dug up this deck of El Al Israel Airlines playing cards. El Al commissioned Israeli artist and designer Jean David to design the set which portrays the Kings, Queens and heroes of Israel’s past. Love the design of the joker. He looks like some crazy elf with danish modern candle holders on his head and a speed bump for an arm.

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I stopped by the The 42nd California International Antiquarian Book Fair in San Francisco this past weekend and saw some really nice books. This is the largest antiquarian book fair in the U.S. and features booksellers from around the world. I saw lots of great pieces by Piet Zwart, Bruno Munari and a ton of rare children’s books. I was really surprised by the prices though. Many of the books were overpriced, especially considering the current economy. Anyone else get a chance to go? Thoughts?

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I use NetNewsWire to read all my feeds. One of the great things about it is that you can use custom CSS styles. Antonio over Aisle One has put together a wonderful set of NetNewsWire styles that he calls Legistyles. As he mentions on the Legistyles site “Much attention has been paid to the design and typography of the styles to improve legibility and readability, and to enhance the overall reading experience.”

Currently there are 4 styles available.

Serif Black 1.0, Serif White 1.0 (Titles and body text are set in Baskerville)

Haaus (Titles are set in Futura and the body text is set in Lucida Grande)

and Brockmann (Titles and body text are set in Helvetica)

Check it out for yourself here.

The last time we mentioned Bolda Display on Grain Edit we were drooling over its eventual release. Well now its available for purchase. I gave it a test run and I have to say, I love this font.  I can’t get enough of those lowercase bubbly round slabs. Definitely one of my faves over the past year. It comes in two styles, regular and outline. This has to be the best (and only) font to be inspired by 1970s ping pong fashion.

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Bruce Jamieson of the top notch design firm I Love Dust emailed me about this diamond mine of vintage cassette tape inserts he just uploaded to Flickr. The collection includes covers from Happy Sound, Bonsonic, Philips, BASF, WHSmith, Emitape, AGFA, TDK and a grip of others.  Lots of great material from the 1970s and 80s.

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Duane King is the creator of Thinking for a Living. A well curated collection of recommended readings and online resources. The site is filled with links to top notch design blogs and firms. Many of the resources are available in a special zine that they put together. In addition to Thinking for a Living, Duane is the creative director of Santa Fe based studio BBDK. They recently completed a project for Italian glassware company Luigi Bormioli. We don’t usually cover web design on grain edit, but I think this site is worth checking out. Clean, minimal and elegant. Very nice.

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Dan Reisinger was born in Yugoslavia in 1934 to a family of painters. His early life was filled with adversity including losing most of his family to the Holocaust. In the 1940s he moved to Israel where he eventually joined the Air Force. It was here that he met his mentor and friend Abram Games. In the 1960s he set up a design studio in Tel Aviv where he helped to design the Israeli Pavilion at Expo’67 as well as create a body of work for El Al Airlines.

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Grain Edit reader Dan Chamberlain sent in this rad safety match label from the 1970s.  He discovered it on a recent trip back to his hometown in Essex where he stumbled upon his Grandfather’s collection of matchboxes.

You can see some of the other labels from his grandfather’s collection here.

Netdiver now in its tenth year just put together one heck of a best of the year list. They aimed to list 100, but couldn’t do it. Check out all 110 solid picks here.

Spacesick absolutely nailed it with his I Can Read Movies Series. The series features cult movies redone as vintage paperback covers similiar to the Penguin book cover art of the 1950s + 60s.  Spacesick was partly inspired by Moss’s Movie Poster Remakes series, and all the musty old textbooks and digests that he used to love flipping through as a kid. I think my favorite is Highlander. Not only is the design great, but its absolutely hilarious.

(via neatorama)

Also worth checking:

Vintage Penguin book covers

Japanese book covers

Wildsville : The art of Derek Yaniger - Published by Korero Books

I first found out about Derek Yaniger through Otto von Stroheim’s Tiki newsletter. His art harks back to the sketchy, loose line illustrations often found in cookbooks, maps, pamphlets and packages of the 1950s and 60s. It’s filled with references to hot rods, beatniks and tiki culture. It’s colorful, fun and always full of suprises.

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Hotel deutschland, Leipzig, Germany luggage label

Check the bird in the logo. Very similar to the Braniff Airlines logo designed by Alexander Girard.

also worth checking:

Hotel Rigi Luggage label

+++Recommended viewing +++

“New won’t stay still. It finds us, ready or not.” These words lead us into this beautiful video by Berkeley based Tomorrow Partners. Really nice short celebrating the power of “new”.  Illustrations by Sarah Labieniec, who also creates really nice things over at Lab Partners. Take a second out of your day, to watch this. Enjoy!

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Many thanks to Catherine (cat) Morley for featuring Grain Edit on Designers Who Blog. She runs a great site that includes interviews with bloggers and tips for writing. Check it out!

Zurich Excursions 1963-Printed by Orell Fussli in Switzerland

The Swiss do it again! Top notch layout by Franz Fassler. Fassler also designed the cover of anwendungstechnik moderner anstrichstoffe seen in our post on modern Swiss book design. This booklet contains information on escorted and non escorted tours around Zurich.

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Eli No! tells the story of one trouble-making dog and the one word that is never far behind. The book was designed and illustrated by Katie Kirk & Nathan Strandberg of Eighthourday.

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Chlapec a opička c1963

My good friend Wes dropped one heck of a link on me. Terry Posters is pure poster sweet corn. The shop is named after Monty Python member and director Terry Gilliam who was present for the opening. Their online store features a huge collection of Polish and Czechoslovakian film posters. The children’s poster section is especially nice.

Also worth checking:

Polish poster gallery

Deutsche Bundespost Internationale Polizeiausstellung IPA 1956

Giving a big hi five to the world y’all.

Part blog, part store, Pardon My Hindi serves up lots of goodies like this print seen above.

After you check out the store, swing by the blog where you can see Kumar (Of Wes Anderson movie fame etc.) serve up chai the right way! Plus every friday its “dance time” where they drop a serious Bollywood gem like this. Pass the naan and get ready to get down!

What up hero? This is a must see! Heck yea!

We’re big fans of Matte Stephens here at Grain Edit, so we’re excited to announce that his work will be displayed at the SoHo, Madison ave and Columbus St. Jonathan Adler stores in New York. Other stores around the country will be added. If your in The NYC area, stop on by. Go Matte!

Keep an eye on Matte’s blog to see if his work is coming to a Jonthan Adler store near you.

I’m really into this tribute poster to the Shining by Tes One. I asked Tes if he could share with Grain Edit readers some of his thoughts in the making of this poster.

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Ok We’re back. I hope everyone had a great New Years! Lets start things off with our first ever…

Conservationist of the Month:

Grain Edit reader Brad Mosher rescued this endangered Italian specimen from a stinky dumpster in an alleyway. To quote Brad, “It was beautiful, broken and smelled of rancid oil and other typical foul goo.” Way to go Brad! Great score and thanks for helping to make this planet a better place.

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Happy Holidays everyone! Thanks for making 2008 a great year. Gleeful shout outs to all the wonderful people that have contributed, commented and generally taken time out of their day to visit Grain Edit. We’ll be back on Jan 5th. Lots of good things planned for the new year!

(image via webgirlpip’s awesome flickr photostream)

Thanks to Alex Haigh of ThinkDust for making my day. I love looking though my old 1970s/80s Letraset catalogs, so I’m really excited to see that someone has finally created a digitized version of the Yagi Link Double typeface. Alex has put in hundreds of hours to create the upper and lower case 255 character set which he calls Miyagi.

I just fired up Illustrator and gave the typeface a test drive. It looks great. This makes me want to break out the Letraset catalogs and see what other typefaces I’m missing.

Technical details: 255 character set upper and lowercase, full ascii characters, opentype format compatible with pc and mac, full manual kerning.

You can purchase the Miyagi typeface at Alex’s new foundry HypeForType

Rad luggage label for Hotel Filser which is located in Oberstdorf, Germany. The mountains in the back would be the Bavarian Alps. Anyone know what typeface “Filser” is set in? Is it Hand-drawn?

Italia Modern Design - Published by PIE Books c2007

Japanese publisher PIE Books has put together some excellent design related books over the past couple years including Book Design of Graphic Designers in the World, Olle Eksell and Book Design of Graphic Designers in Japan. I picked up Italia Modern Design recently and it doesn’t disappoint. The book focuses on Italian graphic design from the 1950s-1970s and includes many of the heavyweights like Bruno Munari, Giovanni Pintori, Max Huber, Enzo Mari, Pino Tovaglia, Albe Steiner etc. It also includes a fair amount of work from Olivetti and Pirelli.

The people at PIE Books do a great job of sourcing and presenting the materials. They always dig up a few posters/books/magazines that I’ve never seen before. I just wish they would include an English translation (all the text is in Japanese) so, I can follow along with the notes.

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I really like Maria Homler Dahlgren’s Bricka Stockholm tray, so I was excited when Maria emailed me with this bag she designed for Loka. Lots of fun colors and shapes.

Check out the rest of Maria’s work at the Metagram Art Ab website.

1979 Republica Argentina- de junio dia mundial del medio ambiente

Rad man tree stamp via David McFarline

Monaco 75 Grand Prix Auto Poster illustrated by Michael Turner

Little something for everyone here….racing stripes, slanted type and a big pink castle.

(via Posterclassics.com)

I have an upcoming trip to Singapore. Can anyone suggest places to visit? (museums, shops, lounges, restaurants, etc.) Is the toy museum worth visiting?

Also I while I’m in Singapore I’d like to contact a few designers/design firms in regards to a studio visit we could feature on Grain Edit. Can anyone suggest any designers/design firms I should contact? If anyone wants to meet up while I’m in Singapore just send me an email the contact page.

Sweet Mother! Six columns of grid goodness! Antonio from Aisle One just emailed me with his latest project The Grid System. The site features links to articles, tools, books as well as templates and other goodies. It’s basically an ever-growing resource site on the topic of grid systems and anything associated to it. Tap it and pass it!

(image via the grid loving Swiss Legacy)

Bag for Polish handicraft store Cepelia 1970s?

Breaking out that case of premium rooster loot. Found this a while back at the local dirt mall. The type is nice, but really its all about that rooster tail.  Even the rooster can’t get his eyes off it. I’d be having a how ya doing all day too if I had a tail like that.

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Back in Febuary we featured John Foster’s work for the So-Cal Fire Poster Project . Recently John contacted us regarding his latest project, a book on packaging design entitled FOR SALE: Over 200 Innovative Solutions in Packaging Design. The book features many of the designers we’ve featured on Grain Edit including: Invisible Creature, Wink, Jason Munn of The Small Stakes and Burlesque of North America. In the exchange below John shares some of his thoughts on the book for Grain Edit Readers.

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Miroslav Sasek: This is the United Nations c1968

Its about time that we have a little Miroslav Sasek love up in here.The Czechoslovakian born illustrator is well known for his This Is Series of children’s books. Most of the books in the This is series are centered around a certain city, for example This is San Franscisco or This is Paris, but in this case it’s an international organization. Through Sasek’s playful ink and gouache illustrations, he guides us through the building. I wish I had books like these when I was a kid. I could stare at this for hours.

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Beautiful hotel luggage label via the consistently good Inspiration Resource.

For those of you in Los Angeles, Shepard Fairey’s Subliminal Gallery is hosting an exhibition of House Industries work.

From Subliminal Gallery’s website:

For Letters and Ligatures, House Industries conveys a single, yet complex philosophy: visual nomenclature fuels language, facilitates communication, and forms the basis of a civilized society.  The written language strings together letters, words, and sentences, conveying the innermost thoughts and ideas that human beings communicate to the outside world.  It is tied to our primitive nature, governing our individual choices and observations, our collective socio-anthropologic history.  At House Industries, the dedicated collective of artists figure if these symbols of syntax hold such an authority, “they might as well look good.”

OPENING RECEPTION
Saturday, November 8
8 p.m. – 11 p.m.

EXHIBITION DATES
November 8th - December 5th

SUBLIMINAL GALLERY
1331 W. Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026
P. 213.213.0078

For more details visit the Subliminal Projects Gallery website.

Poster by CD Ryan. Gets your free here

Its official and now two lucky girls are getting a new puppy.

SAS Airlines dinner menu 1958

Dinner Menu celebrating the 1st Anniversary of the Scandinavian Airlines North Pole Route from Copenhagen to Tokyo.

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Palestine Poster designed by Faustino Perez in 1968

Hop on over to So Much Pileup. There showing OSPAAAL posters all week.

Thanks to Tony Nguyen for sending in these bus passes from the 1940s. Bus #11 seems to be running low on self esteem. “Everyone cannot ride in the first car or bus”, so I guess your stuck with #11. Oh well..

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Found this 1968 yearbook for Depauw University a month ago. I have no idea how the island looking thingys tie in with the school, but I’m really digging it. I think I’m going to chop the front cover off and frame it. Anyone else have any ideas? Maybe I could use the top to make a series of designer trap doors.  Mirage might be a fitting title for that. Trap doors will be the hot thing in 2009, just wait and see. I’m also looking to heavily invest in secret underground passageways and fish sticks. If you have a cave and box of Gorton’s….let’s talk.

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We have a winner in the Grain Edit Insound 20 Thermals Poster Giveaway we announced last tuesday. Congrats to Owen Evans. He will be receiving 1 limited edition Thermals poster designed by Jason Munn of The Small Stakes.

Posters for Centre de Creation Industrielle 1969-1972

Beautiful work form the highly underrated French designer Jean Widmer. These posters were created for the Centre de Creation Industrielle. Jean designed the logo as well as all the exhibition posters for the Centre until 1975. He’s mentioned in interviews that his work was influenced by some of the Swiss modernists including Josef Muller Brockmann and Max Bill.  You can easily see that influence in this poster series.

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Anna Sui has teamed up with the Estate of Alexander Girard to present a series of T-shirts for Spring 2009. One of the T-shirts features an image very similar to this Girard Nativity Poster we featured here last year.  You can see all the T-shirts here.

Actual downloaded print proudly displaying itself in its native Berkeley habitat

Tomorrow partners put together these posters for the upcoming election. The posters are each limited editions, printed in three colors, 18″ x 24″ and are priced at $20. Also available are 8 1/2″ x 11″ and 11″x 17″ versions that can be downloaded for free. Print up a bunch to post around town!

Both posters can be purchased or downloaded for free here.

Get ready to vote!

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We’ve teamed up with Insound to offer this special giveaway today.  Up for grabs is 1 Limited Edition Thermals poster. The poster is part of the Insound 20 series designed by Jason Munn of The Small Stakes.

All you have to do is enter the giveaway here and we’ll announce the winner next Tuesday, 10/28 on grain edit.

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Info on the Insound 20 series:

The series consists of 20 designs for 20 bands. Each design was screened on limited edition T-Shirts, Hoodies and Hand-Numbered Posters. The limited posters were screened once in a run of 200 and after these are gone they won’t be reprinted.

If you want to be alerted of future giveaways, please sign up for the Grain Edit RSS Feed.

If you haven’t already, Check out our interview with Jason Munn of the Small Stakes.

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Once again, you can enter the giveaway here.

We’re rolling with the Pirate theme. First Office’s design for 826 Valencia’s new store and now Booty Juggler, a fun new game designed/animated by Robin Davey and built by Ben Templeton of Thought Den. The look of the game was inspired by vintage poster and animation design, the nautical tattoos of Sailor Jerry, and scruffy screenprinted goodness.

Give it a toss here.

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Marilyn Neuhart dolls for the Textile & Objects shop circa 1961 - photo credit Todd Webb of maXimo

The Scout has an excellent interview with Marilyn Neuhart. Marilyn along with her husband John worked as designers in the Eames Office during the late 1950s. She also worked with Alexander Girard in developing the graphics as well as a line of dolls for Girard’s Textile & Objects Shop in New York City. In part of the interview, Marilyn mentions that she would drive around Los Angeles with Girard looking for toys and folk art. That must of been a blast.

Well enough of me rambling. Read the whole interview here. Check out the rest of the Scout while your there. It’s a great site.

LAX map designed by Dotan & Associates in 1982

Just found this LAX map. The pictograms on the front are very similar to the identity work of Otl Aicher for the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Whats with the obnoxious use of question marks? That’s really ruining my mello.

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Nate Burgos is the man behind Design Feast. An excellent resource and growing index of design related sites. Nate recently invited me to take part in the Designer’s Questionnaire section of the site. For my Questionnaire, Nate asked me 7 questions related to blogging. You can see all my answers here.

While your there, checkout Nate’s book entitled Thought Leadership by Design. A timeless volume of contemporary quotes on the powerful, evolving nature of Design and its influence on society, business, technology, education, and most importantly: Everyday life. The book includes quotes from Ladislav Sutnar, Paul Rand, Milton Glaser and many more.

My wife and I just started watching Mad Men and I  think we’re hooked. Every Sunday night we run upstairs to catch all the dirt going down with the Drapers and the rest of the lot. Not to mention, drool over all the cool furniture! That house in Palm Springs in tonight’s episode had some amazing mid century modern pieces including George Nelson cigar bubble lamps and an Eero Saarinen womb chair. Besides the furniture, I love looking at the type they use on the sets. Mark Simonson has a great post on his blog regarding the type choices for the show.

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Thank you everyone for taking part in our giveaway! We had over 1,400 people enter. It was great to see all your comments and look forward to another year.

We randomly selected our 4 winners in the Grain Edit 1 Year Anniversary Giveaway Shindig thing this morning. The winners will be listed at the bottom of the Grain Edit Email Update and Grain Edit RSS Feed. For those of you who subscribe to the email updates, the email will arrive sometime between now and tomorrow morning.

Many Thanks to all the wonderful designers and stores that sponsored today’s giveaway. Without them this wouldn’t of been possible. Please visit their websites and support their work.

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Adrian Johnson

Antonio Carusone/AisleOne

BEAUTIFUL/DECAY

Burlesque of North America

Draplin Design Co.

Field Notes Brand

Frank Chimero

House Industries

Scott Hansen/Iso50

Invisible Creature

Jason Munn/The Small Stakes

Julia Rothman

Justin Fines

Lab Partners

Lorena Siminovich/ Petit Collage

Matte Stephens

The Heads of State

Wayne Pate/GoodShapeDesign

Xavier Encinas of Swiss Legacy/ Peter&Wendy

You Work For Them

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Stay tuned for our next giveaway, coming soon!

Eliezer Weishoff posters (L)1964 (R)1966

Beautiful posters from Israeli artist and sculptor Eliezer Weishoff. Eliezer first gained international exposure through his work for El Al Airlines and the Israeli Ministry of Tourism during the early 1970s. He was also responsible for designing these environmental stamps we posted back in April. He has a website, but unfortunately I couldn’t find any examples of his early poster work in his image galleries.

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Thomas and the Twig giving me the stare down.

Sorry everyone, I’m running a little late today on my posts. If you missed this, I posted this gem of a kids book by Mary Harris ( illustrations by Cliff Roberts) over at Design Sponge.

YouWorkForThem just launched a brand new site this week. If you are unfamiliar with YWFT, it’s an online store that carries books, t-shirts, posters, stock images and more.

We love books at Grain Edit so, we took some time to browse through the book section and select some of our top picks.

We’ve included links below each description, so you can get more info/purchase the book if you want to.

Dave’s picks

Charley Harper -  An Illustrated Life

This mammoth 420 page book put together by Top Designer Todd Oldham is a wonderful tribute to Charley Harper. The book is filled with full color examples of Charley’s stunning work.

Click here for more for more info/ purchase a copy.

Steven Harrington: Our Mountain

I love Steven Harrington’s illustration style and this book serves as a wonderful overview of his work. This copy is signed and drawn on by Steven Harrington himself!

Click here for more for more info/ purchase a copy.

Pino Tovaglia: The Rule That Corrects Emotion

We received a copy of this book from the publisher a few months back and loved it. You can see our review of the book here. YWFT got in some copies and now you can own a copy of this hard to find Italian import too.

Click here for more for more info/ purchase a copy.

Grid Systems in Graphic Design

Josef Muller Brockmann’s magnum dopest. The definitive book on grid systems. Every designer should be required to own this.

Click here for more for more info/ purchase a copy.

Wim Crouwel Alphabets

I really want a copy of the Wim Crouwel monograph: Mode En Module, but this book will have to due for now. Mode en Module has been out of print for a while and now goes for crazy cash. Wim Crouwel Alphabets (as seen above) is now of out of print as well and I’m sure it won’t be long before it increases in value. YWFT them still has a few copies, get your hands on one while you still can.

Click here for more for more info/ purchase a copy.

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Ethan’s Picks

How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul

As a design student, I am constantly looking for that juicy “tell-all” graphic design book. The one where you learn everything about being a real designer before actually getting a job. I love hearing different tips and tricks from seasoned designers. But my quest is over, because that book is here.

Adrian Shaughnessy breaks the process down into the necessary steps: how to find a job, being freelance, setting up a studio, running a studio, the creative process, etc. All of my burning questions answered in one book! Adrian also includes interviews with Neville Brody, Rudy VanderLans, Andy Cruz, and Natalie Hunter, among others, plus a forward by Stefan Sagmeister.

Click here for more for more info/ purchase a copy.

Beautiful Losers

One summer I spent a month attempting to learn how to skateboard. In the three years since then I’ve probably only landed two tricks successfully. I either got hurt or was too intimidated. Beautiful Losers is a way for me to vicariously live out my 1990s street and skate culture fascinations, without having to get on a skateboard.

Beautiful Losers tells the story of how artists and designers like Shepard Fairey, Spike Jonze, Mike Mills, Barry McGee, and others built their own art community independent of the mainstream art institution.

Click here for more for more info/ purchase a copy.

If you haven’t signed up for the Grain Edit 1 Year Anniversary Giveaway yet, it’s not too late. There’s tons of prizes! You can find out more info and sign up here. It’s quick, easy and free. We will be selecting the winners on Friday.

Dave handling the calls at the Gain Edit customer care corner

Ethan spending quality time listening to the new Grain Edit Audio Tour (clipboard optional)

We’re darn pleased to announce that Apartment Therapy is featuring Grain Edit as the latest entry in their Behind the Blog series.

You can see the whole thing here

Grain Edit we’re here for you.

This just in…Grace of  Design Sponge asked me to guest blog for the rest of the week so, I’ll be posting goodies over there as well. This is a real honor for me, since she runs such a great site. For today’s post I dug up a German Advent calendar.

‘Form’ Unit Furniture by British designer Robin Day for Hille 1961

I thought I’d switch it up a little bit today and post my dream sofa for the workplace. I love the color combinations and the black finished steel base frame. The unit has wide generous seats, yet doesn’t look bulky or heavy. The table top can be surfaced with a mahogany veneer. A drink cabinet can added instead of the corner table.

I hope everyone had a great weekend. Liz and I went to this new Singaporean restaurant in Lafayette. The food was great. I had the Nasi Lemak and it was on point. The rice had so much flavor. We wanted to get the Chicken Rice, but they ran out. Say what? Singaporean food without Chicken Rice? Oh well, I was kind of bummed about that, but we’ll be back.

Thanks for all the wonderful comments on the Grain Edit 1 Year Anniversary Giveaway! It’s really inspiring to see all the positive feedback. You guys are the best!

If you haven’t signed up for the giveaway, it’s not too late. You can sign up here.

This is every cat’s nightmare.

Very similar in style to this 70s Japanese poster. Has to be the same designer.

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We’re proud to announce the Grain Edit 1 year Anniversary Giveaway Shindig Thing!

We’ve had a great year and we want to thank everyone for making the site what it is today. To celebrate, we’re offering up a bunch of goodies from our favorite designers and illustrators.

Sounds great, but how do I enter to win?

Read the rest of this entry »

Hitting screens later today!

Tomorrow we will be celebrating the 1 year anniversary of Grain Edit and we’ve got a big giveaway planned, so be sure to stop by! We’ve had a great year and want to thank all our awesome readers for their wonderful comments and for making Grain Edit a frequent destination.

I’d especially like to thank all of the designers and illustrators that took time out of their busy schedules to share with us.

Some of the highlights of the past year include:

Matte Stephens showed us his awesome home.  Don Clark of Invisible Creature schooled us on his “family portrait”.  Scott Thares of Wink broke out the KISS drawings. Bo Lundberg took us behind the scenes of Barefoot in the Park and Jason Munn of the Small Stakes showed us his Horse Chest.

Ben Butcher of Pixar gave us a sneak a peek into the making of the Wall-E picture book Lots of Bots. Sean and Nicole Flores shared their insane book collection.  Ian Follett showed us some amazing stamps.  Small studio, Odopod and Chronicle Books all graciously opened up their spaces for us and Mike Davis of Burlesque served us up a tight mix.

We created some new groups:

Grain Edit Facebook group

Paul Rand Flickr Group

Modern Sticker, Stamp and label club

Some of the most popular posts (besides the interviews and studio visits) of the past year include:

Swiss Designer Hans Hartmann

Publicity and graphic design in the chemical industry - Hans Neuburg 1967

Giant Golden Book of Biology - An Introduction to the Science of Life c1961

Henri’s Walk to Paris- c1962- illustrations and design Saul Bass

Alain Gree - l’electricitie c1969

Israeli Environment stamps designed by Eliezer Weishoff in 1975

53 Years of Jauna Gaita Magazine

Issues of Icographic magazine 1971-1978 produced by ICOGRADA

Concepts - Promotional book for US Steel c1961

Giovanni Pintori exhibition catalog c2003

Vette Annonce type specimen sheet late - Netherlands 1950s/ early 60s

Lastly we’d like send thank you’s to: Coudal, Design Related and Julia Rothman for allowing us to contribute to each of their sites. How magazine for naming us one of the top 10 Sites for Designers for the month of December. David Airey for including us in the Top 50 Graphic Design Blogs and for all the great sites that featured us in their posts.

We have some exciting things planned for the next few weeks and months, so stay tuned. Thanks again everyone!

If you haven’t already, consider subscribing to the Grain Edit RSS. and join us tomorrow for our 1 year anniversary giveaway!

de openbare bibliotheek poster, amsterdam 1968

This is absolutely one of my favorite posters of all time. Design by Harry Sierman.

Harry studied at the Amsterdam Institute for Arts Education and later the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. After graduation he got a job with the Dutch publishing house: Querido  He worked there for many years and became well known for his book design skills.

Back in January I had the chance to trade a few emails with Harry’s daughter in law. She was nice enough to send me a copy of a small book that focuses on Harry’s graphic design and typography work from the 1940s till 2003. I’ve attached a few scans from the book below.

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Grady McFerrin moving announcement circa 2001

This one goes out to all the Grady Mcferrin fans up in this piece!

With the recent release of Grady’s line of products on Chronicle books, I dug up this golden corn from my nugget bank. This moving announcement dates back to 2001 and marks his transition to San Francisco (I think he lives in Brooklyn now). It’s hard to believe, but I found this at a yard sale a few years ago.  I have no idea how many he printed, but my guess is that it’s pretty limited.

The announcement looks like it was silkscreened. The dimensions are 7.25″ x 5″. To the Gocco experts out there: are those dimensions achievable with the large Gocco model?

Holla if you love Grady, Holla if you love Gocco, Holla if just love hollaring!

**Note - I erased the address and phone number, so all you McFerrin stalkers couldn’t go to the SF address looking for his old clothes and used pencil shavings.

Pinback poster

Lots of good stuff going on in the land of Belgian waffle cookie trees. Delicious is serving up this beauty along with some other tasty treats in their shop.

(Via the always yummy Pica + Pixel)

Yummy geometric type served upon gelatinous globs of red and blue. I’ll take it. Get some here.

Fosforos Del Pirineo - Abcdario Animal (Animal Alphabet) Spain 1970s?

I found these recently. Super cool matchbox covers designed by Cruz Novillo + Olmos. The matchboxes feature an illustration of an animal for each letter of the alphabet. Hard to pick a favorite, but I think I have to go with the yellow oso (bear) loco. I think he cloned himself, because I notice I have two of the letter “O”.

Animal roll call. What’s your favorite matchbook cover from the set?

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This is turning out to be Maraid day. She has an amazing collection of photography and ephemera, plus she always posts beautiful labels to our Mid Century Modern Sticker, Label and Stamp Club.

Get lost in her collection.

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Race numbers from various UK based races

I love thick fat slabs of juicy numberage and Maraid is serving it up big time. Come get some of these vintage fatties here.

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Aaron Draplin runs a tight ship. Not only is he an amazing designer, he puts together one hell of a blog. I look forward to checking his site every morning. The guy is a knowledge farm for all things vintage and he always digs up incredible stuff on his notorious road trips.

Lots of great stuff to see on his site, but start by checking out some of his design work.

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Thanks to Tim Barber and the rest of the gang at Odopod for inviting me  to their studio last Friday. They regularly meet to discuss design and Tim asked if I would like to join them and bring in some of the things that inspire me.

While I was there I was able to take a few photos of the studio. It’s a beautiful space filled with exposed brick, concrete floors and Eames Chairs. When I walked in the main entrance on the first floor, the first thing I noticed was an Odopod sign that looked like it was ripped straight off a Motel 6. It was hot in San Francisco on Friday so, I was lucky that Odopod came with AC, Free WIFI and HBO (I gotta get one of these signs). The rest of the first floor includes meeting rooms and the company parking lot (What is a design studio without atleast one vintage fixie?). The second floor houses the designers, the book collection and a big letter “O”.

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This book cover has all I need, big letters and dagger shaped fishies.

Also worth checking:

450+ examples of German and Swiss Modern Book Design

British Railways Services and Fares booklets for the Riviera (L) Sept 1962 (R) May 1959

Tony Hillman has put together an amazing collection of British Railways publicity material. His site features posters, menus, booklets, brochures, tickets, timetables and commercials. Put some time aside because there is plenty of good stuff too look at here.

(Huge round of thanks goes to Tika Viker-Bloss for sending this my way)

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Thanks to Geoff Wagner and the rest of the crew at Chronicle Books for  for taking the time to show me around the Office.  It’s a beautiful space with lots of nice architectural details including exposed bricks, beams and piping. Large globe fixtures dot the ceilings and remind me of the original Lightolier ball lights that are often found in the Eichler homes of the Bay Area. The entrance to the building hosts a bookshop open to the public. Towards the front of the shop, new books are showcased on top of rustic planks of wood recycled from one of the building’s previous tenants. The top floor features an employee lounge with floor to ceiling window walls and nice views of the Soma district.

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Going to be in Hawaii sometime this month? The Nuuanu Gallery in Honolulu is hosting an exhibition called Dirty Laundry: The Art of the Stain in Modern T-Shirt Design. The basic concept is that they asked designers to stain t-shirts with a medium of their choice (grass, wine, lipstick, etc.) and then design custom artwork that uses the stain as an integral design element. Lots of cool artists and designers are participating including Mike Perry, Damien Correll, Frank Chimero, Kris Chau, Wyeth Hansen and Tim Gough.

You can check out the full roster and get details about the show at the Dirty Laundry website.

Which? magazine offers reviews and advice for various products and services. It looks like it’s a British version of Consumer Reports magazine. In addition, to the cool cover each issue features interesting information graphics and illustrations. Some of the illustrations remind me of the work of Bill Sokol. Anyone know who the art director for the magazine was?

You can check out some of the issues over at the always yummy Delicious Industries.

Be sure to check the grain edit RSS Feed/ Email update today.  We have announced the winner in the Raymond Savignac Poster Giveaway!

Thanks to everyone who participated! We will be announcing a new giveaway soon.

Design Coordination and corporate image - FHK Henrion + Alan Parkin c1967

This is an excellent book on the subject of corporate identity. All the big design guns are in here. The best part, for each case study the designer explains the problems he encountered and his thoughts behind the design etc.

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The Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery located within San Jose State University is hosting an amazing exhibition of graphic design by the office of Otl Aicher for the 1972 Munich Olympics. The exhibition features, posters, books, brochures and signage conceived for the 1972 Olympic identity program. Now you can get a close look at all those pretty isotypes, icons, pictograms, symbols and whatever else you might want to call them.

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Last December we gave away a Raymond Savignac poster. Since then we’ve received emails from people interested in the poster, so we decided to give one more away.

poster details: This is not an original, but rather a reissue of the original poster Savignac created for Olivetti in 1953. We received this copy directly from the Olivetti Society in Italy.

Sounds great, but how do I enter to win?

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Beautiful work by Portuguese designer Sebastio Rodrigues (1929- 1997)

You can see a video of Sebastiao in action here.

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For those of you in the L.A. area, Subliminal Projects Gallery has a new exhibition entitled Somehow We All Seem Connected which features new work from Steven Harrington and Justin Krietemeyer of National Forest Design. Two awesome designers with long last names. The exhibition marks their first show in Los Angeles in four years and runs August 23 through September 19.

Leah Hennen of the excellent More Ways to Waste Time blog just posted a tour of my house/ studio. You can get a glimpse of the goodies here sans my dirty laundry and unwashed dishes. As you can see, books dominate the house. Any other book nerds out there?

See the full tour here. Stop by and say hello.

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Brasil Mapa Geral - from 1969

I picked this up a couple of years ago and I flipped when I saw this cover. This puts to shame my US Texaco maps. Unfortunately, the map part is missing. All I have is the cover and a few bits of text that were inside. What secrets did that map hold? I bet it was a treasure map that led to a top secret cave filled with barrels of almond milk. Dang, I love that stuff.

Can anyone translate the text on the cover?

Also worth checking:

1960s Brazilian book cover designs by Gian Calvi

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Seen above: Caesar the Friendly Lion, Dimensions 12.5 x 9

Able a design and branding firm outside of Philadelphia just put together a great animal poster series. The lion poster has a retro feel to it and reminds me of some the children’s book illustrations seen in the late 1970s to early 1980s.

You can see/ purchase the entire series at Able’s Etsy shop.

Also worth checking:

Petit Collage Animal Alphabet Poster

I’m a big fan of Scott Hansen’s (AKA ISO50) work and this new poster is a knockout. Love his use of Hellenic Wide for the type. The poster is for an upcoming show at the Los Angeles Arboretum.

O Grito logo seen on Brazil’s TV Globo circa 1977/1978

Mike Davis over at Burlesque of North America just dropped a gem on me. He just announced the launching of his new blog So Much Pileup which will feature design artifacts and inspiration from the 1960s-1980s. As you can tell from what I post on grain edit, that I’m love with the design of that era, so I’m really excited to see what Mike will be posting.

Head over to So Much Pileup and check out his first post on the graphics of TV Globo.

Also, if you haven’t already, check out Mike’s exclusive dj mix for grain edit.

Lettered: Clotilde Olyff by Jan Middendorp - published by Druk Editions 2000

Clotile Olyff is a Belgian designer and typographer who teaches at the National Visual Art School of La Cambre and Art School’75′ in Brussels. In this book by Jan Middendorp, Clotilde shares her investigations into the essence of the letter. The book is filled with typographical games and experiments.

The Pebble Alphabets: I’m amazed by her collection of letter shaped pebbles. Next time your at the beach look under your feet, you might be standing on the letter “M”.

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Several weeks ago I posted this wonderful Buck 65 gig poster designed by the Lyon, France based design duo Small Studio. Since then, we’ve been trading emails and they’ve been kind of enough to allow grain edit readers a sneak peek into their design studio.

I love the hand drawn typography often found in their poster work. In the examples below you can see the development of the type work for several posters that were designed recently.

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Athens Hotel door hanger + El Al Airlines hanger for sleepy time

Woah, Michael Lebowitz just posted an awesome collection of hotel door hangers.

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Theatre arts at Western Illinois University Summer 1968

Yep, thats right I’m breaking out the vintage drama club dorkery.

First day cover for Norway 1966 - Feat Sam Eyde 1866/1940 stamp and Kristian Birkeland 1867/1917 stamp.

Beautiful set of stamps dedicated to the Norwegian engineer Samuel Eyde and the scientist Kristian Olaf Birkeland. My copy (above) has a postmark on it, so I tracked down another version without the post mark at the excellent Postimerkki.

also worth checking:

vintage modern stamps from Israel

Iain Follett’s stamp collection

Top: Postcode typeface designed by Christophe Stoll 2008- Bottom: POSTCODE stamp designed by Gert Dumbar in 1978.

Christophe Stoll recently emailed to let me know of a cool typeface he designed called Postcode which is based off a stamp in the Iain Follett Stamp collection we featured. Check out Christophe’s website to hear the story behind Postcode and to download the typeface for FREE.

After you download the typeface, put some time aside to browse Iain Follett’s amazing stamp collection on Flickr.

I’m really excited to present today’s interview. Matte is one of my favorite artists and an all around rad guy. Matte makes amazing art and lives in a house with lots of cool modern furniture. In Matte’s conversation with us he shares some of the people/things that inspire his work, the characters that frequent his paintings as well as a glimpse into his studio and home.

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Bottom of Tefal pans designed by Doshi Levien

This makes me ashamed to look at my crappy IKEA pans.

(via the awesome orange you lucky!)

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How to show telephone numbers on letterheads - c early 1960s

The idea of a set of parenthesis surrounding the area code in a phone number dates back to the booklet above and Ladislav Sutnar’s design work for AT&T. Aflier has posted scans of this booklet which includes 15 letterheads selected by Sutnar with various options of laying out a 10 digit phone number.

(via the always excellent iso50 blog)

Also worth checking:
Sweets Catalog promo designed by Ladislav Sutnar

Nieuwe Muziek - Concrete en elektonische muziek by Gerard de Wit c1968

Great cover photo of a dutch recording studio from the 1960s. Check out all the vintage analog recording equipment! So many buttons, switches, knobs, reel to reels and dials. If your into 60s computer interfaces, tape machines and old mixing boards, I highly recommend you check out Stewf’s amazing Control Panel Flickr group.

Mucho  thanks to Chris at Groove Merchant for hooking me up with the booklet.

Plantão Fatídico é de c1967 -O Assassino Nudista c1968 - No Calor da Noite c1968.

Beautiful book covers by Brazilian designer/ illustrator Gian Calvi. Very similiar to the Penguin book covers of the same time period.

I’m very interested in Brazilian design from the 60s and 70s, so If anyone has any images or info please send it my way.

(via design ref’s wonderful flickr set)

also worth checking:

Japanese book cover art from the 1960s

Giant metal robots feeding toasts to kids, double decker bus eating elephants, pooping unicorns eating ice cream, and this is just for starters! These are just a few of the paintings you’ll see at Amanda Visell’s website. Some of which have come to life in the form of limited edition wood / resign figures and sculptures.

Swindle magazine has a nice interview with her where she shares her appreciation for vintage Walt Disney concept art and her beginnings as an artist.

(via dinosaurs and robots)

In 1940 Albe Steiner founded the Milan based studio Graphica Foto where he and his wife Lica experimented with Photography and design. Over the course of his career, Steiner designed for Domus, Agfa, Pirelli among others.

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Super cool Buck 65 poster via the All-Over gallery. Birds talking about record factories, thats all I’m saying.  Check the rest of the limited edition prints in the gallery as well..

grain edit is proud to announce for your viewing pleasure the second installment in our ongoing record gallery series.

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One of the first people I met when I moved to California was Chris Veltri. Chris aka “Cool Chris” owns the world renowned Groove Merchant record store which has become a haven for those looking for obscure jazz, soul, funk and latin records. Chris is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet and his knowledge of music is bordering on insane. I couldn’t begin to count the amount of amazing albums he has exposed me to.

On one of my trips to Chris’s house I had a chance to take a few photos of his personal record collection. I only had time to go through a small portion of his collection, so here are a few of the choice album covers.

*Note - sorry for the poor image quality on some of the photos. I was having an issue with my camera.

Also worth checking:

The Record Gallery part 1- Mike the 2600 King

If you haven’t seen this already, the arts and architecture website has an amazing archive of the magazine from 1945-1967 available in PDF format. The issue gallery includes covers designed by Herbert Matter, John Follis and Alvin Lustig. Select covers are available as prints you can purchase.

also worth checking:

53 years of Jauna Gaita magazine

Many thanks to Seth for sending this our way.

The Jungle Race - c 1967- Published by Bancroft & Co.

Super cool children’s book from Czech illustrators G. Seda and J. Pavlin. One of many pop up books the duo illustrated during the 1960s and 70s.

The short version of this story is: a lion, an elephant and and a giraffe try to put together a race and find out that their friends are totally lame. Their loser friends include trendy Zebra fashions snobs, snorkeling hippos and an antelope that likes to get tossed in the air by a gaggle of monkeys.

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Design Magazine June 1961

Ken Garland served as art editor for UK based Design Magazine for six years. This is just one of many amazing covers that was conceived during his tenure.

also worth checking:

10 years of Vendre Magazine cover design

Online indie music store Insound announced the release of the Insound 20 project today. The project features limited edition t-shirts, Sweatshirts and posters designed by Jason Munn of The Small Stakes for 20 of Insound’s favorite bands. Only 1000 t-shirts / sweatshirts and 200 posters of each design will be printed.

The band’s featured in the Insound 20 are: Beirut, Black Heart Procession, Built to Spill, Calexico, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Death Cab for Cutie, Department of Eagles, Grizzly Bear, Jose Gonzalez, Magnolia Electric Co., New Pornographers, Okkervil River, Peter Bjorn & John, She & Him, Spoon, The Constantines, The Decemberists, The Hold Steady, The National, and The Thermals.

There is an additonal design being sold that includes the names of all the bands in the Insound 20 program. 100% of the profits from the sale of this shirt and poster will go to benefit nonprofit literacy organization 826 NYC.

You can purchase the goods here.

Behind the Insound 20 Designs with Jason Munn

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From the same East coast that you brought you such cult classics as the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the Thanksgiving holiday comes these bad boys. These cast iron ampersands produced by House Industries are perfect for bookends, door stops, paperweights and rolling shotgun to the next Judas Priest concert.

Plus check out the ampersand t-shirts! I need to get one of these.

also from House:

Alexander Girard Alphabet Blocks

Book cover for Jules Verne novel

Lots of great work to see at Argentinian design firm tholon kunst - Book covers, annual reports, logos and a cow grazing on a prime patch of white space.

Winnie the Pooh has been around since the 1920’s. In the early 1960s the character was licensed to Disney for a series of features that debuted in 1966. The Russian version of this cartoon known as Vinni Puh aired in 1969. You can see an episode here.

It’s weird to see the Russian interpretation. I’m so used to the chunky orange American version. This guy looks like an Ewok.

Really enjoyed the video. Many thanks to Chris for sending this our way.

Giovanni Pintori exhibition catalog c2003

Giovanni Pintori won a scholarship in 1930 (at the age of 18) to study at the ISIA in Monza under design heavyweights like Marcello Nizzoli and Edoardo Persico. After graduation he was invited to work for Olivetti in the Development & Advertising Office located in Milan. Three years later he would become the head of the department. Over the next 27 years he created an impressive body of work for Olivetti that would earn him a lasting international reputation.

This book was made in conjunction with a 2003 exhibition that highlighted many of Pintori’s designs for Olivetti.

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stamp commemorating 100 years of Professional Baseball c 1969 - printed on a Giori press.

One of my favorite stamps from the US. It all works for me, the use of negative space, the colors, and the 6 cent price tag. Makes me miss the days of buying big league chew at the candy store and watching TWIB.

Also worth checking:

vintage modern stamps from Israel

modern sticker, label and stamp club

moodswing9 (me) digging for records circa 1998

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July. We had a few people over and watched the fireworks from our deck. Ryan “burger mother” tenderly worked the grill and successfully brought over 10 meat patties to life. This man knows his stuff. Thanks to everyone that came through. In addition to all this patriotic partying, it was my birthday, so it was a pretty busy weekend.

Now onto the picture above. Before I was interested in design I produced music for many of the guys in the Anticon collective under the moniker Moodswing9. Marc of We Push Buttons recently interviewed me. You can read the full interview here.

If the bomb doesn’t get you maybe the Uzi will.

Have a great 4th of July. We’ll be back on monday.

(vintage firecrackers via crackerpacks)

Bossa Nova Online has an insane collection of Bossa Nova album covers. I counted over 2000 albums! what! Tons of records from the 1950s, 60s and 70s. You can sort by labels as well. The site has archives for some of my favorite labels including: equipe, Forma, Odeon, Elenco, MPS and Som Maior. I’m not sure if these records are store inventory or part of someone’s personal collection. Either way you can easily spend a few hours browsing this monster.

Also worth checking:

Quarteto Em Cy - album cover design

1950s Japan: The blossoming of the graphic designer exhibition book

Packaging -  Honen salad oil - design by Kenji Ito 1959, Snow ice cream -design by Tadashi Masuda 1959, KAO soap - design by Hideo Amano 1958

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Eric Tan nailed it with his recent line of limited edition prints for Wall-E. The illustrations were inspired by vintage Disneyland attraction posters.

I saw Wall-E on friday. The theater was packed, as you might expect for the premier in Oakland. Pixar is only a few miles away from my house, so I’m sure there were illustrators who worked on the film in the audience. It was unlike any other Pixar film I’ve seen. Amazing in so many ways.

(image via Slash Film)

Also worth checking:
Exclusive look at the making of the Wall-E picture book.

Finished Cover

The cover of the July/ August issue of STEP Inside Design magazine was designed by Wink. Scott Thares of Wink shares with grain edit some of the thoughts that went into the cover:

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Of Great Masses Moving at Visionary Speeds - Small Book Series vol. 2

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while. Joel over at the design studio Forest (of The Drama magazine fame) sent us this swell little book that’s part of the Forest Small Book Series. Books in the series are released quarterly and feature various thoughts, sketches, collections, and travels. Each issue is handmade using French paper and designed by Forest.

Vol. 2 (seen above) features photos by Joel and quotes from CS Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet. I really like the quotes Joel selected for inclusion in the book. Here’s one:

“To EVERY MAN, in his acquaintance with a new art, there comes a moment when that which before was meaningless first lifts, as it were, one corner of the curtain that hides its mystery, and reveals, in a burst of delight which later and fuller understanding can hardly ever equal, one glimpse of the indefinite possibilities within.”

Each issue is only $5, so stop by the Forest website and pickup vol. 2 and the recently released vol.3. You can sign up for a yearly subscription as well.

Bedside Nurse magazine design from 1968, 1969 and 1970

Charles Goslin (1932-2007) began his career at Lester Beall’s studio in 1954 and left to pursue work at corporate identity firm Lippincott & Margulies in 1958. Three years later he parted ways again, but this time to begin what would be a lengthy career as a freelance designer and illustrator. During this time he started teaching at Pratt Institute as well, where he became known for unique assignments.

For those interested in learning more about Charles Goslin, former student Scott Santoro has written a lovely piece about him here.

Also of interest:

Graphic designer Clarence Lee - He worked at Lester Beall’s studio in 1958, possibly at the same time as Charles Goslin.

Animal Alphabet 18 x 24 poster. 3 color screen print

I first ran into San Francisco based Lorena Siminovich’s work at a local store that carries modern goods a few years ago. It was the Elephant collage seen on this page that caught my eye. Since then she has released a small zoo of colorful collages, posters and notecards.

The poster seen above is the latest addition to her collection. Check out that chocolate elephant! He’s hanging out with his mysterious friend that starts with a letter “i” and drinking some yummy camel leg. Lots of Fun!

You can see this poster and the rest of the collection at Lorena’s website: Petit Collage.

British Airways standard playing cards - 1970

Woah, British airways on acid! Anyone know who designed this deck of cards?

Creative America: Art director- Albert Squillace c1962

Thanks to Chad for sending this in. Looks very similar to the book cover design work of Paul Rand.

Also worth checking:
Modern Dutch book cover design
1960s Penguin books

Apartment Therapy posted photos of Sam Grawe’s apartment yesterday as part of their 2008 home tour series. Sam is the Editor-in-Chief at the San Francisco based Dwell Magazine. If you are unfamiliar with Dwell, it is a magazine that focuses on modern architecture and design.

Sam has lots of goodies in his house. The place is filled with Danish modern furniture, Bertoia chairs and Scandinavian nic nacs. What did me in was the record covers and the owls. This is a man that loves owls! He has a slew of these Edvard Lindahl looking ceramic miniature birds of prey. Too be fair, it looks he holds no Owl biases. I see examples of Strigidae (Heck yea, I’m name dropping) as well as the barn yard variety. I actually know nothing about Owls. I picked all this up in a two minute search at Wikipedia. Anyways, I’m getting off track. To sum up, just check out the house tour.

Elizabeth shoes shoebox possibly from the 1970s

I just about flipped when I found this image of an Elizabeth shoe box on flickr. I love the organic lines flowing inside the butterfly wings. Is it me or does it look like the body of the butterfly is rising from a lighter thats created when the letter “L” and letter”i” are placed next to each other? I doubt that was their intention, but its still looks cool. I can’t get enough of those branches that stem from the letters. Has anyone heard of this company? Is this a new company or is this from the 1960s or 1970s?

Many, Many thanks to Fountaineer for posting this.

Aldo Novarese - Recta Type Specimen sheet circa late 1950s/ early 1960s.

Beautiful san serif typeface by Aldo Novarese. He designed Recta in 1958 while serving as the art director at the Nebiolo type foundry (Societe Nebiolo Torino) in Turin, Italy. Novarese is well known for designing the modern typeface Microgramma, which later became Eurostile.

In the pictures below, you can see a few examples of the 21 fonts that were included in the Recta font family.

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For those of you in the Minneapolis/ St. Paul area, Poster Offensive 4 will be hitting your hood on Friday August 29th 2008 at the Black Dog Cafe.  The show later travels to the Frank Stone Gallery on October 3rd.

Poster Offensive is partnering up with the organization, Provention: A group of Minnesota artists offering a peaceful welcome to the GOP conventioneers as they arrive in town. The Poster Offensive is a non-partsian poster show dedicated to the promotion of peace and democracy.

Participants include: Aesthetic Apparatus, Peet Fetsch, Todd Bartz, Boyd Brent , Kelly Munson and many others.

For gallery times, dates and locations click here.

Many thanks to the gracious people at Spunk Design Machine for putting this event together and for sending us some of the swell posters seen above. If you live in the Oakland area and would like a poster, please contact me.

Classical album covers from 1954

Finnish illustrator Elina Minn captured these lovely record cover specimens designed for the Haydn Society by Alvin Lustig hiding in her Grandmother’s vinyl collection. I really like the colors of the album on the right. Every time I look at it, it reminds me of this Alexander Girard nativity poster.

After you check out the Vivaldi covers, wander down to Elina’s website. Plenty of great illustration and collage work to look at.

Many thanks to Gina Federico for sending this my way and Kind Company who designed the Alvin Lustig website, for alerting us that these album covers are the work of designer Alvin Lustig.

Other work by Alvin Lustig:

The Collected writings of Alvin Lustig
Alvin Lustig brochure design

Orange buildings, black suns and a white glob with two eyes in the upper right corner. Anyone have an idea what the white glob is? I guess it doesn’t matter, it looks cool.

Many thanks to Kim Eriksson for posting images of this Bricka Stockholm tray. You can get in on this good stuff here.

Karl Gerstner and Markus Kutter - the new graphic art - c1959 published by Arthur Niggli Ltd.

Classic book that surveys modern graphic design from its origins up till the late 1950s. Filled with advertisements, posters, packages, lettering, logos and displays. Lots of Swiss design to drool over.  I just wish there were more color images.

I love the clean type and the 3 column grid on the cover. The modern day remake of the cover would be exactly the same except someone would replace the header “die neue graphik” with “this is a design book”. Ha

Includes work from: Hans Neuburg, Joseph Muller Brockmann, Richard Paul Lohse, Ladislav Sutnar and many others.

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Allison at The Lark posted an amazing collection of vintage travel posters by British artist and illustrator Daphne Padden. Most of the posters in the collection were created for Royal Blue Coach Services (A Bus company located in the UK) during the1950s and 1960s. Her work is fun and filled with little men with big beards! The illustration style reminds me of Tom Eckersley and Abram Games.

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Andre-Francois Marescotti / Armin Schibler album cover - Designed by Joseph Muller Brockmann

I’m off to a late start today, I was up late last night making a few changes to the far right column. In addition, I’ve added a page dedicated to our Modern Sticker + Stamp club and Paul Rand group. Give it spin!

I hope everyone had a great weekend. Has anyone been to the Birth of Cool : California at Midcentury exhibition yet? I’m dying to go but, I haven’t had a chance yet. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the exhibit.

Up above. Beautiful example of Swiss graphic design via Alki1.

Invisible creature is the three-time Grammy-nominated Seattle based design duo of Don and Ryan Clark. Including their work while part of Asterik Studio and current work for Tooth & Nail Records, the two have created hundreds of CD packages and limited edition silk-screened posters. A small sample of their Client list includes: Foo Fighters, Chris Cornell, and Billboard magazine.

Their work is inspiring and fun to look at and they have no problem with experimentation. I’m amazed by their ability to consistently create quality work in a broad range of media.

In this interview, Don Clark shares with us some of the history of Invisible Creature and an exclusive look at the process behind “family portrait”, a piece in their recent gallery exhibition titled Haven.

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Charley Harper’s ABC’s - published by AMMO Books c2008

Greg over at daddytypes always posts top notch modern design goodies for kids and dads alike. Yesterday he posted this sweet ABC book which features Charley Harper prints. At $10 this is a must for any Charles Harper fan.

You can buy the book here.

Also worth checking:
We posted a bunch of images of the heavily sought after Giant Golden Book of Biology, written by Gerald Ames and illustrations by Charles Harper (Copies sell for $300 +!) Click the link below to see the image gallery.

Charley Harper illustrations - Giant Golden Book of Biology

also see:
Charley Harper Ford Times

Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners had some nice things to say about grain edit and invited me to be the guest editor at Fresh Signals (Coudal’s daily news section) for the month of June. I’m a long time fan of Coudal, so this was quite an honor.

Keep an eye out for the posts marked with “dc”. Thats me!

CBS logo designer William Golden

The CBS logo has shaker roots! Who knew? In this video, fellow CBS designers Lou Dorfsman and Kurt Weiss explain how creative director William Golden was inspired by an article on Shaker art that ran in Alexey Brodovitch’s Portfolio Magazine.

(via Lined & Unlined)

Ephemera from the Soviet Pavilion at Expo 1967 (World’s Fair)

I found this guide book a few weeks ago hidden in a box of old paper goods. I almost dropped a loaf when I saw the maps contained within. The maps display the table arrangements and walking paths for each floor of the Soviet Pavilion which was designed by Russian architects M. Posokhin, A. Mndoyants and B. Tkhor. Simple and effective layout of the information. I love Circular blobs, lines and arrows and these maps are chock full of that good stuff.

The Soviet Pavilion was filled with cool exhibits including; Russian postage stamps, Matryoshka dolls and folk art, space exploration as well as a restaurant that featured bliny and Ukrainian borsch.  I wish I could of gone, but I wasn’t even born yet.

peter & wendy just released this classy piece of posterage entitled “Grotesque”. It’s a double-sided 170 gr/m² Offset paper poster printed in black and PMS 871U. Get your hands on it while you can. It’s a limited edition run of 100.

Cool cover for the 1969 Chicago 3 design annual. Consists of three “C’s” or if you look from left to right, the letter “C” and the #” 3″. The annual is a catalog of work from the Artists Guild of Chicago, Chicago Society of Communicating Arts and the Society of Typographic Arts.

Simon Perrin who recently won the Herbert Bayer Olivetti poster contest, just notified me of a website he put together which offers news, info, links to the relief efforts/projects and some of the fundraising initiatives for the recent earthquake in China’s Sichuan province. Simon was living in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, when the earthquake hit.

You can find more info about the relief efforts here.

For those of you in Europe Steven Harrington has an artshow touring through Paris, Milan, Berlin and Barcelona. In conjuction with the tour Steven is releasing his first solo book.

In addition to the book, He is also releasing some custom shaped and designed limited edition element series decks, a paper toy and 10 new prints. You can check the tour dates, SH book info, day by day photo blog of the tour and in progress shots here at the Our Mountain website.

Tour kicks off June 5th in Paris.

Solo Lipnik - UUZO Praha - Pronti Tetanu label - 1960s?

Super cool matchbox label from Czechoslovakia. Pretty intense colors. Nothing like taking a bike ride through a field of ketchup. Can anyone translate the text?

If you don’t know what TypeCon is, it’s the leading conference in America on Typography. YouWorkForThem is curating a poster exhibit at TypeCon. They are looking for your best poster work that has excellent usage of Type on it. It can be the main focus, or minor. They will be displaying the best submissions and the poster show will most likely travel, like the last one did. Don’t wait till last minute, send your entries over now! Please help spread the word, they want as many submissions as possible.

Click here for more info and to download the submission PDF.

I wonder who this guy is waiting for? Maybe he’s into Planespotting? Whatever the case, the guy in the back with the brown jacket looks pissed.

Great Airport scene from Japanese illustrator Atsushi Hara. His work is reminiscent of Miroslav Sasek and Richard Erdoes. Check out Atsushi’s portfolio for a selection of hand picked gems.

(via stickers and stuff)

After discovering Iain Follett’s stamp collection was featured in Creative Review’s January 2008 issue of Monograph, I decided to contact him and see if he would be interested in sharing some of his favorite stamps on grain edit. He agreed and has graciously provided us with some choice stamps and his comments.

Continuing with our designer’s bookshelf series, grain edit is proud to present Iain Follett.

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After discovering Iain Follett’s stamp collection was featured in Creative Review’s January 2008 issue of Monograph, I decided to contact him and see if he would be interested in sharing some of his favorite stamps on grain edit. He agreed and has graciously provided us with some choice stamps and his comments.

Continuing with our designer’s bookshelf series, grain edit is proud to present Iain Follett.

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Tele Communicate poster for an event in Luxembourg, 1962

I love the layering of color within the bird. If you were to isolate the blue shape, the bird would look similar to Alexander Girard’s design for the Braniff Airlines logo in 1965.

also worth checking:
317 Dutch posters

“et” style ampersand that appears to be based on the letter “B”

Just found out about this swell blog called The Ampersand. Yep a whole site dedicated to the little homies. Quotes, design and photos of wild Ampersands roaming the streets.

Also, check out this great new blog by the people of Crew Design. Choc full of design goodness! Many thanks to Meghan for hipping me to this cool site.

Annette Simon sent over two lovely books that I’ve been meaning to post. The first is Mocking Birdies which is the story of two fun loving birds that love to copy each other’s words and whistles. The birds are having a real hoot till a couple of “copycats” come along. Its’ a really funny ending so, you have to read the book to find out what happens. I love how she chose to illustrate the book. The bright colors and simple shapes really catch your eye.

Annette also sent a very touching book titled This Book is for all kids, but especially my sister Libby, which her 5 year old son Jack wrote. The book contains Jack’s thoughts and questions as he struggles to understand the death of his real life sister Libby. Libby died when she was three and half years old due to a rare disorder. Jack’s questions are honest, frank and often humorous. For parents and young ones that are dealing with a similar situation, I’m sure this book leads to some thoughtful discussions.

You can purchase either book at Amazon by clicking on the links above.

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Label from Bardola Hoyfjellshotel in Geilo, Norway - c1960s?

I think I’m obsessed with modern Scandinavian design from the 1950s- 1960s. First it was furniture and kids books, then Ceramics and now luggage labels! Where does it end? What’s in that Nordic water?

also worth checking:
Swiss Modern luggage label
Modern luggage label from Portugal

Lots of Bots c2008 - Text by Kiki Thorpe - illustrated by Ben Butcher

Ben Butcher of Pixar recently stopped by to give us a preview of the new WALL-E picture book Lots of Bots which he illustrated. The book is the precursor to the film, which is due to hit screens this summer. In the interview below, Ben discusses his thoughts and process in the making of this beautiful book. Where it was possible, we’ve included Ben’s original artwork alongside images of the finished book.

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After the second World War many Latvian writers were relocated to different areas of the world. Many ended up in Great Britain, Canada and the USA. Living in these new lands they began their own periodicals and publication houses. A new generation of writers emerged. “Living in foreign lands and surrounded by other cultures, these writers strove to capture the influences of modernism.” * One of the magazines that surfaced during this time period was Jauna Gaita (the new course). Ilmārs RumpÄ“ters who designed many of the covers of Jauna Gaita during the 1950s-1970s, wonderfully captured the spirit of this era.

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Bare Knuckles poster circa 1977

Last night a few of us went down to the Parkway theater in Oakland to check out the classic blaxploitation film Bare Knuckles. The film stars Robert Viharo as Bounty Hunter Zachary Kane who’s on the hunt for a motorcycle riding, masked serial killer ninja! It doesn’t get any better then that!

Bare Knuckles is one of several films that inspired Quentin Tarantino’s GrindHouse flick. Tarantino loaned his copy of Bare Knuckles to Will Viharo (son of Robert Viharo) for the viewing. Robert was in the audience last night and joined his son on stage after the film. It was awesome to see this guy in person after he just kicked two tons of serial killer ninja butt a few minutes before.

One of my favorite parts of the film is Zach’s training session. One minute he’s whaling on a punching bag and the next he’s in the lotus position playing the flute! Now thats Bad Ass!

Check the soundtrack for the film as well. It was reissued recently. Vic Caesar put together a gritty funk masterpiece.

also worth checking:
Nikkatsu Action Cinema

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