Canada

I’m just in awe of Canadian comic book creator and illustrator Pascal Blanchet’s work. It was tough to decide what image to post, everything is so good.
(Many thanks to Julia at Book by its cover for passing this along)

1871-1971 census stamp

Pretty bugged stamp from the Canadian Post.
Designed by Hans Kleefeld.

(via the great Canadian design resource)

The Asian American Film Festival is in San Francisco now, so I had a chance to check out “Blood Brothers” which is one of the more recent films produced by John Woo. Anyone else seen this? Overall I thought it was pretty cheesy, but the ending wasn’t too bad. On the way to the theater I stopped by my friend Cool Chris’s record shop. Chris runs Groove Merchant which is notorious amongst beat diggers and record collectors as the place to go if you want to find rare jazz, funk and library lps. While I was there Chris hit me off with a copy of the record above.

The John Hawkins lp seen above is part of a series of 45s (the little records..7″) initiated by CAPAC (Composers, Authors and Publishers Association of Canada Limited). I’m less concerned with the music on this album as I am with the design of the logo. The rounded letters take form as records with the lines of different weights creating the grooves. It wasn’t uncommon to see logo treatments like this in the 1970s and I think this is one of the better examples.

This Land - A Geography of Canada by Edward Wahl c1961
Hans Kleefeld cover designer

Great book discovery by Rosemary Travale.
Hans also designed the original logo for the Toronto Zoo.

Seems like everyone has been talking about Tavis Coburn lately and why not? His work is great. A beautiful marriage of vintage illustrative styles and images with contemporary techniques. This makes perfect sense in light of a recent interview with Josh Spear where he admitted to being “obsessed with anything from the 1940s - 1960s”. I was excited to find out that limited edition prints are available at Tavis Coburn’s online shop. Each print is signed and numbered.

This is a man that must have alot of stories to tell. For everyone that has seen the classic Noah Baumbach movie Kicking and Screaming; this man might of been the new leader of the cougars. Go cougars!

So now that we’ve established that Rolf Harder has the coolest name in graphic design, let’s get on to his work. I was blown away when I stumbled upon Rolf’s designs for International Paints Canada yesterday. I love his use of the paint brushes for the 1961 annual report. This design could of doubled as a poster for Krzysztof Kieslowski three colors trilogy. Like the Kieslowski films, I would guess that these colors represent the colors of the French flag considering International Paints was based out of Quebec.

The society of Graphic Designers of Canada has a bio on Rolf Harder for those interested in reading further.

Thanks to element kuuda for posting these great designs by Rolf Harder as well other Canadian designers on Flickr.