Designers

Beautiful advertisement for Arkwright-Interlaken, Inc designed by Malcolm Grear Designers. Dates back to the early 1960s.

Many thanks to the good people at Tomorrow for stopping by last week, and for the gift of this beautiful bookmark. The bookmark is part of a promotional piece marking their recent contribution to “Trees for the Future“.

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Mar Hernández aka Malota aka really cool designer living and working in Valencia, Spain, offers an extremely fun and inspiring collection of work for our viewing pleasure. Mar’s style is really bold and graphic, but very detailed and complex at the same time. She has a nice range of work — from very flat, computer drawn images, to a sketchier, looser, hand drawn style.

Check out the video entitled “Greenville.” Very cool motion graphics.

Cool work from Brooklyn based illustrator and designer Stephen Kelleher aka Frankenstyles.

Marcus Walters, a designer and illustrator from the UK, loves washing machines. A lot of his work is similar to the above image — which reminds me of putting felt onto a feltboard as a kid. They have that very flat, semi-dimensional quality to them which I love.

Marcus is also a part of New Future Graphic, which is more graphic design-oriented (posters, ad’s, books, etc).

Wayne Pate runs GoodShapeDesign, a Brooklyn, NY based design shop and all around fun place. I’m really into his “Flock” series — if you’re a fan of our feathered friends, now you can have 18 on a single poster!

Also check out his artwork section for some really inspiring collages.

Mike Krol designs for musical bands, sandwiches, accordions, gorillas, light bulbs, and maple syrup, among many other things. He has a very good sense of humor, wit, and typography. I love finding work where the designer’s personality shines through. Especially if that includes heavy metal and Eskimos.

Check out the walking backwards to school video. I loved that!

Invisible creature has a slew of great design and illustration work at their site including the album art for the latest Hawk Nelson record.

Frank Chimero is having a great time, apparently. His portfolio is full of super fun, exciting work. As a design student, it’s always thrilling to see work that is equal parts vision, humor, inspiration, and a snappy idea.

He also has a cool blog, and a flickr.

The Futile Vignette is a design studio run by Mick Marston, out of Sheffield, UK. Mick’s work is a fun combo of contemporary and vintage illustration styles. Lots of rabbits, cats, girls with pig noses, hands holding things, and 2 George Saunders book covers! (Anyone know if those are in print?)

Bonus points for an interesting website, too!

Leonardo Hss comes to us all the way from Flickr. I couldn’t find any info on him other than what is on his Flickr page. Lots of different styles represented here. Corporate, logo, and some more playful graphic work (like the above image).

Be sure to check out his experimental work as well.

Letterpress cityscape print by lab partners

Ryan and Sarah aka lab partners sent me a sweet print. My wife and I have been wanting one of these, so we were super excited when the package arrived at the doorstep.  I didn’t realize it was letterpressed till I opened the mailer. That really blew me away. I can’t stop touching it! ha

If you like the print above, then you have to stop by the lab partners ETSY shop. Gocco prints and goodies for everyone. Also be sure to check out their wonderful design and illustration work as they post it from time to time on their blog.

Mike Davis aka Mike the 2600 King is part of a design collaborative known as Burlesque of North Of America. In addition to their design work they are a full service screenprinting studio.

I first ran into Mike while on a cross country record digging trip in 2003. My friends and I were crashing with some of the cool cats at galapagos 4. They heard that Mike was spinning at one of the local clubs, so we decided to check it out. Mike was laying down some serious funk/ soul heat that night and the club was packed. Later I found out that in addition to be a great dj, he was an excellent designer creating posters for my friends at anticon.

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Hello Freaks are based in Paris, and led by one Jerome Castro (who has a cool blog, in French.) Their illustration work is really impressive, and includes lots of mouth-watering type. Be sure to check the motion work as well. It’s a nice departure from the standard motion reels we’re used to seeing all over.

Thanks to Sharon for the heads up on Hello Freaks.

I’m digging Colorcubic’s identity work for Nueva Forma. You can check the rest of their portfolio here

Cover illustration/typography for the Yale University Art Gallery spring catalog

Garrett Morin does great work. He draws lots of type and makes people happy. You may have seen his works in the likes of Mike Perry’s Hand Job book. If you click on over to his site, you’ll find lots of happy characters, t-shirt graphics, corn-cob pipes, animated GIFs, skateboard graphics, magazine covers, and a great animated spot for Death Cab for Cutie / MTV.

Garrett’s also a member of the Rad Mountain collective, which recently did some yummy illustrations for Good Magazine. Check it.

Jesse Kaczmarek is a one-man, super-clean design shop located in NYC. His clients include BMW, Sony, Pepsi, HBO, and on and on. The work remains consistently clean, sophisticated and fun — all at once! Just look at those happy families in their Hertz rental cars!

Also, bonus points for a super slick website.

Luke Williams is a third year graphic design student at the Maryland Institute College of Art. While making sweet calendar-meets-packaging cubes, he is also working for Abbott Miller/Pentagram in Baltimore. From magazine and book layouts to posters and self-initiated work, Luke’s work is fresh. It’s nice to see a large body of work with this much variety, attention to detail, and experimentation with other mediums.

Christopher David Ryan is a “Brooklyn-based graphic artist, daydreamer, pseudo-scientist, wanna-be astronaut and untrained intellectual.” His work shows a similar range of experimentation — photography, collage, illustration, found images, etc. Why! He even makes pillows! On his personal website, Ryan is posting at least one image of his work per day for every day of the year. Busy, busy.

One of the notable things that has come out of producing this blog has been the opportunity to speak with designers I respect and admire. Bo Lundberg is one of those designers. Several months ago we posted some of his work. Since then Bo and I have been exchanging emails which eventually led to this interview. Here he shares a few thoughts on inspiration, as well as his creative process.

Bo’s work has been featured in Old Type/ New Type by Steven Heller, Illustration Now! published by Taschen, Illusive: Contemporary Illustration and its Context by Hellige & Klanten, as well as other publications. His clients include Wallpaper magazine, Elle, Vogue, Neiman Marcus and Scandinavian Airlines.

Without further ado, I’m proud to present Bo Lundberg.

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Damien Correll is a Brooklyn, NY based “designer/maker/illustrator.” I first came across his work in the fabulous book Hand Job, by Mike Perry. I really love seeing the intersection of graphic design with his DIY hand-drawn aesthetic. This work is difficult to pin down, but it’s quirky and full of personality.

I think I’ve found my new favorite illustrator and his name is James Datz. His portfolio of design work found at Neither Fish Nor Fowl is really impressive. Fun and playful material executed really well.

(Via the excellent - Here are things I like)

Spike Press is the monikor for one John Solimine, a Chicago based designer. In a world overrun by gig-poster designers, it’s refreshing to see someone with a little originality and illustration sense. These posters are fun, whimsical, and full of narrative — each poster has a very engaging mini-story that will pull you and your wallet right in. Enjoy!

2275 Santa Rosa Ave in Altadena, California. Here lies the house of an exceptional designer but also a house of an exceptional design. This is the address of Case study House #20 as well as the residence of Saul Bass. This remarkable example of modern residential architecture was designed by Buff, Straub and Hensman in 1958 for John Entenza’s Arts & Architecture magazine.
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Woot! Aesthetic Apparatus is a member of my weekly design web site “do they have any new work up yet?” visiting rituals. So I was happy to find not only new work, but a new web site too! There are plenty of new posters, some new test prints, and if you have not yet seen their “doom” series, it’s worth a look. Very fun.

You can scream along with Dan and Michael on YouTube as they show you how to silkscreen a poster.
Coudal has a nice interview with Aesthetic Apparatus as well.

The Hats off to Hans Hartmann post has been updated.
Thanks to Felix and Thierry for the additional information.

I’ve always been told that when designing a film festival poster to “NEVER use a camera!” in the imagery. Well, Jesse Kirsch just did it, and I’d say it turned out pretty awesome. While he was at it, he also designed a map of Manhattan as a leaf, and a Beatles poster using only hair! What a rule breaker!

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.

My favorite thing about Jose Rodriguez is not his great work, nice type, or his motion reels. It’s his URL: HeyJose.com! It’s probably the hottest domain name on the web right now. Anyway, the work is definitely on par with the URL. That’s right, solid gold! From the long-suited men of “beginning” to the technical-but-beautiful diagrammatic analysis of FF-Meta, this Sarasota, FL, designer is making some really great images. Go over and check out Hey Jose!

Our story with Jason Munn (The Small Stakes) begins in the summer of 2005. We had recently learned that his studio was located near our office so we decided for a little suprise visit. We arrived at his front door and rang his buzzer. When he opened the door we said something along the lines of..
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I have a very special place in my heart for poster design. Especially poster design that incorporates type in an interesting, fresh way. I mean, how do they do that? It looks too easy! Andrio Abero, the man behind the poster and design studio 33rpm, is a master at “type and image integration.” This is one of the first firms that kick started my obsession with the poster, way back in the early 2000’s.

Today is Bruno Munari’s birthday. If he was still alive, he would of been 100 years old. What better way to celebrate then to browse through the Bruno Munari image archive put together by the Collezione Bruno Munari. The collection includes information on most of his projects created during his highly prolific career as a designer.

Non-Format are a twin-continent based award winning design firm. They also happen to be the kings of super thick and chunky left justified type. They posses the unique ability to seamlessly integrate their big type with organic illustrative elements, with very nice results. In addition to running their studio, they also design Varoom, a journal of illustration and made images, art directed by Adrian Shaughnessy. In addition, they just released a book.

I stumbled across WSDIA (We Should Do It All) Design Studio from the winners list of ADC’s 2006 Young Guns Award. This firm has a great eye for type, detail, and apparently skittles! Check out WSDIA’s website as well as an episode of The Creative Backstory: ADC Young Guns, Big/Small, featuring WSDIA. This short series explores the question about a design firm’s size: does size matter?

This is part 2 of an interview with Wim Crouwel at Galerie Anatome in Paris, 2/2007

This is part 1 of an interview with Wim Crouwel at Galerie Anatome in Paris, 2/2007

Marian Bantjes considers herself “independently pursuing a combination of illustration and design.” She really understands how to capture a spirit in typography. Ironically, she designed the Design Matters Live poster, an event we featured earlier this week. Take a look at Marian Bantjes’ website to gain a better understanding of where her organic typography stems from.

Drool! Drool! ( As my wife would say) I’m just drooling over Sanna Annukka’s online portfolio. She has a great sense of color and composititon. I definitely see a link between her work and traditional Finnish Folk art, which would make sense because she is from Finland. Do yourself a favor and goto her website now! No, scratch that, do me a favor… Please goto her site.

This is the last of the four part lecture series featuring Alan Dye, Creative Director with Apple’s graphic design team. Alan’s work has been recognized by a number of design shows and publications, he recently spoke at the AIGA’s “Fresh Dialogue” event, and was also selected by Print Magazine as one of their New Visual Artists in the annual 20 under 30 issue in 2003. Event will be held at Adobe Systems Incorporated, 601 Townsend Street San Francisco.

Thursday, Nov. 8th from 6-9pm, AIGA Members: $15, Non-Members:$20

For more information please visit the official Design Matters Live website.

Erik Nitsche - Design and paper #34 195?. Part of a series put out by Marquardt and Company.  After you’ve absorbed the photos above check out this killer collection of Erik Nitsche designs put together by the people at Bustbright.

Esono is the design studio of Professor Boris Müller. His design is expressive, experimental, and down right inspiring. Boris also teaches at the Interface Design programme of the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam. He is currently organizing a conference on interaction design, the Innovationsforum Interaktionsdesign. Check him out!

Herb Lubalin b.1918 -d.1981. If you haven’t bit his work, or butchered his typefaces, you’ve at least seen his iconic typographic logo for Avant Garde magazine. The logo spawned a type face of the same name in 1970 which was later condensed by Ed Benguiat. Many people are unfamiliar with his work beyond this typeface so, please take a moment to check him out. Thanks to Peter Gabor of the excellent Design & Typo site for providing the Herb Lubalin tribute gallery.

For those of you who can’t enough of Saul bass. The Excellent Saul Bass Tribute Site Saul Bass on the Web is back after a long Hiatus. Brendan Dawes who created the site does a great job of bringing Saul’s work back to life through flash animations very similar to his title sequences. The site includes a filmography, video of some of titlling works, biography, as well as a poster gallery filled with classic works ( The man with the Golden arm, Anatomy of a murder and Vertigo) by the master.

Also worth checking out is Notcoming.com’s Saul bass title gallery.