USA

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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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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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

Technorati Tags: films,1970s,blaxploitation

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

Brochure for the Rancho San Miguel (Walnut Creek,CA) Eichler development c1950s

In honor of the upcoming Birth of Cool: Mid-Century Modern design in California exhibition, I thought it would be nice to post this Eichler brochure. I found the brochure several years ago at an estate sale in Lafayette, California. I love the photo. Most likely the photographer is Ernest (Ernie) Braun.

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

For those of you in the San Francisco/ Bay area, Geoff McFetridge has a show tonight at Mollusk surf shop.

Details
show 7-10pm

Address:
Mollusk Surf shop
4500 Irving st.
SF, CA 94122

(Big thanks to Nicole for passing this along)

Matchbooks for Hunt-Wesson by Graphic designer Saul Bass

Jon (Insect54) posted this amazing set of matchbooks on flickr last night. I’ve never seen these before. I’m digging the pixelated flower in the lower left corner and the orange and yellow pattern on the 3rd down, 3rd to right is really nice. Saul designed the logo for Hunt-Wesson in 1964 so I’m guessing this work was produced right around the same time.

Can’t get enough of Saul?
check these out:
Henri’s Walk to Paris - children’s book illustrated by Saul Bass
San Francisco International Film Festival poster
Saul Bass’s Case study house

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while. I first came across Tyler Lang a few months ago when his Universal Demand poster for Ringling School of Art and Design was making the rounds on select blogs. His portfolio is filled with great work, I just wish I could see more. I especially like his logo system for the Sarasota Design Summit and the Ford piece seen above.

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.

Design Studio/ gallery Wonderful Union have an upcoming exhibition of work from brothers Don and Ryan Clark (better known as Invisible Creature).

The Exhibition is entitled Haven: An Exploration of Domestic Life and opens on Saturday, April 12th, 2008. The art work highlights the tension between modernism’s smiley-faced rejection of things past and their own coming of age domesticity from an autodidactic, punk ethos point of view.

Details:
Saturday, April 12th, 2008, 6-10 PM
The Wonderful Union Gallery
2221 NW 56th St. Suite 201, Seattle WA 98107

For more details check out the Wonderful Union gallery.

(t) Jazz/ Rock voicings for the contemporary keyboard player c1974
(b) Jazz Improvisation for keyboard players c1978

I picked up these two books over the weekend. They are part of an instructional jazz book series produced in the 1970s for Studio publications and recordings. I’m not sure who responsible for the cover design but, I like how he limited it to a few simple shapes and the type. Both books are written by Dan Haerle, but there are others in the series by Rufus Reid and Ramon Ricker.

Antonio over at Aisleone just released a great new typeface called Enotmik. It’s a two weight display font that pays homage to Helvetica and Avant Garde.

You can buy the font here.

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.

Check out this Easter egg coloring contest from Hatch design. Lots of great submissions. I think my favorite so far is the Sir Eyes Egg Newton entry. Funny stuff. Keep your eyes open for our entry which will be posting tomorrow.

Los Angeles Press Photographers Annual 1958

Great cover.

(via Bradley J Gake)

From the book - Jacqueline S Casey Thirty years of design at MIT

Beautiful work from graphic designer Jacqueline Casey. It mentions in the book she was inspired by Karl Gerstner, Kurt Wirth and Anton Stankowski.

“In the early 1950s, John Matill, a writer and editor, founded the MIT office of publications. He was joined in 1952 by Muriel Cooper. Cooper was among the first designers ever hired by a university to represent it graphically. She and Matill hired Jacqueline Casey to design summer session materials in 1955.” Casey continued to work for MIT until her retirement in 1989. (Taken from the introduction of the book.)

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.

The images above are from the introduction to The collected writings of graphic designer Alvin Lustig (c1958). When I first found out about this book, I was going nuts trying to find a copy. I wasn’t able to find one, so I had to settle for a photocopy of the one presently in the RISD library. A couple of years ago, I finally tracked one down. It was worth the wait. It’s a short book (only 95 pages), but it has some real nuggets. It contains interviews and articles on Alvin from Interiors magazine, AIGA Journal, Design Quarterly, Type Talks and a few other sources. Wonderful insight into his design thinking and process.

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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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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.

1960s IBM 7094 poster - Designed by Clarence Lee

Clarence Lee graduated from Yale in 1958 and went on to work for the uber graphic designer Lester Beall. In 1962 Clarence left Beall’s firm to work for IBM. During his time at IBM he designed the poster above for the IBM 7094 Data Processing System. The 7094 was released in 1962 and was built for large-scale scientific computing.

During the late 1950s - early 1960s, Paul Rand, Charles Eames ,Marcel Breuer and Eliot Noyes were involved in design work for IBM. It would be interesting to find out if Clarence had any interaction with these designers.

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.

Silkscreen Print for a Drama magazine sponsored show at Nonesuch Gallery

Cool design work from Wyeth Hansen (Casual Aesthetics). His website includes t-shirts, posters, type faces as well some motion design. I’m loving the type work above.

(Via Wrong distance)

Giant Golden Book of Biology - An Introduction to the Science of Life c1961
Text by Gerald Ames and Rose Wyler - Illustrated by Charley Harper

It doesn’t get much better then this. This is Charley in his prime.

“In a style he called “minimal realism”, Charley Harper captured the essence of his subjects with the fewest possible visual elements. When asked to describe his unique visual style, Charley responded:

When I look at a wildlife or nature subject, I don’t see the feathers in the wings, I just count the wings. I see exciting shapes, color combinations, patterns, textures, fascinating behavior and endless possibilities for making interesting pictures. I regard the picture as an ecosystem in which all the elements are interrelated, interdependent, perfectly balanced, without trimming or unutilized parts; and herein lies the lure of painting; in a world of chaos, the picture is one small rectangle in which the artist can create an ordered universe.[cite this quote]

He contrasted his nature-oriented artwork with the realism of John James Audubon, drawing influence from Cubism, Minimalism, Einsteinian physics and countless other developments in Modern art and science. His style distilled and simplified complex organisms and natural subjects, yet they are often arranged in a complex fashion. On the subject of his simplified forms, Harper noted:

I don’t think there was much resistance to the way I simplified things. I think everybody understood that. Some people liked it and others didn’t care for it. There’s some who want to count all the feathers in the wings and then others who never think about counting the feathers, like me.”

- Wikipedia

For those interested, I’ve posted a copy of the Giant Golden book of biology for sale on Ebay.

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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.

Portland based designer Gavin Potenza (Exploratory Design) has cooked up a series of sweet stamps. The series which was inspired by the work of Otl Aicher is entitled Homage to the Stamp.

Alexander Girard alphabet blocks designed and produced by House Industries

Many thanks to the guys at House Industries for sending over a box of goodies. Included in the box was a set of Alexander Girard alphabet blocks. These blocks were the result of a collaboration with the estate of mid-century designer Alexander Girard, the 28 wood blocks feature alphabets based on the forthcoming Alexander Girard font collection and a cleverly-adapted House Industries factory logo puzzle. I have been jocking these blocks since day 1. They have been on my want list for a while. My wife and I don’t have kids yet, but when we do, I can tell you one thing for sure. There is no way the kids are going to touch these! ha! These are daddy’s blocks!

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BarryBlog has posted a rare glimpse of some in-house publications for Herman Miller. They were produced in conjunction with the great design thinker Ralph Caplan, and designed by John Massey of Container Corporation of America fame. I’m drooling! I’d love to read these. Maybe we can get the good people at Barry Blog to make photo copies.

Enjoy!

“Documentary” directed by Justin Leibow for Superfad

It’s friday and what better way to celebrate then by watching a good ole animated short.

grain edit reader and rad guy Justin Leibow sent in this animated film he directed for the Seattle Film Festival. Nude skydiving wee hoo!!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Westvaco Inspirations #210 c1958

Westvaco Inspirations was a promotional journal produced by the Westvaco Corporation, formerly known as the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company. The purpose of the journal was to highlight the printing processes and quality of paper achieved by the Westvaco paper Mills. Bradbury Thompson (1911-1995) served as designer and editor for over fifty issues of this publication including the issue featured above.

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.

My first introduction to Wink was four or five years ago when their packaging for Sunmilk was making the rounds in the design magazines and annuals. Since then, I’ve tried to keep an eye on their work. What has impressed me the most about Wink has been their ability to consistently produce top notch work.

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We just started a Paul Rand fan group on Flickr. As of this writing we only have 12 members. Surely there are more then 12 people who appreciate one of the greatest graphic designers of all time! Its good wholesome fun! Bring your whole family. Show all the little ones why Mommy keeps stealing their copy of Sparkle and Spin.

Join now.. Paul needs you and our little egos need affirmation that people like our Flickr groups.

Click here and let the nerdery begin

(Thanks go to Bureau L’Imprimante for the pic)

In this card designed by mr.mannun, business ties are flying in the wind as this beast rips down a small patch of Christmas trees all while holding a flock of fudgesicle shaped birds. This is great! One of my favorite finds on Flickr. My top pick in the genre of groucy card design.

You can browse the rest of mr.mannun’s design / illustration work on Flickr. He also has a few poster samples on Gig posters.com

What? Why? How? Essential Product Information - Sweet’s Catalogue Service
©1942 Design by Ladislav Sutnar

Sweet’s Catalog Service provided catalogs of building and plumbing supplies to architects and contractors. Ladislav along with Knud Lönberg-Holm were responsible for presenting the information within these catalogs in a clear, concise manner.

The promotional, folded sheet above explains the need for easily accessible product information especially during times of war (this was written in the midst of World War 2). As Sweets maintained, providing essential product information in an effecient way could eliminate waste and speed production:

The increasing need for speed in war production is reflected in increasing demand for product information.

In order to be useful such product information should be comprehensive, concise, coordinated

Prefiling of catalogs has been developed as a means for controlling the flow of essential product information

Beautiful layout, far ahead of its time.
For further reading, I suggest Steven Heller’s article Ladislav Sutnar and Knud Lönberg-Holm

Eames demetrios, grandson of Charles and Ray Eames presents a rare glimpse of the Solar Film produced by graphic designer Saul Bass. The film was commissioned in 1980 by Robert Redford. If you listen at the end of the film you can hear Saul Bass speak for a few seconds. He mentions something about pumping hot water to the house.

I’m not sure if the illustrations/ animations in the film were created by Saul Bass or Art Goodman. The film credits Goodman, but it is unclear if he was just involved in the animation process or if he created the illustrations as well.

Cool film and as one person mentions in the later half “If you stop and think about it, the Sun doesn’t send you a bill each month”. So true my friend.

Can’t get enough of Saul?
check these out:
Henri’s Walk to Paris - children’s book illustrated by Saul Bass
San Francisco International Film Festival poster
Saul Bass’s Case study house

From the makers of Neutra Face, the Alexander Girard Alphabet blocks and the upcoming Tim Biskup fonts comes the kid friendly House Industries factory t-shirt. Click the link to the left to get some of this goodness.

Illustration by Fred Mcnabb c1956

Well here it is, the “house of the future”. Mom’s making oven fresh algae, grand pa is chilling in the living room in his chocolate love suit and grand ma is cleaning up the kitchen in her finest elf garb. For the house of the future it looks a lot like the house of 1956. I realize not every house in 1956 had steel beams and case study furniture or a garbage disposal unit that spits out freshly pressed Victorian lacies. I guess I was expecting something a little more “futuristic”, like some sort of flying magical orb.

(great illustration via Plan59)

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)