You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2010.
The work of Christopher Silas Neal is a lovely break from the chaotic mess that is the internet. It’s not often that you come across beautiful hand drawn type, mixed with completely original illustration, so it is a really great treat for the eyes. Also interesting is that his work always has a sense of movement to it. Even his typography, which is predominantly script, seems like it’s rushing across the page.
12.24.10 | Liz Meyer | Found design, Typography | 
14 comments
You need to take a gander at Erik Marinovich‘s work. It mirrors our current holiday climate quite well — bold and bright with a lot of busy hustle and bustle. Erik’s work defies any sort of specific style or set of rules (aside from the majority of it being typographic). The variety and amount of work contained within this portfolio is wonderful and exciting and void of plainness.
12.22.10 | Ethan | Found design, Typography | 17 comments
Mimmo Castellano is an award-winning graphic designer and photographer who got his start in the port city of Bari located in the South-East corner of Italy. It was here that he landed a position with Laterza, a prominent publishing house, where he designed many of the book covers. This collaboration would last for over twenty years. In the late 60s he moved to Milan to further his career as a designer and taught at the European Institute of Design. In more recent years he has been researching digital imaging connected with photography and photomechanics.
12.20.10 | Dave | Off Our Bookshelves, Uncategorized | 5 comments
Thanks to everyone who took part in the Grain Edit Holiday Giveaway Bash! It was great to see all your comments. We randomly selected our winners this weekend.
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 tomorrow morning.
The winners were also announced via our twitter stream and facebook page earlier today.
——————————————————
Special thanks goes out to:
Poster Cabaret, YouWorkForThem, Chronicle Books, Soundscreen Design, Script & Seal, Rilla Alexander, Josh Brill/ Lumadessa, No Brow Magazine, Blanca Gomez, Friends of Type, Ty Wilkins, Ingela P Arrhenius, Silnt, Dan Stiles, Jessica Hische, Scotty Reifsynder, enormouschampion, Marcus Walters, Invisible Creature, The Tree House Press, Jolby, Greg Pizzoli, Jason Munn, Brent Couchman, Paul Tebbott, Luke Bott, Esther Arts, and Dan Matutina.
Please take time to visit their sites.
——————————————————
I was recently introduced to Esteve Padilla’s work and am really impressed with his ability to create interesting grids, while maintaining readable and clear type. Usually, I gravitate towards some crazy and/or experimental typography, but I have a very soft spot in my heart for a designer who knows how to use traditional typography to create beautiful layouts and publications. While Esteve seems to have conquered the difficult task of forming grids, his newest work (a font called “Nowadays”) has a touch of a old-style sign painting aesthetic.
I’m really interested to see where Esteve takes his work, he definitely seems to be a designer to watch for in the future. Read the rest of this entry »
12.17.10 | Liz Meyer | Found design, Typography | 2 comments
Design Coordination and Corporate Image by FHK Henrion
New items have been added to the vintage kid’s books and graphic design sections of the grain edit shop.
What if all all TV series’ posters looked like this? I can’t imagine a world like that, but what a wonderful world it would be! Ty Mattson, the man behind Mattson Creative, has created posters for both Dexter and Lost.
The composition of these Dexter posters is great — I love the variety of stylized details, all relevant to the show. I’ve seen a few episodes of the first season of Dexter, but these prints pique my interest. There very well may be some more Dexter in my future.
12.15.10 | Ethan | Found design | 9 comments
“The Gap Records and Tapes, San Francisco.”
Graphic Design San Francisco is a book that was published in the late ’70s by the Institute for Graphic Design (which would later become AIGA SF) and Chronicle Books. For the first in a series of posts about the works of San Francisco Bay Area designers and firms, as their portfolios stood on the brink of the ’80s, I present to you Harry Murphy + Friends.
“The Philosophy of Harry Murphy + Friends is to maintain design work of consistently high quality, while producing a large volume of projects involving an exceptionally wide range of related disciplines, frequently with rigorous deadlines.
Since locating in the San Francisco area in 1966, Harry Murphy + Friends has won over 700 national and international design awards for architectural graphics, space design, environmental art, corporate identity, print graphics, and packaging.”
12.14.10 | Dave | 1970s, Off Our Bookshelves | 17 comments
Letters, numbers, ceramics and craftsmanship collide in a month-long House Industries exhibition at the Heath Los Angeles studio and store. House will transform the legendary tile and tableware maker’s airy Beverly Boulevard space into an unprecedented emulsion of clay, metal, ink, cotton, wood, lacquer, lithography and letterforms.
The exhibition will feature several new objects including custom-fired House-Heath tiles, reclaimed wood end-grain tiles, hand-printed folding plywood divider screens, tree ornaments, letterpressed greeting cards and much more. Heath also stocks hard-to-find House classics such as the Eames House blocks and the Alexander Girard Nativity.
12.11.10 | Dave | Events | 6 comments
Dear Holiday Spirit(s):
We’re approaching the end of 2010, a year filled with work, work…and did we mention, more work? Seeing as we’ve all been on our best behavior, please take a look at the wish list we’ve compiled with some of our favorite artists and friends. It’s much BIGGER than last year’s list and excited to share it with you. Please say you’ll bring some of these goodies our way!
Yours Truly,
Grain Edit + Friends
12.10.10 | Grace Danico | Guides | 4 comments
For this week’s poster pick, Invisible Creature presents us with a cold, ghost-like city, where it’s remaining inhabitants are fleeing in a school bus into an unknown suburban abyss. The artwork was inspired by the equally bleak lyrics of ‘City With No Children’, a song from Arcade Fire’s latest release, ‘The Suburbs‘. I appreciate the selective use of color and asymmetrical layout, which immediately caught my eye. This gets my vote as one of the Creature’s most impressive posters to date.
You can pick up a print at the Poster Cabaret or enter to win a copy in the Grain Edit Holiday Giveaway Bash.
12.10.10 | Dave | Poster Picks | 8 comments
For my first post here at Grain Edit, I’m going to share one of my favorite design books from my bookshelf: American Trademark Designs. Published in 1976 by Dover Books and written and compiled by Barbara Baer Capitman, this book is chock full of 732 delicious black, bold, and inky vintage logos. My favorite aspect of this book is that it showcases extremely recognizable logos that have been stamped into the back of our eyelids (IBM, Mr. Peanut, Pepsi-Cola, Playboy) right alongside rarely seen identities created by tiny firms for tiny companies. Some marks are also showcased next to their former, replaced versions, displaying the brand’s evolution.
I’ve scanned some of my favorite graphics to share with you. A portion of this book is also available for view in Google Books, but it’s much more interesting on paper.
12.09.10 | Dave | Off Our Bookshelves | 10 comments
Only one day left to apply for the 2010 Design Sponge Scholarship. This year they’re awarding $10,000 to both undergrad & grad students. Apply here.
12.07.10 | Dave | Found design | Comments closed
Voidwreck is the collaborative studio of Amsterdam residents Karl Nawrot & Walter Warton. Karl is a graduate of the Werkplaats Typografie, which is considered by some to be the holy grail of typography programs in the world.
As an experimental studio, Voidwreck constantly explore different mediums to develop shape and pattern. The same can be said of their typography, which I think embodies the word ‘modernism’—embracing the new while drawing on geometrical sans serifs as inspiration.
12.03.10 | Liz Meyer | Found design, modern, Typography | 6 comments
Malota is the pseudonym of Spain based illustrator and designer Mar Hernandez. Mar’s work uses a lot of punchy colors, varied textures and gradients, as well as sharp geometric shapes, which is evident in this illustration of a cat in boots. I really love the way she depicts the cat’s fur and kooky tail. Its facial expression and whiskers are really fun too!
12.02.10 | Grace Danico | Found design | 6 comments
The above music cover inspired series is one of many self-initiated projects by the Switzerland based GVA Studio. I really love this series, and I can’t help but think that some jazz record was playing while these prints were in the works. Their simplistic, whimsical nature seems to express the feeling of certain kinds of music so well. Looking at this set of prints also reminds me of a number of classical jazz record covers.
12.01.10 | Ethan | Found design | 4 comments
