1975 Hong Kong festivals – official first day cover and stamp set designed by Tao Ho
Tao Ho is a Hong Kong-based architect, designer, teacher, and writer. He studied under Sigfried Giedion and Josep Lluís Sert at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and worked with Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius at the Architects Collaborative. In 1975, Tao Ho designed this first day cover and stamp set to commemorate Hong Kong’s Tin Hau, Dragon Boat, and Mid-Autumn festivals.
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?
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.
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.
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 of my Photo Lettering catalogs. Here for your viewing pleasure is Alphabet Thesaurus Vol.2
Alphabet Thesaurus Vol 2 – A Treasury of Letter Design
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.
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.
#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.
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.
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!
