Mike Perry Interview

Mike Perry / Grain Edit

This Grain Edit interview takes us to New York’s largest burough—Brooklyn—and to the office of Mike Perry! I’m sure most here are quite familiar with his work. The style is very specific; you definitely know it when you see it. With the help of the fancy-shmancy Internet, Mike’s work seems often imitated, but never duplicated. There is only one Mike Perry, folks.

I became most familiar with Mike’s work with the publication of his first book, Hand Job: A Catalog of Type. While still in school I preordered it, as did many of my classmates. But I had my first real hands-on looks at it over at the studio where I was interning — they had an advance copy. I remember the smell, especially, as well as the general office ogling.

One of the things that strikes me the most about Mike’s work is that he can be making a zine or an object, putting on a show, or designing a typeface, or just doodling—all of his work feels consistent. With whatever he’s doing, you’re always entering the world of Mike Perry.

After the jump, Mike talks about various aspects of his work, his work history, and his favorite Brooklyn restaurant. Let’s get into it!

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Karl Oskar Blase

karl oskar blase

Deutsche Bundespost: Internationales Jahr Des Kindes stamp c1979  Karl Oskar Blase’s son is the boy in the image.

Karl Oskar Blase was born in the German city of Cologne (Koln) in 1925. At the age of 25 he attended the Wuppertal School of Industrial Art to study painting and graphic design. Around the same time he formed a design studio with Felix Muller. One of the studio’s more significant projects was to develop the layout for form magazine. Karl would go on to design almost all the covers through 1968. Karl also taught at the Kassel school of Industrial Art and designed many stamps for the Deutsche Bundespost.

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Julia Guther

Julia Guther / Grain Edit

Love these cutout illustrations and typography from Germany-based Julia Guther. Her work is minimal, colorful, and she uses a wide (and interesting) range of media.

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Pavel Fuksa Matchbox Designs for Navigators Video

pavel fuksa

If your a fan of vintage matchbox labels you will appreciate Czech illustrator & designer Pavel Fuksa’s latest project. Pavel created 178 matchbox covers for the Navigators “My Place” video,  many of which contain lyrics from the song. See the full video here

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Nate Williams Illustration

nate williams, n8w, illustration mundo, hola mi amiga, illustration

Buenos Aires based illustrator and artist, Nate Williams, is a force to be reckoned with! This illustration, entitled Lion and Molecules, uses an earthy palette reminiscent of A&W root beer; the chocolate brown layered over the orange and cream is a real treat! It’s choc full of organic shapes and patterns, including really lovely star bursts and variations in line texture and weights. Nate’s hand drawn type is also very fun and unique as it juxtaposes thick and thin, masculine and feminine.

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Matt Keers

Matt Keers, the UK-based designer responsible for the above design, has a portfolio full of the same: bold, colorful, and compelling.

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Wim Crouwel Archive

wim crouwel

Architectuur werk van leden poster c1959

Wim Crouwel fans rejoice!

The Het Geheugen van Nederland (The Memory of the Netherlands) is a dutch website that contains an extensive collection of illustrations, photographs, texts, film and audio fragments, all of Dutch making. They have an impressive archive of work by Wim Crouwel. Over 500 original designs by Wim and his partners at Total Design lay in wait for your perusing pleasure. Enjoy!

Huge thanks to Antonio at Aisleone for sharing this gem.

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Nomono Illustration

Cristóbal Schmal, nomono, illustration, berlin

Berlin based illustrator and designer, Cristóbal Schmal, has an impressive collection of work under his moniker Nomono. This particular piece, created for INOPOLIS’s guided tour for the 90th anniversary of Bauhaus, celebrates Berlin as the modern city. The color palette is limited and the imagery is quite striking. I really love the rough textures and geometrical figures in this illustration, especially the red ray emanating from the foreseeing eye.

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6th Biennale of Graphic Design Brno 1974

brno biennale

While I was in Maine I discovered this book put together after the 1974 Biennale of Graphic Design in Brno, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia). The book contains notes and essays from a symposium centered around corporate identity.

Wim Crouwel contributes an essay on the problems with house-style. In the essay he discusses the role of a designer in the creation of a corporate identity program and describes the difference between what he calls “information designers” and “advertising designers. He ends the essay off with a few thoughts on trademarks (abstract symbols vs type driven solutions).

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