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The place for the things that drive me in design, music, inspiration, and life. A collage of the things that inspire me on and off the internet.
This might be the only piece of music I’ve bought mostly based on the design and marketing of the album itself.
Orba Squara’s album The Trouble with Flying is an upbeat piece of music with heavy narrative and apparently great design.It’s one of the best examples in my memory of a truly combined effort between facets of a marketing campaign for an album. I quite like some of the music too.
I, as you may know, am a lover of information graphics and more recently a lover of Istanbul. My recent time in Istanbul has left me with lots of great experiences and lots to digest.
Mapping Istanbul has caught my interest as not only a beautiful series of information graphics but as a way to digest and process the city that has a massive history, a myriad of cultural influences, and a diverse life of its own.
The series of narrative information graphics from ProjectProjects catalogs travel routes, population density and demographics, economic factors and much more.
It looks like the only way to purchase the beauty outside turkey is to email the Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Center by email at archive@ottomanbank.com
All images via ProjectProjects.com
I don’t tend to re-blog things that are making the rounds on the internet because you don’t want to see the same thing twice but in this case I actually had to do a bit of hunting to get past the trailer and the logo progress clip to find images of the work of Herbert Matter.
The trailer is for a documentary coming out soon about his life and work. The man was a very influential graphic designer of Swiss birth from the 30′s through the 80′s. His overall mastery of photography, design, typography and in many cases art making put him in the position of great influence in the visual arts and design world. His life crossed paths with the lives of many other greats of the era including Jackson Polluck, Willem de Kooning, Alberto Giacometti, Charles & Ray Eams, and R. Buckminster Fuller.
The documentary looks excellent but I was more interested in seeing some images of his work:
I’ve been digging through the Duke Digital Collections site for a few months now and wanted to share some of the best galleries I’ve found.
I first found my way to the Duke Digital Collections site by way of a link to this Historic American Sheet Music Collection. The collection features wild and beautiful examples of typography throughout the featured decades as well as some culturally interesting song titles and images.
This collection features ads printed in Canada and the US between 1911 and 1955 in the areas of Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygiene, and World War II. The imagery and copy writing in these ads are quintessential and really fun to browse through.
For more type goodness and political incorrectness dive into the Emergence of Advertising in America archive and see the enormous variety housed in the catalog spanning 1850-1920. My favorite three sections, exemplified above, are:
Tobacco Advertising (1872 – 1918)
Early Advertising Publications (1870 – 1925)
Advertising Ephemera (1853 – 1921)
I was in MICA’s library for a few minutes yesterday and browsed through Eye Magazine and was very much impressed.
Eye Magazine is an international review of graphic design and I happened to pick up the typography special which was full of beautiful lettering, old type specimens and modern typographers. The articles were in-depth and graphic design focused. The magazine seemed a lot more serious and a lot more authentic than some of my other subscriptions (Print and Commarts).
The paper choice for the magazine also stood out to me. Not overly glossy, the pages felt great and had a wonderful quality and tint to them. Eye magazine is reminding me why I subscribe to printed magazines and has certainly got my hooked with its first issue. With a student price around $80 for a year (4 issues) it might be one to consider checking out of your local library until it convinces you to get it delivered to your house.
I went up the coast today with the family to the Maine Maritime Museum and picked up some great old typography.
And some more below…
Rodney Smith is a photographer with a very particular style who I discovered while doing a little bit of research for a class last semester.
My name is Bryan Connor and I have the itis.
De•sign–i•tis Definition
Pronunciation: /-dih-zahyn-īt-əs-/
-noun
Many designers know the trials of this unfortunate disorder, myself included. As you can see my site has fallen prey to a redesign once again.
But whenever this happens I think all designers feel a certain sense of improvement which I think is the case here. It may look like a pretty standard redesign but in the process I’ve changed the format up quite a bit…
Amtrak has been doing a fantastic job of branding themselves lately and despite delays and inconveniences I still love them. The wonderful posters that have been coming out for Amtrak, designed by Michael Schwab, harken back to the golden era of train travel and add a lot of dimension to the Amtrak brand.
The posters are nice on a surface level but you don’t get this richness of brand while you’re actually traveling. To begin to bring that brand in to the train travel experience i redesigned Amtrak’s default luggage tags to resemble the work and feeling of Michael Scwhab‘s campaign for Amtrak.
So I’ve arrived at SXSW after a brilliant trip and initial contact which I’ll detail in an article later.
Preparing for this conference has been intense. I’ve been working with Infochimps to prepare for a data meetup happening on Sunday (which you should come to if you’re in Austin) by completing the meetup identity, website, and signage for the event.
I’ve also been working heavily with GuruStorms, a finalist in the SXSW Business Accelerator Program to get their brand and website up to date. They’ll be presenting Monday in front of a panel of judges who in previous years have singled out Twitter from a myriad of other startups.
In all his preparation I’ve been squeezing in time on this website and trying to get it fully functionally and beautiful as well. As you might imagine this has proved difficult. Contorting wordpress to bend to my will is taking time and I’m striving to make a site that is deep with content and really nice to look at.
Bare with me as I make everything functional stay tuned by subscribing to my RSS feed to be notified when everything is perfected.
I don’t pretend to know a great deal about the illustration or print making world but when an artist presents us with a strong new aesthetic and a brilliant concept people take notice. This seems to be the case for the very striking style of the prints of Josh Brill, founder of the now quite popular Lumadessa label.
As a Maine College of Art graduate with a degree in New Media Design, Josh was in the position of many young freelancers ; fresh out of school and full of creativity. Since that time Josh has set up a successful art and design label under which he can produce work that he loves and people will flock to it. With his successes and very bright future I thought he would be a valuable resource for young freelancers trying to make it big. He generously answered my questions below.
