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Ozomatli

2009-12-10T09:36:00.006-06:00

I was browsing new cd's in the library last night and found a musical group called Ozomatli.

I noticed their logo first because it reminded me a little bit of one of the logos Push Pin Studio came up with for Solo, a publishing group. I wonder if that was a conscious inspiration for the designer of the group's identity mark.

The band is just cool, too! Their website describes them as "culture mashers" and their music is:

a notorious urban-Latino-and-beyond collision of hip hop and salsa, dancehall and cumbia, samba and funk, merengue and comparsa, East LA R&B and New Orleans second line, Jamaican ragga and Indian raga

The story behind their name is interesting too. Apparently, the Aztec Stone of the Sun calendar has a 20 day cycle with particular tasks for particular days.

Ozomatli (the monkey) is on day 11.

Among the Aztecs and the Mayans, the monkey has been associated with dance, art, beauty and harmony. This specific day shows our life must reunite with art, that our ways of being, dressing, acting, must be each day more and more artistic, harmonious, beautiful, etc. (samaelgnosis.us)

Finally, here's a poster of the band that ties it all together. I'd love to do this kind of symbolic/conceptual design!

Mok

2009-12-09T12:27:00.003-06:00

Clement Mok was another designer listed as influential. Here's some information that was on Will Sherwood's website, Success Secrets of the Graphic Design Superstars.

Clement Mok is a designer, digital pioneer, software publisher/developer, author, and design patent holder. Mok, a former creative director at Apple, founded multiple successful design-related businesses — Studio Archetype, CMCD and NetObjects. He was the Chief Creative Officer of Sapient, and the president of AIGA. Currently, he consults for Sapient and other Fortune 500 companies on a variety of design planning and user experience projects.

Quote from Clement Mok:

As much as young designers are good at creating compelling imagery for today’s cultural currency, they still don’t have the life experience in understanding how to make things usable. They can make them desirable, but mastery requires a lifetime of learning.

Examples of Mok's work:

Fourth of July Flag - it's interesting that he chose to use non-traditional colors for the flag. I like it because it suggests a more complex, inclusive understanding of what this country could be.

Identity for Republic of Tea -- I've always liked these:

Other examples:

Kidd

2009-12-08T21:54:00.001-06:00

Since we weren't able to cover all the influential designers in class, I thought I'd look up a few that weren't presented.

Chip Kidd seems to have his plate pretty full -- Associate Art Director at Knopf, editor-at-large for Pantheon, writer, and percussionist. I've probably missed some things. His blog is very well done and witty. The name of the blog itself is pretty funny -- Good is dead. Very entertaining! Here are some images of his work - particularly his book covers. I found that I wanted to just keep looking at them to take in all the weirdness, the funniness or the details depending on which of these the cover possessed.

New Pepsi logo

2009-12-08T21:14:00.002-06:00

I'm a Diet Coke drinker myself but I will never look at the Pepsi logo in the same way again. Too funny! I doubt this guy intended it but it kind of captures some of the health problems caused by America's obsession with sugar and junk food! Not that I'm separating myself from that obsession, of course.

Can't get enough of this guy...

2009-12-08T20:39:00.010-06:00

More by my new friend Gunter.

I'm drawn to the powerful simplicity of many of his designs. This one is for the International Prison Watch organization. Many of his images are black, white, red and gray which reminds me of the Constructivists. If you're interested in some of the more typographic posters he's done for theater, you can check out my typography blog.

I believe this is for the UN World Day Against Racism and Violence. The shattered hand and complementary colors make this an intense design.

This image for peace seems to avoid the cliche of the heart (mostly, anyway) .

This final image is obviously more complex and really interesting. It's a poster for something to do with freelance photographers, I think. The combination of type and image is great.

Gunter Rambow

2009-12-08T19:30:00.001-06:00

We saw a few images of Gunter Rambow's work in the Megg's History book and he was one of the designers I really liked. I went to find some more of his work. I'll be picking some out to share. Here are some images from his work for S. Fischer which is, as far as I can tell, a publishing house. That would make sense given the theme. There are many, many images on his website but they aren't particularly well marked in terms of dates. In addition, they're in German so I couldn't tell what half of them actually mean. Google translator can only help so much.

Bob Dylan's Brain. Milton Glaser's Design.

2009-11-16T22:47:00.002-06:00

This is an image from a 2008 Vanity Fair magazine article. Since we're looking at Postmodern design, I thought this would be a good example of the old (1966)

becoming new again and the use of typographic space that's not on a grid. Imagine creating something with this typographic detail before design software was available.

Fuel

2009-11-09T22:12:00.001-06:00

Neat movie poster - with a message. Would this be considered conceptual art?

I had an idea...

2009-11-09T22:09:00.001-06:00

If anyone ever actually reads this blog, do me a favor...in the comments section below this post, type in the name of one object (e.g., chair, tea cup) -- any object will do -- and I will do 50 sketches of it and will post them. I need something to sketch and you can be my inspiration!

Sketching

2009-11-09T22:05:00.003-06:00

Karly Barrett is a designer who was gracious enough to include sketches she did while developing a logo for bioTrekker - an interesting environmental campaign. I like reading her blog because she includes lots of info about the process of designing. She gives a great description of the process on her blog but I'm just including the images here. I've had a really hard time getting myself to sketch every day even though I know that by doing so, my graphic design work would improve. I've heard this from more people than I can remember. It just doesn't come so naturally to me. This will be good inspiration.

Great Danes

2009-11-02T20:18:00.016-06:00

After watching Helvetica in class last week, I had a lot of fun doing web searches on the various designers the movie featured. I have dozens of blog posts in the wings now. For many of the sites I found, I have no idea what series of clicks led me there. The web is just a great thing. I found a site that allows you to create "word clouds." You can look at my Typography blog if you're interested or go here.

I also found a really interesting Danish design company called e-types. I have often thought of myself as a minimalist and was initially really excited about finding this company. As I went through the numerous projects they'd done, however, I began to get a little bored! Their aesthetic seems to be very much in line with the Swiss International style. To their credit, they put a little twist on it sometimes and don't align everything just perfectly. Here are a few of their designs I like.

The Danish Arts Council logo was my favorite. Their materials describe the Arts Council as supporting artwork that "pays tribute to art that goes against the grain of society." If you look at the logo, you can see there's one little line out of place to represent going against the grain. Very subtle. Too subtle?

The next image is from a fashion ad for a company named Noir. Love the logo that's readable upside down and downside up. Clever.

Finally, I picked their treatment of a series of DVD's about Denmark's history. I liked how the logo color was altered for each time period. As I look at these examples, I notice that they're all pretty dark. That was an unconscious process on my part. Dark thoughts.

e-types has a great website so check it out if you want to see some of their other designs.

Don't judge a book by it's cover...

2009-10-26T21:15:00.008-05:00

...unless you're a graphic designer.

I was looking through AIGA's Design Archives book covers and found some that illustrate the design style we're learning about in Graphic Design History. The one on the left looks like the classic Swiss style to me: use of the grid, simple, straightforward communication. Le Corbusier book cover is interesting because he was a designer during the time period we're looking at so, no doubt, the book cover designer took concepts from that time period and modernized them somewhat.

These other two just caught my eye so I'm including them. The Beat the Reaper cover just seems really intense to me -- I like that. I'm not sure if this would follow the Swiss style because it's so jarring -- bright colors, jagged edges. Seems too energetic for the Swiss style. The L is for Lollygag is just a fun little cover that made me laugh. Apparently, this silliness continues throughout the book. I hope you enjoy it too!

Alvin Lustig

2009-10-19T22:07:00.013-05:00

As I was preparing for my part of the presentation on the Late Modern period, I came across some of the designs of Alvin Lustig. The link here takes you to a great site about him. There was something about them I really liked so I thought I'd share. He was overshadowed by some of the bigger designers of the time and died very young. I especially like his book covers.

I was surprised about how much I enjoyed learning about this time period in design history. I liked more of the artwork than I thought I would. Lustig's designs seem very clean to me. It looks like a lot of his pieces have either a strong vertical emphasis or a strong horizontal emphasis. I like his work because it seems very precise and visually interesting.

The more things change...

2009-10-05T22:29:00.007-05:00

I was reading my history text last night (can't figure out why I keep leaving it for the last minute -- dumb, dumb, dumb)...Anyway, I was really interested to realize that when I was reading the section about Futurism, the way Futurists arranged type on the page looked very, very similar to a book I'd just found at the bookstore.

The book is called The Art of Reading Sideways by Alan Fletcher. I've scanned some pages here to show how it's similar to the examples in Megg's text. Interesting to think that we don't see this kind of layout as all that unusual but during the early modern era, it was revolutionary -- sometimes literally.

It's 533 pages of all kinds of stuff arranged in a variety of ways on the pages. I love it! Another snowy day book.

Film Festival

2009-09-30T23:23:00.004-05:00

I'm having trouble with this image...I scanned it from HOW magazine. Photoshop says the image is 701 X 342 pixels but it turns out teeny tiny and I can't scale it bigger. Suggestions?

I wanted to share it because I like the copy and the style. It's a series of posters from the Cincinnati Film Festival in 2007. What you're not seeing in the small image is "Confess your love for film" on all three posters. From lef to right, they say: My cell phone is still on; I laugh even when I don't get it; I like to sit in the dark with strangers. I don't entirely understand the first one (maybe the films are shown in a more casual environment?). They just seem kind of quirky and whimsical. The color choice is interesting too.

Book Design

2009-09-21T23:28:00.007-05:00

The Anatomy of Design by Heller and Ilic was included in the 2009 International Design Annual put out by HOW magazine. This book was given an "editorial merit." I had actually just gotten the book for myself because it looked so interesting. I'll bring it to class so people can thumb through it.

There is a design (or set of designs) on the right page. Then on the left foldout page, the design is broken down into a number of elements. You can't see it very well in this picture but they've broken this design into "painted sticks, stones and ropes typography," "diptych, triptych, etc," and "burning holes." Each of these elements is broken out and examples of that same element are given in the corresponding row. I'm amazed at how many of the elements show up in other designs and there are some interesting/weird ones: numbers becoming letters; chain link fence; potato type; lots of things piled up neatly; are these my hands?; and many more.

The idea is to explore the influences and inspirations for modern design. It's a brilliant concept and is nicely executed, using the metaphor of how we study anatomy. The introduction has a brief description of the history we've been studying so far. It drew my attention because it's kind of interactive which I've always been drawn to. I could spend hours looking through it. Can't wait for a snowy weekend!

Aaarrggghhhh! Plus Some Graphic Design

2009-09-14T22:09:00.015-05:00

I've been trying unsuccessfully to find an interesting blog template I can download so I'll have more options than these boring blogger ones. Stayed up late trying to download one of the free ones online but got frustrated -- couldn't figure out the html. I made this header in Illustrator but it doesn't fit very well. More tinkering later.

I do have some samples of graphic designs. I was shopping at Rebecca's - cute little store in downtown Champaign that's unfortunately closing. Here are some products from a company called Pacifica. Their website is nicely done if you want to click on the link. AND their soap smells good! I apologize for the fuzzy images - cell phone.

The images are of packaging for soaps and lotions. My sense is that their function is to lure you into taking a smell and to interest you in what's inside the box. Looking at the boxes, it's almost like the designers were trying to make visual what the product smells like. That's one of the things that attracted me to this packaging is that all the packages were different -- just like all the scents are different. They each have their own personality. The way the designers were able to create very different packages that all had a similar aesthetic is pretty interesting.

I'd say the commonality in the styles is that they're modern, geometric, with highly saturated colors. They also seem to reference some of the art from the art deco period. I don't recognize the type but it works with the product name because it's light and simple - like a day lying in a hammock on the beach smelling good because you just took a shower with this soap. I would describe the design as bold, fresh, playful, and trendy. Worked for me - I bought two bars!

GDS 131 Post

2009-09-07T23:31:00.006-05:00

I saw this billboard when I was rushing to class at Parkland one day and thought it was pretty clever. I had no idea it was actually a billboard for Parkland College until I went back today to take a picture of it. The design is contemporary but references some of the typographic work that Herb Lubalin did in the 60's and 70's. He was able to mess around with type in ways never dreamed of until the development of phototypesetting in the 50's allowed designers to use type in more creative, interesting ways.

It's a little difficult to see in this picture (cell phone quality!) but there are two font colors. "You" and "matter" are in black and the rest is in green. Kind of clever, huh? You do.....matter. Really.