Richard Perez

I like the styles used by this particular designer, from the colour schemes to his chosen compositions. The poster to the right is a simple design, composed to advertise a music event that took place in the summer. Therefore I think the illustration of a fairground is wholly appropriate, and the blue and yellows work perfectly well with the black and white. I think the stars add the perfect little touch.

Perez also dabbles in both typography and illustration, below is my favourite illustrative piece from his website. Its a narrative of a boring afternoon in an office job, and manages to be both informative and humourous.

Notebooks and Calenders

I came across these two different projects whilst browsing www.behance.net. I think they're just very unique ways of putting a twist on something that could be deemed a boring subject. The first photos are of a series of 12 notebooks. What's so special is that this set comes in bread packaging. The theme does not stop there though, I think its pretty obvious the colouring of the books are in direct relation to the bread idea, and therefore they come only in a grainy, wholemeal colour.

This second batch of pictures is very clever as it almost recalls back to a simpler time. With a world where almost everyone has access to the internet and can join networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, it's nice to see products that enlist traditional approaches like handwriting and not broadcasting what you are doing to everyone you know. It's private and I like it very much. I would buy one.

Speaking from Experience

For the 'Speaking from Experience' brief I want to create an informative book/booklet and therefore thought I should look into a few different approaches to that type of design. The first thing I remembered was reading a book a few years ago and being struck by the boldness of the layout, and the interesting use of a minimal colour scheme. It took me a while to remember what that book was but when I did I took it out of the library and scanned in some of my favourite page layouts. The book was Paul Arden's 'Whatever you think, think the opposite' and below are the scans.





I wanted to discover more interesting examples so whilst searching the internet I stumbled across the website www.onlab.ch and was taken in by the bredth of book and magazine layouts featured. However below is the one that really caught my eye. It is the design for a German magazine that also features a double sided poster with a large scale image on one side and purely type on the other. Not only was it that that I liked but the clear wallet that comes with it is a very unique idea. Instead of placing the name of the magazine actually on it, it is placed on the wallet, therefore not impeding on the layout of the magazine and helping stand alone as a piece of art itself. I really like the idea and may use it as inspiration for my own work.

Covent Garden Market

I took a trip to London over the easter holidays and whilst at Covent Garden I spotted this little flyer for the market. At first I didn't think it was that special. I was just drawn in by the colours and the way in which all the different foodstuffs had been edited and simplified using most probably illustrator. But the more I looked, the more I realised how clever it was. The foods that make up the large letters on the front are all on the back, but spread out with a brief description of each one. I think it's a cute little design and one of the few flyers/leaflets I've picked up that haven't thrown away almost instantly.

Mike Kus

As part of Mike Kus' talk at FOWD London 2009 he played this short film. It's sped up footage of him designing his slides for his talk. He showed it because he thought it would be interesting to see the design process he went through whilst making them. It also features a lot of footage of slides being designed that never made it to the final slide deck. I just think its incredibly fascinating because it shows what every graphic designer goes through whilst in the creative process. Most times you would just see the final result, and nothing in terms of development, this video gives you an inside look into the time consuming aspect of graphic design.

Always With Honour

From the website: Always With Honor is the collective work of Elsa, Tyler and Zoe. Their mission is to create work that simplifies, synthesizes and clarifies. Zoe is a dog. I think this collective is probably the best one I have found in terms of infographics and illustrations that cut straight to the point. Below is an infographic created for the monthly journal 'Good Magazine'. This entertaining info graphic depicts the “Largest Bankruptcies in History.” Its design is straightforward, simple, and fun as it uses bright colors and geometric shapes. Each boat appropriately corresponds with the data, with tiny sailboats depicting small money loss and huge cruise ships depicting major losses.

Robinsson Cravents

I realised that I haven't got much corporate identity on this blog, thats why when I found this artist I thought I would post some of his work. Above is Cravents vision for a new Pizza place. He says he was inspired by cheese, Tomato, pepper, salami, Italian colors and the classic pizza form. I think it works very well, with the least effort. For example most people when they see red, green and white put together they think of Italy and in turn the food that has made the country so very famous. The inclusion of a 'triangular' pattern is also very clever, because this is the archetypal shape relating to a 'slice'.
This is another branding project that Cravents did that I think works really well. It for the energy drink called 'Missile'. He describes it as a different point view to the usual energy drink packaging looks. The intention is to offer and show a different drink, more medicinal but fresh and cool. I think the pink, yellow and green choice of colours works really well in relation to 'energy boosts' and that whole energising approach.

Zim and Zou

This is a fantastic little paper crafted game boy. It was created entirely using coloured card, glue and scissors. I think the effort gone into designing it is clearly evident, and the colours chosen are vivid and enticing. The designers also assembled another variation, but using the traditional light grey colour scheme. I personally think the brightly coloured one is much more interesting. The game which is shown 'on screen' is tetris and even though it looks like it really is that small, visual trickery is to be accounted for. What the designers did is construct a large scale tetris scenario, with purely paper of course, then photographed it and used photoshop to manipulate it so it looks as though it is really on screen. Even this product may have no serious meaning behind its development, I think if you take it for purely what it is, a but of fun, the successes are clearly evident. I would definitely consider designing something like this in the future for my own bit of fun.

Simon Page

OK, so the geek in me is really coming out with this post. I love this series of Star Wars related posters designed by Simon Page, simply for pleasure. The designs are about the fictional planets and universes where a lot of the plot lines take place in the movie franchise. I love the simplicity of the designs, in direct juxtaposition of the often complex story lines. The colours may look like they were chosen purely for aesthetic value however this is a reason behind every choice. For example Tatooine is a desert planet, hence the sandy tones. Hoth is a planet covered in snow and ice therefore it is depicted as blue, Endor is considered a giant forest therefore it is green and Dagobah is covered in murky swamps hence the muted yet slightly dank tones.

Mike Crozier

I found this stop motion animation video and loved the attempt made. He wrote, shot and edited the film himself without the use of special effects or stopmotion software. There are 1846 photos, and it took just under 4 days to shoot. Its reminiscent of the Johnny Kelly videos I featured very early on in my blogging. It must be a style that I like if I keep finding similar artists with similar stop motion animations.

Chris Thornley

I couldn't find much information on this artist, but what I did find was great pieces of his work. He works predominantly with illustration and re-imagining previous pieces of art. The poster above works very well in advertising the film 'Mean Streets'. It combines the original black and red colour scheme, and he found a very creative way of combining a gun outline and a New York street map. Other pieces in this series are shown below.

Movie Title Screenshots

CLICK HERE
This is my new favourite website. Website designer Christian Annyas watches a lot of films and to prove it he started to take screenshots of the opening credits. Just where the name of the film appears he print screens. The collection is vast, ranging from the black and white, silent films of the twenties to the brand new additions of your typical Hollywood blockbusters. From the outset it might seem like a website purely for people interested in film, however when you start to search and take in more imagery you quickly realise how typography related it is. Some titles are beautiful and obviously a lot of effort went into crafting them, others are a lot more rushed but fit in incredibly well within the concept of the film. A few of my favourites examples are below.

Examples from 2000 to 2009:

Examples from 1960 to 1969:

James Joyce

I found this limited edition poster on Blanka.co.uk and was instantly drawn in. It is the artists re-imagining of Hitchcocks 'Rear Window' promotional poster. It's perfect because it communicates all of what the film is about through one single illustration. For those who know Hitchcock's work it is glaringly obvious this poster draws inspiration from the film's basic plotline, which involves a wheelchair bound man watching his neighbours 'intriguing' actions through a window in his house. That's why I love it so much, it's for the film geeks out there. Sure it doesn't exclude people who don't know what's going on but it's a subtle nod to those who do.


Other James Joyce pieces that i like:

Lucy Vigrass

Lucy is a freelance illustrator working in London and a member of Peepshow Collective. She works predominantly with illustration, and is all about colour and designs which are straight to the point. The piece to the left is the only example of her work I could find with type used, yet the main type is actually crafted through her meccano illustrations. Therefore still fitting her personal approach.
I really like her use of colour and textures. She seems to have a way of addressing the problem with the simplest design possible. I'm not quite sure what the illustration below was drawn for but if I had to hazard a guess I would probably suggest that it is about drinking in different social circumstances. This is communicated by her using different shaped glasses and the colours used for the background scenarios.

Andrew Townsend

Townsend is a very successful graphic designer who graduated from Nottingham Trent University in 1999. He is the Art Director at Un.titled in the UK and specialises in graphic design and art direction for print. His website is absolutely full to the brim with projects that are well thought out and designed. Practically every link that I clicked I was directed to more pieces of beautifully crafted typographic pieces. The project to the left stood out because of its simplicity but also the wide range of scenarios that the designs were
incorporated into, for example the room layout for the fashion show itself. The simple colour scheme remains fluent and stands out from a distance.





Townsend uses very simple sans serif fonts in many of his works, mainly Helvetica. He also likes to use different stocks to make a range of intriguing and appealing books. His style is simplicity, and his works are usually very effective. If there are illustrations included with his designs, which is rare, they are also simple and minimalistic. Other examples of his work that stood out to me from his website are below:




Check out here for more: Andrew Townsend

The Ambient Life

I love this video, I don't actually know what it is that I love though. It could be seen as quite cheesy but I think its fantastic. I have no idea who the narrator is, but I personally feel that his voice completes the video.



DESCRIPTION:
Commissioned by: Buro Knapzak / Client: Freeband / Year: 2009
Freeband Communication and IIPIC share a vision of the future: a world in which information and communication technology render one's surroundings into a thinking and caring environment.
The results of the Freeband Communication research program should be visualized in a compelling film. I approached the material using infographics to explain the vast quantities of data. To create a relationship with the continuing technology the film starts with a minimalist introduction in a narrow color spectrum and gradually transitioned to an abundant, multicolored world.

Anton Jeludkov

This artist does not have much work on his website, however I saw this and was quite impressed. It is very similar to the style of book we had to create for the book fair not long ago. He describes it as 'Fifteen short booklets acted as outlets for experimentation with form, typography and composition as a response to modernism'. I like the simple composition and the fact that the colours are kept minimal. It is also interesting to see such a variety of fonts, and styles within one book. Each page is so different yet when the pages are placed directly after one another it becomes clear and works well as a collection. It is also a good vehicle to begin to understand the basics of quite a confusing topic.

Laika

TAKEN FROM THE WEBSITE:
Type has always been something static.
In considering type we speak, for example, in terms of bold, thin, grotesque, classical, roman, italic: terms that all describe a defined variant of the font family. Thus we only ever see individual fixed points in what is actually an infinitely wide space of possibilities.
With digitalisation, however, typeface has left its manifest image – cast in lead – behind, and with it all the associated limitations. Computer-based applications, the Internet and new, fluid advertising media allow us to go beyond the existing, static view of typography.
LAIKA is neither bold nor thin, but swings between these two extremes. Its form is no longer defined statically, but alters dynamically. As well as the font’s weight, the stroke contrast, serif lengths and italic angles of the font all behave dynamically too. All these parameters can be driven and influenced by a range of inputs, in order to create a typeface that changes constantly in real time.
LAIKA requires a whole new, dynamic understanding of typography.
Why should a typeface be rigidly set, if it is not going to be printed? In a dynamic medium, why shouldn’t the form and the character of the typeface be understood dynamically as well? Why shouldn’t its forms change, transform, and respond to circumstances?
Prototypical applications show their potential in combination with interactive, audiovisual inputs, data requested from the Internet in real-time (RSS feeds), and electronic components such as sensors or simple switches. In this way, an advertising text could react to passers-by, stock market prices could influence a corporate typeface, or ECG measurements taken while writing could breathe new emotional life into digital love letters.
With LAIKA, there is finally a font that can seamlessly use the whole spectrum of its cuts. A font that is able to move between its extremes in real time. An interactive font that is able to respond to its surroundings. A font that questions deadlocked dogmas and throws up completely new design questions, and thus has the potential to revolutionise the understanding of digital typography.

IF YOU VISIT HERE YOU CAN TEST THE FONT YOURSELF!

Maggi Noem

Maggi Noem is a young graphic designer who works with typography and zines in her home country of Iceland. I really like the typographic examples below. Each one is incredibly different from the other, but somehow I think they work really well as a series, and personally I believe that they are easily recognisable as Maggi's work. Others are easier to read than others, whilst some take a few seconds to configure the words on display. However, I love the depth created and the colours used communicate to me the atmosphere and design style of Iceland itself.

'Now or Never'

'Look At Me Now'

'Bump and Grind'

Measuring Type

Matt Robinson is a young graduate who is making a name for himself in the visual communication market. After browsing through his website I came across a few pieces of his work with Tom Wrigglesworth that I really like.

Example One
A selection of the most commonly used typefaces were compared for how economical they are with the amount of ink which they use at the same point size. Large scale renditions of the typefaces were drawn out with ballpoint pens, allowing the remaining ink levels to display the ink efficiency of each typeface.


Example Two
A short film demonstrating the limitless creative potential of Hewlett Packard Workstations.

KOA

Taken from his website:
His world is a universe of happy and colorfull oppresive chaos where monsters are masters and humans are slaves. Monsters fascinate him since he is a little kid. His universe is full of barbed women, dwarfs hip hop masters, clouds who laugh about humans, flying fishes who want to be rock stars, fearfull wherewolfs, ridiculous ghosts, strange dogs (Gustavio)...Mirror of our hearts his creatition takes part of our fears, fantasms for strange things. His creations are the echo of our falling civilisation where the human Insanity, violence and sex is everywhere.


There's not much more I can say about his work. However if there was something I had to say is that maybe the designs are a little too busy. Obviously this is the artists style, and a lot of time and effort has gone into crafting these wonderfully intricate pieces, but from a first glance I can't actually tell what is being communicated. It takes a few minutes to take it all in and register what is being shown, however this may well be the artist intention. His designs are not things to just be glanced at but instead to be really studied and understood. I do like the designs, especially the colours used, but I dont think they would be great advertising tools.

Mark Ward

BIO: Mark Ward is a graphic artist based in South London and working internationally. His style is influenced by 80’s skate culture and Americana combined with elements of his British identity. Like a glace cherry gone rotten, Mark’s images inject the everyday mundane into the sun-drenched California he was sold as a kid to bring a different perspective to the American dream.
I like the typography used in this piece, the depth he has managed to portray by simply playing around with composition. I also like how self contained it is, how nothing leaves the circle template, therefore making a great logo design. The colours used are actually quite subtle if you were to pull them apart; a pale blue, a dull yellow and black. However when they are brought together somehow the final piece is incredibly vivid and attractive.
This is a piece commissioned for the company Zoo York. Mark uses seperate illustrations of places and objects you would usually find in New York City and brings them together to form the number 93. I am not entirely sure why the number 93 was chosen, but this is only one part of a whole series. Other examples of this series include a 24 which contains all Parisian related objects, a 75 which seems to be Tokyo inspired and an 86 which is London related. When put together the idea is very well communicated.
This last piece is quite confusing as I have no idea if it holds purpose in terms of advertising or promotion. However what I do recognise is the similarity between the top of the mans face and the illustration used to promote the 'Coney Island Steeplechase' in the early 20th century. A visual that has become synonymous with the American way of life and gimmickry.

Hatch Show Print

A fascinating eight-minute look at Hatch Show Print, a 130 year-old working letterpress shop (established 1879) in Nashville, Tennessee.


After watching the video a quote I was struck by was; 'everything is done by letterpress, hand cranked, hand inked, hand trimmed, hand wrapped and we call the customer from a rotary telephone'. I just think that that is so fascinating in this day and age. It seems as though a lot of people use vintage imagery and vintage techniques to seem cool, they want a different approach so they go back in time and the results are usually successful. However what I find interesting about this is this business does not use older techniques to be different, but instead is just interested in preserving the methods. They like the time consuming aspect and are not averse to spending an entire week on just one edition. I love some of the final pieces, especially the music posters, advertising concert dates and CD releases. A particular poster that I have always liked, and have a replica of myself is one promoting the King himself; Elvis Presley. After researching about Hatch Show Print it was a pleasant surprise to find out that they actually designed the original. The simple blue and red lettering, which subconsciously instills patriotic pride, and the blue portrait of Elvis work so well together, I love the minimalist yet impressive design.

Neon Gray

Neon Gray are a multidisciplinary art and design kinship from Baltimore, MD and San Francisco, CA. They focus on typography, photography, print, packaging, web, analogue design and art direction. After looking at their page they have quite an impressive portfolio of wide ranging pieces. However it is their typographic pieces that I was most drawn to. Below are a few examples of my favourite pieces.

BACK ON TRACK
2007
Three steps towards recharging the godforce of your crystal.
Back on Track is a series of analog designs created by laser-cutting manila folders. We used our stencil typeface, Waving Hello.

THE SLOW SLEEP
2007
The Slow Sleep is a custom typeface that was created for use on various personal and commercial projects. The aim was to create a font that showcased the boldness of retro fonts that have recently been making a comeback, but to also steer away from prevalent sharp right angles, drawing inspiration from rounded retro fonts like Frankfurter. The name was chosen because of its reminiscence to big dilated pupils and being in bed all day long.

SAY EVERYTHING
2007
Make custom messages spelled out in your favorite office supply! The font Olimpyc was created specifically for this purpose (although we like it on the screen/in print too). Each letter was designed within the constraints of a standard 3"x3” Post-It pad. There are 26 pads in all; one for each letter of the alphabet. Each set comes with a separate sheet of punctuation marks.

In conclusion I like all the above pieces because the fonts are bold and stand out. Their legibility is crystal clear, there is no looking at the type and taking a few seconds to figure out what it being communicated. The messages are concise and therefore these typefaces are very successful in their aims. They are all sans serif, obviously taking inspiration from the Bauhaus approach and are most probably visible and recognisable from greater distances.

Tron Vs. Saul Bass

This is a video I stumbled across on the video networking site Vimeo. I was instantly drawn in because it combines two of my favourite things: films and Saul Bass. I pretty much like everything about this video, from the accompanying music to the texture of the backgrounds. The type used is obviously hand rendered and then digitally designed using illustrator, something I like to do with fonts that I create. The simple, block illustrations are incredibly effective and the way in which the multicoloured lines appear across the screen are not only reminiscent of retro design, but also fit incredibly well within the fictional Tron universe.


Whilst browsing the artists page I came across an earlier project which was similar but instead combined the Saul Bass approach with the TV programme Lost. Again the music is very fitting, but this video it a bit more hit and miss than the other. Some parts work very well, like the zooming into the island at the end with the plane crashing into it, but I feel that the portraits of the characters do not work at all. All in all I like both attempts a lot.

Calender

Calenders are something that everyone needs. Once they were just for people with busy schedules and therefore their designs were often plain and uninteresting. However in this busy modern day and age, it seems as though everyone has appointments and meetings they need to remember, therefore designs have increased in style and above is just a small example of the new breed of calenders. At the end of the day you will see your calender every day of the year, so why not have a visually attractive one. The example above is a hand printed limited set available from etsy.com. The designs are simple, with each month occupying one simple colour and the hand drawn designs printed on with white ink. I think its really effective in a subtle way and its definitely a calender that I would be proud to display.