Theo Inglis...

Todays post is promoting a tumblr I’ve been enjoying for a...

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:48:00 +0000

Todays post is promoting a tumblr I’ve been enjoying for a few weeks, which you should be following too!

News Of The Times is a blog where 3 French illustrators each post editorial illustrations with links to the news articles that inspired them. The artists are some of my favorites too, Jean Jullien (top two images of this post, who I’ve previously posted about here), Yann Le Bec (middle two images, previously featured here) and Gwendal Le Bec (bottom two images).

Give them a follow; http://newsofthetimes.tumblr.com/

Pages from the book Henri’s Walk to Paris which was the...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:16:00 +0000

Pages from the book Henri’s Walk to Paris which was the only children’s book Saul Bass ever worked on, it’s being republished exactly 50 years after it came out in 1962. Looks really great, hope I get to see it in a shop soon! More pictures and info at Brain Pickings

And if your into this sort of style don’t forget to follow my other blog here;

http://midcenturymoderndesign.tumblr.com (I’m looking for contributors for it too so If your interested get in touch! Thanks)

Today I went to the David Shrigley exhibition Brain Activity at...

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 21:55:00 +0000

Today I went to the David Shrigley exhibition Brain Activity at the Hayward Gallery at the Southbank Centre. Really enjoyed it! Lots of great drawings and animations I hadn’t seen before, as well as sculptures, some of which I liked more than others. But overall a great exhibition, lots of things that made me smile, it’s on until the 13th of May.

Oh and my favourite animation from the show is on youtube, give it a watch. I love it!

I’m in London til Tuesday, today I checked out the...

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 22:24:41 +0000

I’m in London til Tuesday, today I checked out the exhibition at Kemistry Gallery - Mr T: The Posters of Jerzy Treutler. (More info here where I got the pictures from too)

Great little exhibition, lots of very nice posters! If you don’t know about the Polish poster school of design It’s a very interesting genre, artists had a real freedom in their designs and developed a quite unique style that sometimes borrowed from European Modernism but was often totally different. The film posters are especially fascinating because they relied on mainly abstract graphic elements rather than the photography that dominated movie posters in the west.

The exhibition runs until 17th of March, and the gallery is on Charlotte Road, Shoreditch. Other things worth checking out in the vicinity are the YCN shop round the corner on Rivington Street, and KK Outlet down the road in Hoxton Square.

More packaging today! Peppersmith chewing gum and mints branding...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 22:00:09 +0000

More packaging today! Peppersmith chewing gum and mints branding and packaging designed by London based B&B Studio.

“B&B Studio were tasked with creating an entirely new gum brand, including naming, tone of voice and visual identity with the main focus on packaging. Rather than selling to two or three grocery distributors, Peppersmith decided to sell directly to hundreds of busy shopkeepers, a strategy unachievable without an exceptional packaging design.”

Really great work, and it just won a gold in the packaging category at the Design Business Association Awards. You can see the rest of the winners here, all the best design work from the past year! Definitely worth a look, especially the packaging category.

Plymouth Gin redesign, by Design Bridge. Interesting the 3...

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 18:29:07 +0000

Plymouth Gin redesign, by Design Bridge.

Interesting the 3 bottles in the last image, from pretty boring and standard, to a bit more edgy and interesting, then to something really unique with a lot more character and story.

U.S vs. U.K book covers! The American covers are on the left...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 18:27:00 +0000

U.S vs. U.K book covers!

The American covers are on the left side of the pairs, think I prefer the UK ones overall. Except for the last pair, where the American one is much better in my opinion.

Loads more here; The Millions: Judging Books by Their Covers

New work from Spin for Christie’s Magazine. Using the...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:40:09 +0000

New work from Spin for Christie’s Magazine. Using the lovely Bella typeface from Face37

I recently came across a nice new site called Ohh Deer (although...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:21:28 +0000

I recently came across a nice new site called Ohh Deer (although its been around since November) who sell prints, cards, stationery, clothes and home-ware from a range of creatives, mainly illustrators and designers. They had a competition last month based on the theme of ‘Stuck on Repeat’, with the winners work becoming notebook covers. You can see all the entrants here or just the winners here, lots of great work!

The top 4 images are my favorites of the 8 winners they selected, by David Stelfox, Emma Pearce, Pippa Stewart and Stephen Cheetham.

The 4 below them didn’t win but I like them, by Suzanne Antonelli (who graduated from my uni last year), Nancy Straughan, Rich Banks and Marina Molares.

I had a decent time at the weekly Norwich flea market yesterday!...

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 23:59:09 +0000

I had a decent time at the weekly Norwich flea market yesterday! I got the book above with cover and illustrations by David Gentleman, and also a book called It’s fun finding out by Bernard Wicksteed which I bought for the illustrations by Osbert Lancaster. Got both for under five pounds combined, not bad for some classic British illustration.

Interestingly David Gentleman in this blog post on creative review, mentions that Plats Du Jour was his first work for Penguin and explains the context of it. Really lovely cover, and more interesting than I thought!

Unit Editions, the publishing company of designers Tony Brook...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 20:21:07 +0000

Unit Editions, the publishing company of designers Tony Brook and Adrian Shaughnessy, have recently come out with a new publication called England’s Burning. It is the story of the riots we had in England last summer, but told without words entirely through pictograms. Designed and thought up by Stephen McCarthy.

It’s in the format of a tabloid newspaper with a red card wrap around which holds the information. It is the 4th publication in this style from Unit Editions, each one dedicated to a single graphic subject. Well worth checking out the full length books they publish too, some interesting titles!

Designer/Illustrator James Joyce has been sharing some...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:17:57 +0000

Designer/Illustrator James Joyce has been sharing some sketchbook pages today on his twitter (@jamesjoyce). Nice simple black and white drawings, I especially like the type of course!

Todays graphics lecture at NUCA was from ex-student Jim...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:56:00 +0000

Todays graphics lecture at NUCA was from ex-student Jim Sutherland, co-founder of design studio Hat-Trick. Jim came to Norwich about 2 years a go to do a similar talk, but wow have they been busy since then! They produce an amazing range of great work for big clients despite being a small studio of about ten designers, apparently they have around 40 live projects at the moment.

Check out all their work on their website; http://www.hat-trickdesign.co.uk/ lots of clever witty ideas, which they push as far as they can. Plus they do some fun side personal side projects like these.

Oh and also Jim designed a nice poster for his lecture and sent a stack of them to uni, Im hoping to get one for my wall now the talks done…

Max Little, a friend of mine at uni, has recently released a...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:20:38 +0000

Max Little, a friend of mine at uni, has recently released a font he designed for a project earlier in the year. It’s called MASS and he describes it as; “a super heavy stencil font. Designed to be used at large sizes for maximum impact. A perfect headline or poster font, or even better as a huge font for supergraphics, the modular construction of the characters creates letterforms that are perfectly legible as type but also very effective as a tool for patterns”

I really like it! So bold but also quite subtle with the different patterns the letters make together. Plus its cool that it started as a uni project and now you can buy it on a site as big as MyFonts. If you like it get it now while its 50% off! Only $15 available from here; http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/little-fonts/mass/

Ephemera from the flickr of Alistair Hall, founder of brilliant...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:00:06 +0000

Ephemera from the flickr of Alistair Hall, founder of brilliant design studio We Made This. He has a great collection of vintage graphics, I should really get into buying this sort of thing, will have a look this weekend!

I definitely blogged some of this ephemera ages a go on here, but I was reminded of them again when I saw that one of my favorite blogs The Casual Optimist is going to be posting a Q&A with Alistair soon (As well as one with the also great AceJet 170) so look out for them!

Alistair also runs a We Made This blog which is not to be missed.

Two recent book covers using die-cut circles in the dust...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:15:40 +0000

Two recent book covers using die-cut circles in the dust jackets. Both are really nice! The Watergate cover was designed by Paul Sahre, and the Religion for Atheists was by Matt Dorfman (pretty sure I saw this book today but with a really boring cover).

Found both of these via Jacket Mechanical, the blog of book designer Peter Mendelsund.

Watching Words Move by Chermayeff and Geismar (and Robert...

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 20:48:00 +0000

Watching Words Move by Chermayeff and Geismar (and Robert Brownjohn too im sure, but his name isn’t on the front), first published in 1962. An exploration of expression through the most simple typographic means, using only Helvetica.

Pictures from Past Print found via @AJWShaughnessy. You can buy it on amazon still here; Watching Words Move.

Advertisements, London 1973 Via Retronaut

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:00:03 +0000

Advertisements, London 1973

Via Retronaut

Hipster Animals by Matt Saunders. Very funny! Via Handsome Frank

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:10:05 +0000

Hipster Animals by Matt Saunders. Very funny!

Via Handsome Frank

This weeks lecture at NUCA was from Zoe, co-founder and 1/4 of...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:08:00 +0000

This weeks lecture at NUCA was from Zoe, co-founder and 1/4 of Studio8. Who are best known for their magazine design work, I had much admired their Wired magazine typeface when I first saw it last year, so it was great to get more info about the studio and their work.

As well as working on magazines such as Wired, Elephant and Plastique they have also designed books such as the Brian Cox Wonders series, and have a few identities in their portfolio. I really like their style, very nice type! Which they are especially known for. Very impressive the amount of work they do despite only being a studio of 4.

Definitely check out all the work on their website, a must see for anyone interested in editorial and magazine design! http://www.studio8design.co.uk/home/