things to look at

Issue 3

noreply@blogger.com (Kuchar Swara) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 11:10:00 +0000

Port, Issue 3, Autumn 2011 from PORT on Vimeo.

P/M Magazine

noreply@blogger.com (jaypeg) — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 06:57:00 +0000

A Design Student's Guide to The New York World's Fair
1939
Paul Rand

We here at things to look at are always in favour of bold, pure geometry and this just caught our eye.

Logo for RCS

noreply@blogger.com (Kuchar Swara) — Thu, 26 May 2011 17:39:00 +0000

Latest studio output from DKW&R.

Festival Times

noreply@blogger.com (jaypeg) — Tue, 10 May 2011 06:07:00 +0000

The Festival Times
4 Issues from 1981
Edinburgh University Student Publishing Company
Designers: Simon Esterson & Nigel Billen
Editor: Tim Willis

Anyone who attended Simon Esterson's Typographic Circle talk last month might remember seeing this early piece of work. There is something very exciting about the angled headers and images.

Dennis Bailey

noreply@blogger.com (jaypeg) — Fri, 06 May 2011 11:06:00 +0000

Dennis Bailey designed this contents page in 1963 for Olympia magazine

Varoom 15

noreply@blogger.com (jaypeg) — Tue, 03 May 2011 14:24:00 +0000

The lastest issue of Varoom Magazine is out which is full of things we liked the look of.

Airside's illustrations for How To Make a How To Film. The animated versions are well worth checking out on the website.

Penguin's new editions of Nabakov featuring illustrators such as Luke Best, commissioned by Pentagram. It's a great contemporary angle on the very successful Poetry series patterns of the past.

Above: Illustrations by Astrid Chesney and ]Agnès Decourchelle. See more of these on Pentagrams website

It's quite interesting to compare them with the John Gall Nabakov covers, all of which you can see on Design Observer.

And of course, Marian Bantjes' map of an Isle of Knowledge charting all the ups and downs of the illustrator's world is beautifully rendered. The delta of common sense is not somewhere I hang out a lot and the swamp of failure seems to be ominously large.

There are more details on Marian Bantjes' website. They're well worth some scrutiny.

Wim Crouwel

noreply@blogger.com (jaypeg) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 21:43:00 +0000

Wim Crouwel; design hero. Even if you think you've seen it all before, the Design Museum have really come up trumps with their exhibition: Wim Crouwel: A Graphic Odyssey on from 30 March – 03 July. You can't help but be impressed by a huge wall of the posters we've all seen. It's an epic collection beautifully laid out. We here at Things to Look at particularly appreciated this poster.

Stilla: The Greatest Numerals

noreply@blogger.com (jaypeg) — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 14:54:00 +0000

According to Herb Lubalin in the 1975 Second edition of U&lc (Upper and Lowercase magazine), which can now be downloaded as great hi res PDFs from the fonts.com blog. They're up to six issues in what must be a time-consuming endeavor. It's such a great idea and I hope they continue to upload what was a great example of Herb Lubalin's love of typography and contains many gems that don't feature in the book.

The numerals are shown in Stilla, designed by French type designer, François Boltana in 1973. A perfect example of the 'Fat Face' type style. The commercial face differs slightly from the above version which surely must have been hand drawn by Lubalin.

PORT : Could this be the modern man?

noreply@blogger.com (jaypeg) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 16:20:00 +0000

What do all those men not buying existing magazines want in a magazine that isn't offered in one publication? PORT could just have the answer. Behold the 'modern man' in bold spreads, with pensive words and amazing photographs. Check out the video on the website to see the all-star content.

Flipboard on the iPad

noreply@blogger.com (jaypeg) — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 20:37:00 +0000

In order to acknowledge modern technology, Things to look at have set up a sparse Twitter account in order that people can import the feed into their Flipboard on the iPad should they so wish. Here's what it looks like.

Helmut Krone

noreply@blogger.com (jaypeg) — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 10:40:00 +0000

Designer: Helmut Krone
Photographer: Bert Stern
Process: Letterpress
Typeface: Century
Compositor: Typographic Craftsman, Inc.
Engraver: Walker Engraving Corp.
Client: Polaroid Corp.

Agency: Doyle Dane Bernbach, Inc.
Art director: Helmut Krone
Copywriter: Robert Levenson
Photographer: Bill King
Client: Ohrbach's

The great Doyle Dane Bernbach art director Helmut Krone, (July 16, 1925 – April 12, 1996), mostly known for the 1960s Volkswagen Beetle work. Here are a few things that caught our eye. There is a book about his work, examples of his work on the AIGA website and information about his life and work on Design Observer.

From The Archive

noreply@blogger.com (jaypeg) — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 11:28:00 +0000

A random book cover we like the look of due to the very ornate typeface used to represent conflict

Fictional Book Covers

noreply@blogger.com (jaypeg) — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 10:54:00 +0000

There was a trend last year in creating fictional retro book covers for films and video games. It's a very satisfying project. We hate to leave people uncredited which is why this post never made it up on the blog. If anyone knows who did the bottom three covers then please let us know as we think they are great and would love to link to that person's site.

The above are from Spacesick

Colour Theory

noreply@blogger.com (jaypeg) — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 10:36:00 +0000

There is so much to say about colour theory, that we just won't say it. If you throw all that aside and boil it down to its simplest level, then we can all agree that their is something very fulfilling in explaining a complex idea through the placement of a few humble shapes.

Wrapping up 2010

noreply@blogger.com (jaypeg) — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 09:12:00 +0000

A few random things from the archive that we like to look at

Contemporary British Printmakers

noreply@blogger.com (jaypeg) — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:28:00 +0000

A great book cover using simple geometric shapes

Filmkonst

noreply@blogger.com (jaypeg) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:18:00 +0000

Cover of Swedish Magazine: Filmkonst March 1998

Faber & Faber

noreply@blogger.com (jaypeg) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 21:30:00 +0000

Book: Faber and Faber: Eighty Years of Book Cover Design
Author: Joseph Connolly
Publisher: Faber and Faber
Year: 2009

Back to the all type cover. Sometimes simplicity is missing these days. Although the above examples might not be your classic Faber & Faber book cover, they are a surprising delight. The book has a huge variety of cover designs in it from which we showcased a selection of all type covers that just caught our eye here at Things to Look At.

Andrzej Klimowski

noreply@blogger.com (Kuchar Swara) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 15:31:00 +0000

Stumbled across these gorgeous covers by Andrzej Klimowski for the republished works of P.G. Wodehouse.
A great marriage of typographic style and illustration.

Publisher: Everyman's Library

Molteni & C

noreply@blogger.com (Kuchar Swara) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 15:54:00 +0000

Latest Swara & Co. studio output.

Concept: Octopus Design Media
Photography: Henry Bourne
Styling: Faye Toogood
Illustration: Emily Robertson

The New Yorker

noreply@blogger.com (Kuchar Swara) — Sat, 29 May 2010 09:12:00 +0000

We've just realised that we've never put up a blog post on The New Yorker!
Never talked about how enjoyable it is to read 5 straight pages of solid 3 column type, its fantastic cartoon's, the pleasure of walking around with it.
Hopefully you're all aware of it. Just for indulgence though, here are some covers from their fantastic archive going all the way back to 1925.

Giles Balne

noreply@blogger.com (jaypeg) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:38:00 +0000

Giles Balne, Printer, 1777, was in a great position. He printed lottery tickets, then won the jackpot, then bought the Vauxhall Gardens, then spent the rest of his days printing amazing posters for them. This poster is 780 x 532mm and is one of seven kept at the Bodleian Library in the John Johnson collection in Oxford. Well worth a visit to see the real thing.

ipad EDO lecture

noreply@blogger.com (jaypeg) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:34:00 +0000

Next Wednesday (March 3rd) heralds the first EDO lecture of the year titled: What’s on your iPad? Rather than continue the talk about technology and the intricacies of how your amazing new futureproof app works, it seems it's more about content (The King) and how it works with the print dinosaur weeping in the background behind it. Are Newspapers the littlest hobo moving on from their print past towards a bright shiny new digital future, where everyones' laps, ears and hands are warmed by their plethora of devices? or do they see some kind of rose-tinted synergy between the two? Or will they enthuse us with phrases such as a 'paradigm shift in interactivity' as we heard someone utter with a straight face the other day.

Here at Things to look at, we feel all these lofty words should be set into a Star Wars introesque paragraph of glowing blue text which slowly disappears into the grand star-studded chasm of the swirly black universe of possibilities, but this is probably because we know nothing about our intergalactic future and feel we couldn't possibly read more than 120 characters on a computer screen before we forgot how to read and our eyeballs fell out. So we thought we might as well go along and see what the future looks like before we rush out and buy the iPad that we know we will probably rush out and buy no matter what anyone says or produces for it.

We will report back in some highly interactive manner forthwith. But if you feel the need to join us then a few tickets are still available and representatives from The Times, Wired and Cosmopolitan could all be made to sweat under your penetrative questions. You can now book online.

In the meantime we thought you might like this great little site on console graphics.

American Wood Type

noreply@blogger.com (jaypeg) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:48:00 +0000

A great typographic book cover to start the new year and a great book if you are interested in the history of wood type.

American Wood Type: 1828-1900 was written by Rob Roy Kelly and published in 1969 by Van Nostrand, Reinhold Company.

I.D. Magazine

noreply@blogger.com (Kuchar Swara) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:53:00 +0000

Editor in Chief: Jesse Ashlock
Art Director: Jeffery Docherty

I.D. is an American based design magazine. Its features cover profiles of designers, design entrepreneurs, latest gadgets, inventions architecture etc. Its been around for a good while, but its latest rendition hasn't failed to impress us time and time again.

Firstly what a gorgeous font. A stencil serif font thats not obtrusive or loud and so contemporary.
The design and layout is really understated, never at risk of being bland because of all the expertly crafted bits of detailing. The captions, arrows, rules (usually the least interesting in other magazines) have been treated with a great deal of care here. Nothing has been overlooked.

Editorially its also really enjoyable - writing about design with a real sense of industry and scale but always with a youthful vigor.
Photographically, its all very clean and consistent..... always spontaneous and light. My favorites are the still life shots, lit beautifully and shot on colored backgrounds - what could be more simple...

These images are of a special Design+Business June 2009 issue where they used one of our favorite magazine tricks - the old paper stock change... never fails to impress when used properly, this case is no exception.