Until now I had never heard of Wilt Chamberlain the NBA basketball player or this enormous house. After reading a few articles about the house, the most interesting thing aside from the architecture and interior was that it has a groovy feel to it.

“Built in 1971, the five-bedroom, 7,158-square-foot contemporary-style house at 15216 Antelo Place in Bel-Air was built by Chamberlain, who lived there until his death in 1999. TV writers George Meyer and Maria Semple purchased the house from Chamberlain’s estate in 2002 for nearly $3 million, and have owned it ever since. The house has attracted much attention over the years–both with this listing and in 2000-2002, when Chamberlain’s estate was trying to unload it, first for $7.45 million and later reducing its asking price to $4.38 million. The house’s unconventional features include a gold-lined hot tub, a retractable mirrored ceiling above the master bed, a swimming pool that flows into the living room, walls of glass, 40-foot ceilings, a wrap-around pool, and a balcony suspended over the living room. Other features include five and a half baths and teak finishes.

The house sits on a 2.58-acre parcel that has ocean and city views.”

Source Mid Century Architecture

Sometimes I find it increasingly difficult to get away from working on stuff and take a break. This past weekend I managed to get away and go north from Seattle, out onto the Olympic Peninsula–all around fun trip. Excited to get out and start shooting more photos.

The 1967 world fair in Montreal, Canada was held together by one unifying object–the Expo 67 logo. Quite possibly it is one of the most cleanly executed and memorable World Fair logo’s to date. The combination of the timeless icon combined with beautifully kerned type (set in the Optima Roman typeface), really unified the core ideas behind Expo 67.

The theme of this World Fair was ‘Man and his World’. Every pavilion in one way or another, represents this theme of man to the world around him. The designer responsible for this logo was Julien Hébert, a Canadian industrial designer. At the soul of this logo is Hébert’s conceptual use of an ancient sign representing man–vertical line with arms outstretched to either side–close in proximity to represent friendship. The symbol representing man is repeated in a circle, extending the conceptual representation of unity of mankind around the world.

The following logo’s are a few from past World Fair’s with the exception of the Shanghai 2010 logo. You can see that the Expo 67 logo stands out a whole lot more than the others. Aside from incorporating the Chinese symbol for world into it, the Shanghai 2010 logo is in my opinion quite weak. What do you think?

Habitat 158 Housing

When looking at the pavilions it is clearly visible of how each intertwines the theme ‘Man and his World’. The perfect example is the Habitat 158 living units. If you’re interested in seeing floor plans or a whole series of images, look here. Each is built in such close quarters; it’s all about being a village. I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t take living in such a small place.

Polymer Pavilion

Air Canada Pavilion

La Ronde Pavilion

United States Pavilion

Expo 67 cheerleaders purely for your enjoyment.

Note: If by change any French-speakers are tuning in, would you mind translating this Julien Hébert interview word for word for us?

It’s a wonderful feeling to look back at older art & design. This particular group of images, taken from a pool on Flickr called Mid-Century Modern Art & Design, are just a few of many that I really enjoyed.

Don’t let the great image of the Sands Motel fool you. Maybe at one point in its life it was an oasis but now, its far from it. I included this image because of my personal recollection of the motel and also because I wasn’t aware that the Sands Motels existed anywhere but in downtown Boise, Idaho. In the image above it looks gorgeous and like it was the hot spot. That certainly wasn’t the case in Boise back in 2002.

The Sands Motel as I know it, was a trashy, run-down motel where drug deals and prostitutes went down. The sheets of the beds had burn holes, the knob of the sink came off to the touch and fell down the sink (whoops), and lastly the TV. My brother and I were little and of course wanted to watch some TV (more than likely to get our minds off the fact that this motel was sketchy) so our dad hardwired the TV back into working order because someone had cut the wires off the back of it for some unknown reason. On top of that I believe that when our dad went into the lobby to get a room, the guy was sleeping in his chair with his arms falling back to each side and his head tilted over the back of the chair, looking like he was dead. If this wasn’t an indication that we shouldn’t stay here, then I don’t know what was.

Alex Varanese is a stunning graphic designer based out of San Francisco. His work has a very unique and retro feel to it, using experimental type to really make each piece sing. Initially the detail is what I was drawn to, but after reading about Alex on various sites, I realized that the majority of his work is true 3D Illustrations. It’s extremely hard to tell because each piece has been completed so extensively. I could only imagine that each one of these pieces was substantially time consuming.

I would love to take the time to learn how to work with a real 3D program such as Maya or 3ds Max. It seems like there is so much that could be done design-wise. If you have any other great 3d design links, feel free to share them.

Hit the jump to see larger images.

These images are of a 1960’s magazine called Venture. It’s a shame there really isn’t that much information about the magazine.

Via the Retro America Flickr pool

This project, brand and identity development, was for long time friend and photographer Ian Matteson. Ian is an action and commercial based photographer out of Salt Lake City, Utah. Along with Ian’s action and commercial work, he shoots a lot of film/fine art photographs. As the project progressed, I realized just how great it would be to incorporate these other areas into core components of his brand. We both have put in endless hours working on this project and really are excited to have this portion of it completed.

Objectives & Goals

Our first main objective was to develop an identity for Ian that really complimented his style of photography also keeping his long and short-term goals in mind, while at the same time, enabling him to stand out among others in the photography industry. After talking about these goals we came to recognize that simplicity was key in this case. We needed people to remember his name through his work and needed to be unique in the way that we were doing it. A brand that was cohesive would in itself set Ian apart from his competition.

Logo Development

Round one sketches

Before diving into headfirst into the design, Ian and I sat down (mostly via iChat) and researched current and past photographer logo trends. Based upon our research, we saw a pattern. It showed that generally the more successful photographers opt to utilize their name as their logo. In some cases, Ian’s competition also did this, but completely lacked the visual stability throughout their brand and the uniqueness of the logotype.

The few sketches above show alleys that were explored. Although my initial icon sketches didn’t make the cut, they still provided a point in which I could look at how an icon could assist or take away from the main logo. This was the point where we really questioned tradition and steered away from using an icon. There would be no case where Ian would need to use one and going back to our original goal: We want people to remember his name–not an icon.

Round two sketches

Once the direction was established for the logo, I began to use tracing paper over my round two sketches. Have you ever used tracing paper for logos? I find it to be a huge time saver when repeating sketches over and over. After hashing out several versions of the original sketch, I visited the personality of each letterform. The biggest issue I saw with using just logotype as the main logo was that we really needed it to sing. Ian is such a character that we really needed it to do him justice. The beautiful hand drawn type and driving idea of simplicity fit perfectly into the recipe that both Ian and I were envisioning.

Color

Selecting color was a no brainer for this project. The use of a highlight color deemed inappropriate for this logo considering there was no icon to utilize a seconary color. Also, to add a secondary color to the logo would ultimately take away from our main goal and lastly, it would cause problems when using the logo as a watermark directly over color images. The solution for the color scheme was to bring in Ian’s film and fine art look to enhance the brand. We focused on what imagery would be where and on what application (print or web). In the case of printed materials, the type and logo will be black on white with the exception of the business card (black on black).

The website however, will use white text on dark imagery. This is where we really bring in Ian’s work. All of the images that require a substantial amount of text overlaying them, are greyscale like in the above diagram. The other imagery are portfolio works that have no overlaying text. To create the base colors I blurred out images until they only viewable as splotches of color. Another way to do this is to select your image and use the mosaic filter in Photoshop. I hadn’t used this method prior to this project, but it really helped narrow down the amount of greys, whites and blacks.

Typography

Typefaces used in both print & web applications

The typefaces used throughout the collateral pieces absolutely enhanced this project. Interstate was used in the printed material as it bonded beautifully with the final logo; the angular design of each letterform also complimented Ian’s action photography. For online collateral, we utilized Klavika. Once again the type reflected the work by both the angular and rounded letterforms.

Business Papers

Even though there is becoming less and less of a need for a printed business cabinet, we still felt like it was absolutely necessary. Ian still needs to present himself to clients whom aren’t fully immersed in the digital age. In addition to the traditional business papers, I designed templates of Ian’s business papers as an extension of the identity: Invoice, Contract, Model and Property Releases.

Conclusion

This project has been awesome to work on and the end result is something we’re proud of and thrilled to have it out on the table for viewing. The whole visual aesthetic and logo fit exactly to who Ian is as a photographer. Not to mention Ian is in love with his new look. I hope you enjoyed this post and feel free to chime in if you have something to say.

When large typography and monochrome color combine, I fall in love. This is without a doubt, one of my favorite package designs this year. The product, Ms men by Mesoesthetic, was designed by Espluga + Associados a Barcelona based design group. If anyone from Mesoesthetic just happens to be tuning in I would love to get my hands on some of this product.

If you need on the fly icons to serve in your wire-frames or maybe even icons for your design then Helveticons are your savior. These are are beautifully designed icons based on the Helvetica Bold typeface. This set includes 245 icons in a slew of different formats to suit your need. I’d definitely recommend using the preview icons on the website as inspiration to create your own or purchasing if you can stomach the $279 price tag.

As a side note I just have to say that the Helveticon’s website is nicely laid out. The typography and ‘Preview’ section is what pulls me in. As you click to preview the icons, the page slides up as a reveal for more content. The motion is very pleasant and leaves your mouse with an ‘x’ to click, close and show the main page. I haven’t seen a site done this well in a longtime. Not to mention one with such a beautiful grid.

Read Kyle Meyer’s thoughts on the website’s design.

Nearly every week for the last year and a half I’ve been viewing websites on The FWA for inspiration and then saving to my bookmarks. In these screen shots I’m loving the navigation systems combined with fullscreen imagery or video. In one of my current projects (to be launched very soon), I’m working with navigational elements in a similar way to make the most sense of the interaction.

You can check out the sites below–all are beautifully designed sites in flash:

• http://www.resn.co.nz/
• http://www.fl-2.com/
• http://www.themetaproject.com/
• http://www.martinanderle.de/
• http://www.sorenrose.com/ Note: Not awarded an FWA, but shown for relevance