design:related - featured posts

New wings for Chrysler

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:43:05 GMT

The troubled automaker reinvents itself with a new logo.

Foundations of Faith Series

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:00:31 GMT

Designer: Ben Pieratt Other sites: The Book Cover Archive, the BCA Blog Images: A few of them are hand-illustrated, most are from iStock. Flower illustration, Handbook on Faith, Hope and Love by Anna Melcon Typefaces: Oh man. Lots. Sloop, Futura, Delicato, Historical FellType, Bello, Saloon, Foundry Gridnik, Agincourt.. and more, those are just the ones I can think of right now. It's a bit silly. Specials: These were printed basic matte stock, with a bit of custom embossing. But the embossing is poorly registered, so I don't like to mention it as a selling point (I didn't handle the production on these. Fortunately and unfortunately.) Publisher: Relevant Books Genre: Religion A while ago I thought it would be a good idea to interview Ben, the man who inspires all in the book world. As an avid reader of theology, I noted how fresh and innovative these designs were and wanted to hear the behind the lines. Thanks Ben! —Jason Gabbert I run the design shop General Projects. Since I am my only employee, you could say that I am a professional freelancer, but where's the fun in that. I work with a couple different developers so I wind up doing a good share of client management and self-intiated web product development (new stuff to be announced soon). Book cover design is one of those disciplines that I have a huge amount of respect for but don't consider myself to be terribly good at. I look forward to improving with age, as it is easily the most interesting of all the design subsets out there. Beyond the usual suspects (ffffound, etc), I spend a lot of time looking at older design books and works. I have a small number of logo and design collections from the 50s, 60s and 70s that I pour over on a regular basis. Design used to be less of a lifestyle and more of a profession, and I have a huge amount of respect for the craftsmen of yesteryear. The discipline of working diligently with your hands yields all sorts sensibilities and wonderful details that I'm missing in my own work, and I hope to reclaim that with the right kind of effort. When I left Fwis a year-or-so ago, we agreed that I would yield control of my old blog, Covers. As book cover appreciation is a hobby of mine which I have no intention of abandoning, The Book Cover Archive is my replacement for the fact. The main difference between the two is that I decided a while back that I felt uncomfortable making a habit of critiquing the work of my betters, so BCA is explicitly for the purpose of education and inspiration, which is why we put so much effort into cross-referencing our meta data. When I say "we" I'm referencing Eric Jacobsen, who coded the thing like a champ. These were done about a year after I'd gotten out of school. I was working on a full-time contract basis for Relevant Books at the time, which was cool of them considering how little experience I had. They still get the most attention as anything else I've done, book cover wise (which isn't saying much as I haven't worked on that many covers), which can be frustrating simply because I have a hard time looking past all the poor design choices I made at the time. So it goes. The Foundations of Faith series was an attempt by Relevant Books to resurrect historical theological texts and make them relevant to a new, younger audience. I think the target group was 22-35yr olds? Cameron Strang, who runs Relevant and acts as its overarching CD, was very cool about the whole process. Gave me a lot of leeway and trusted my instincts. Very few constraints and only mild push back. The only real point of disagreement was with Imitation of Christ, which he wound up handing to a different designer because my designs were too masculine and he had to get the other half of the population involved too. Hopefully, the meanings of the designs are fairly apparent upon first viewing. Only a few of them really try and delve into conceptual obscurity. The one I get asked about the most is A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (the one with the horse). The design for this one started with the fact that the author, John Wesley, was known for riding across the countryside on his horse, stopping and preaching as needed. As I played with the imagery and the content of the book, the horse took on a life of its own and became symbolic of a Christian's struggle with his faith. Ultimately the design wound up being an exploration of man's rebellion in the presence of the Holy Spirit, represented by the band of light which envelopes it. Previous / Next image (1 of 5)Developmental Sketches It's worth noting that I ripped off MM/Paris for the band of color (see below). Once I saw the imperfect geometry and use of color in their poster, I knew it was the right direction for the symbolism I was going for. Unsure how I feel about having referenced their work so directly. I suppose it's legitimate but I still feel a bit bad about it, especially considering that I apparently copied Edward Bettison's design for Orthodoxy, though I have to say that I have no direct memory of this so it must have been working on a level of subconscious inspiration. MM/Paris poster Bettison's design for The Country of the Blind Add Comment 11.03.09 // Nate said:These are just fantastic. The inventiveness with which the subject matter was approached is both novel and necessary, I think; these great theological thinkers deserve to appear relevant.

Design Newspaper from Jed Heuer

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:24:15 GMT

Jed Heuer shows one year of his work in our studio.

Books: Every Thing Design

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:00:34 GMT

This unusual "book as object" designed by Dutch book designer Irma Boom is a hefty brick of a book, which features 700 prints, posters and other objects from the collection of Zurich's Gestaltung Museum. Founded in 1875, the museum is renowned worldwide for its unsurpassed holdings of design masterpieces including, ...

Jean Tschumi, Bernard Tschumi & DOCOMOMO

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:06 GMT

On Wednesday evening I attended a party at Vitra celebrating the publication of a long overdue monograph on architect Jean Tschumi, written by Jacques Gubler and published by Skira. Jean Tschumi: Architecture at Full Scale documents the brief career of the Swiss architect who eschewed his Beaux Arts training in favor of "the polemical field of modernity and its technological expression." In the US, the name Tschumi is more well known prefaced by Bernard, rather than Jean, who died in 1962 at the age of 57, when his son was only 18 years old. His early death may have cut his architectural career short, but the quality of the architecture that he produced is evidenced in the pages of this monograph and in the Archizoom exhibition last year, curated also by Gubler.

I'm especially taken by the image on the party invitation of the Aula de Cèdres, a conference center and auditorium at HEP Lausanne:

On Wednesday Gubler spoke of Tschumi's architecture relative to color (embraced by the architect, but rarely captured in documentation of buildings) and scale, referring to the book's subtitle and the architect's consideration of design from furniture to the city. The book offers an in-depth exploration of Tschumi's career, which includes a number of office headquarters, for Nestlé, La Mutuelle Vaudoise, and the World Health Organization. (This blog post at New Switzerland gives a decent overview of the qualities of Jean's architecture.)

One is tempted to break down how the father's architecture influenced Bernard Tschumi's, though if an influence on the latter is evident, it is in the year's since his father's passing. Some brief words on Wednesday by the architect of the new Acropolis Museum pointed to little discussion between the two regarding architecture. In fact Bernard admits that he didn't decide to pursue architecture until a trip to Chicago, only a few weeks before his father died. But with time to study his father's buildings, and a role in Architecture at Full Scale, it would be difficult not to find Jean's influence on his son.

[new Acropolis Museum | image source]

Looking at the two buildings shown above, I would say the influence of Jean on Bernard happens primarily with thinking about site. The above clearly illustrates how the new Acropolis Museum's top relates to the distant Parthenon, while the lower floor contends with the ruins preserved below. In between, the museum is all about movement and the clarity of the exhibition, but it can be seen as the byproduct of contending with the site below and distant. The elder Tschumi's HEP building skillfully addresses the site's topography (as can be seen here) and adjacent buildings, standing out formally but fitting into the multi-faceted landscape.

In the Wednesday-night party's introduction by Nina Rappaport, Chair of DOCOMOMO-New York/Tristate, the preservation of Jean Tschumi's architecture in Switzerland was commended, an unspoken difference between an appreciation of Modernism's gems and the demolition of the same in part or in full an ocean away. The US chapter of DOCOMOMO (international working party for DOcumentation and COnservation of building sites and neighborhoods of the MOdern MOvement) includes ten regional chapters (all tolled the international DOCOMOMO is 53 chapters strong), but fights for preservation seem to be lost more often than won.

While this fact points to a limited appreciation in this country for architecture produced in the middle of last century, I can't help but wonder if this situation is more about ideology than taste. Modernism was predicated on progress and responses to the changes sweeping across the developed world from industrialization and world wars, so the preservation of the movement's buildings seems anithetical to their origin. That people equate modern architecture with the tabula rasa clearing of neighborhoods, towards the erection of towers in the park in that time does not help matters.

A couple issues further complicate matters: how many modern buildings were not built with the longevity of buildings centuries before; the open plans and platonic forms of modernism did not turn out to be as flexible as envisioned. These point to the necessity of preservation less than 75 years after many buildings of the era were completed and the creativity needed by architects to propose and carry out the adaptive reuse of modernist structures. I think the latter is key in efforts to preserve modern architecture, especially when faced with opponents arguing that demolition and new construction is cheaper and therefore better. The fact that many modern buildings are ingrained and important elements in their neighborhoods (ironically, like the older buildings many modern structures replaced) is perhaps the strongest argument for DOCOMOMO's continued relevance today.