iancul

Always inspiring. Still hard to understand. But, God’s permit, we’ll have a lifetime ahead of re-reading and re-watching until we’ll come to understand Mr. Rand. Dying trying is not that bad either. After all, there’s more than just one way to reach Rome, right?

Description from YouTube: A short film by Preston McLanahan interviewing Paul Rand, the great American Modernist designer. Filmed in 1996, shortly before his death he talks about his process, art, aesthetics, and design in general. A very inspirational video and soon to be released on DVD.

(via Swiss Legacy)

This is too good to miss: Blanka has organized their flickr, making sets with posters by Muller-Brockmann, Wim Crouwell, Otl Aicher and some other great designers. A definite must-see.

Some apetizers:

• posters by Josef Müller–Brockmann
(the Opernhaus Zürich template is amazing in its simplicity and impact)

• poster by Otl Aicher (for Munich 1972 Olympic games)

• poster by Wim Crouwel

• poster by Experimental Jetset

(via AisleOne)

Great posters for Ratatouille by Eric Tan. Reminding of Paul Rand or Cassandre’s Dubonnet posters. Btw, Cassandre was the one that made the Yves Saint Laurent logo. You can view some of his work here.

and here’s one concept drawing from the The Art of Ratatouille book:

Fun to see the great jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt’s caricature in Les Triplettes de Belleville (one of the best animation films ever made - not kidding). If you’re wondering about his left hand fingers, Django lost two of them in a fire at the age of 18, yet he managed to relearn and master the quitar, becoming a jazz guitar legend, in spite of his handicap.

If you ever find yourself working late at night and want to be energized, hoping to work for hours without feeling the time flying by, do listen to Django. Highly recommended for sunny afternoons as well ;)

(via)

Great teachings by Lao Zi that can reffer to whitespace (or negative space) in design and typography (great to put on the wall as well):

Thirty spokes unite at the single hub;
It is the empty space which makes the wheel useful.
Mold clay to form a bowl;
It is the empty space which makes the bowl useful.
Cut out windows and doors;
It is the empty space which makes the room useful.

(via ilovetypography)

Liam Walsh took the time to reproduce Brockmann’s Zurich Tonhalle Poster in scripting and tune it to Beethoven’s ouverture op.61 (go to Liam’s website to enjoy the piece).

(via September Industry)

Great typographic take on Milton Glaser’s Bob Dylan poster (you can view the large image here):

(via Kottke)

After The World Of Logotypes book, here’s another great resource, still from the 70’s.“Top Symbols And Trademarks Of The World” was published in 1973, written by Franco Maria Ricci & Corinna Ferrari. There were actually two volumes. The books themselves are very hard to find now, maybe if you’re lucky you’ll find them in some old bookshops (like AceJet was, with a similar book - preface by Paul Rand).

Fortunately, you can view all the pages on the TypoGabor website (along with other great examples of design). I’ve made pdfs to save you the clicking: download volume 1 and volume 2 :) (8 and 17 megs).

Here are some images to make you drool:

(thanks Alin for finding the TypoGabor website)

Nice tribute to Jozef Muller-Brockmann (feeble wiki, it’s weird that there are so few good articles about one of the greatest and most influential designers). Made by Gary Butcher (Creative Director for Motion Graphics at Apple, it seems).

(via brockmann)

In spite of the plethora of logo books nowadays, good ones are but a handful (there’s a paucity - smallness of number, quantity - of good design books, contrary to what Amazon would let you think). Al Cooper’s World of Logotypes is one of these, first published in 1976, then several years later, now unfortunately out of print (still available here and there, if you’re lucky). It seems that it had 2 or 3 volumes.

The logos are all in black and white, most of them have been replaced or redesigned since then, some just “passed away” together with the corresponding companies. Some of them are easily dated, but most are ageless, strong, showing that those years’ designers where thinking more about what a good logotype is. Not to mention that the majority are designed by grid, something less and less used now in the age of online photo and vector editing software. The book proves once more that good logos don’t need no “web 2.0″ effects. It seems that with the easiness of Photoshop and Illustrator comes great responsability (glows and shadows weren’t exactly easy to ink on the drawing board), or tempting the path to the web 2.0 flashy design it is, as wise Yoda would say :P

Eric Carl kindfully scanned the book (not sure which volume this is or even if it’s the whole book) and posted it on his Flickr. The guys at Logoblink helpfully made a pdf. You’ve got to download it (you can find other mirrors on Logoblink’s site).

Here are some images as appetizer: