And Snow Covered The Land…

Such a wonderful thing to draw aimlessly on a torn paper, randomly picked among the piles of books and papers on your desk, never knowing what you’ll eventually get to — and not even suspecting that it’ll be related in any way to future events. If Mr. Glaser says ‘drawing is thinking‘, could it be that drawing is also a small peek into the future? I wonder…

(also on flickr)

Best wishes to all!

May we all have a wonderful year in 2010!

“Voyages Extraordinaires”—16th theme from Design Challenge

The 16th theme for the periodical Design Challenge was a series of covers for Jules Verne books. The mandatories demanded the design of three jackets, hinting the graphic style for the entire series (54 in total).

Here are my designs:

— click here to view the full size image

You can also check out Ciprian’s wonderful solution here.

Design Challenge is a group of creative people that test their wits and talents on periodically-given themes (usually on a two-weeks basis). The themes are given by rotation and are based on less comercial topics like book covers, movie posters, music covers and others (most of us work as brand designers so we try to challenge ourselves with something different from what we do every day).

Town Magazine:
B&W photo+typography=perfect marriage

Wonderful spreads from the Town Magazine (1952 -1968):

You can read more about it here.

(via Things To Look At)

Serifed wayfinding in Gatwick, London

This really drew my eye last night as I was checking out in Gatwick, London: serifed wayfinding.

How about that, these chaps don’t give a damn about legibility theories and it’s such a good thing they don’t, every sign looks so beautiful, friendly and comfortable to follow. Only ermergency signs are written in sans, mostly on green colour (did see one on yellow, but I think it was just a mistake), well differentiated from the others. Take a look:

Steal or copy—treading the fine line

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources”
—Albert Einstein

“Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.”
—Pablo Picasso

“Instinct [...] is memory in disguise—works quite well when trained, poorly otherwise.”
—Robert Bringhurst

Last night I couldn’t go to sleep before making this poster (larger here)—it stood as a sketch in my Moleskine for two days. It is one of my works for the 15th Design Challenge (the theme being a bike-day-or-ride poster with the title “I want to ride my bicycle”). The concept is great: a giant, red-striking, italic B (Futura UltraBold, of course) suggesting the word “bicycle”, helped by the small bike icon (InfoPict Two) and being part of an already very well known song line, “I want to ride my bicycle” from Queen. Add that big red letter over a black&white photo (bikes in their urban environment) and you have a clear winner. Looks great (I actually have people that can testify, so please excuse the self-praise :P)

However, this poster—most likely—wouldn’t have been born without seeing another poster three days ago, browsing Flickr. This one was made by Gabriel & Svoboda, exibited at the A:Event—larger here.

Now, the obvious troubling question is: how much is my poster mine?
Sure, they only have the big italic B in common, and the black&white poster is obviously not the first or the last one to make use of a huge, dominating letter as the main focus of its composition. Just as I’m not the first to use red Futura UltraBold over black&white photography—Barbara Kruger did this way back, and she’s in most design books so almost every designer has seen her work at some point, even if only by visiting Centre Pompidou.

Usually we don’t really remember our influences, mostly because we always filter everything we see and learn through our own personality, through our own creative talent. I didn’t think of Barbara Kruger at all when I designed the poster, I only remembered her while writing this analisys. God knows how many other influences I had. But I did know about the other poster, I specifically wrote down in my sketchbook to use the big italic B to illustrate my own ideas.

In the end, I guess it comes down to how much the work is your own, to how well you’ve managed to bring it close to your soul, to how much you believe in it. To how much you’ve “stolen” it or made it your own, as Picasso says. Do I like the poster? Of course, I’m proud of it. Is it mine? I think so. But being an intelligent person, I’m never completely sure of anything (“Only fools are 100% sure, son” “You sure, dad?” “Of course, son”).

This having been said, in commercial work there’s a pretty different story. The last thing you want is to find out that your design resembles another—your whole effort for differentiating your client can be ruined just because somebody somewhere had a similar idea. This is why market research is important, just as keeping yourself informed on other fellow designers’ work is (but this also influences your work—feel the irony?)

Come to think of it, there is this recent case that touches the same problem: Wolff Olins’ Docomo vs Pentagram’s MAD. Many hurried to cry “copy-cat”, but that’s just plain thought-less reaction. All designers, consultants and advertisers (the serious ones, that is) know how many elements are involved during a project. And we all know that you can’t reinvent the wheel. The basic shapes will remain the same, nobody can “own” them, just like T-Mobile can’t own magenta—that’s just against common sense.

(quotes reminded by Adi – RO link)

Type & patterns — beautiful work by Andrew Townsend

I wish I made these. They’re that beautiful. Andrew Townsend’s NTU Degree Shows 09 invitations and print materials look just wonderful. Mixing patterns with colour and a strong typeface surely hits the right spot. See for yourself (definitely browse his website for more treats):

(via Graphic-Exchange, thanks Cipri)

Big-Typography-River

This beautifully-set-typography poster knocked me out. If the film is half as good, it’s definitely worth watching (Big River Man on IMDB). Wonder who made it—movie posters are rarely this well-designed, they usually go for big, red Futura Ultra Bold or the ‘classic’ Trajan.

(via Graphic Exchange, thanks Cipri)

Wonderful typography from Mucca Design

Wonderful work and especially eye-drooling typography from Mucca Design (offices in NY and SF). I like how they manage to generate series of books, not just individual covers—talking about covers, you should definitely check the new covers on Design Challenge.

Chermayeff & Geismar logos animation

Just sit back and enjoy some of the most fameous and well-drawn logos in the history of graphic design:

(via very visual)