Posts in Print

I spent a good chunk of my youth destroying my knees in the name of skateboarding; first during the 80’s as a kid and later in college. The contrast between these two distinct stylistic periods was stark to say the least. Decks went from the curvy whale-tail style with garish neon graphics to the simplified, unidirectional kind you see more often today. The graphics changed a lot with the shape, but each era had a huge influence on my visual tastes. The stickers, the shirts, the decks; I was obsessed with the imagery. I guess it was one of the few instances where a suburban kid could be exposed to non-traditional art and design created by outsiders.

While digging around for some interesting graphics I came across this article at Unodos covering a few books that feature some classic skateboarding designs. There are some old favorites in there (the Powell branding is still about as good as it gets), but I missed Hook-Ups (which you’ll catch a brief glimpse of on the Skateboard Stickers cover) and Alien Workshop (two of my 90’s era favorites). Most of the images are from The Disposable Skateboard Bible which definitely looks worth picking up. The publishers have an online gallery featuring decks from various designers and artists featured in the book.

I also came across this Buddy Carr Pintail designed by Antonio Carusone (thanks for the heads up Derek. A great example of a contemporary design.

Robert Murdock is CCO at Method here in San Francisco. His design moniker is Post-Mammal, which in his words is “based on the notion that humans are always evolving, and are always looking for what’s next — essentially what’s beyond human.”

Robert’s work is incredible. I could easily post every image from each of his projects but I wanted to show the variety of the work he does so you could get a sense of how multifaceted he is. One of those choice designers who combines rock-solid formal design chops with an extremely creative and exciting visual style. Never boring.

via Grain Edit

Barcelona based Folch Studio kicks off the second half of this week with some wonderfully restrained graphics. They also provide a few studio shots — something I wish every studio was required to do (to satisfy my own curiosity). I’m painting my ceiling charcoal as soon as I find my paintbrush.

Make sure to check out these guy’s rather massive portfolio.

Bernard Barry is one of the principal visual designers at Facebook. A pretty sweet job I’d say. Imagine having a guarantee that your work would always reach millions of people. Barry handles the pressure nicely; his work is exceptional. If you just briefly glance at his site, you might not notice the absurd amount of detail that goes into each of his projects. The scale of each is often staggering. Barry also has cataloged his entire collection of books and movies. Absolutely worth checking out if you’re on the search for some new books.

Before Facebook, Barry worked at the Decoder Ring and I am imensly curious is he had a hand in creating my favorite logo of all time.

via dinner, earlier tonight

Brock Davis has a very fun Make Something Cool Everyday collection up on his site. The stylistic variety of the work, in addition to the ever present and nuanced humor, makes for a very interesting collection. Very impressive.

A lot of designers undertake such a project, and I’m always fascinated to observe how their creativity evolves over the course of the project. I’m especially intrigued by the work in the beginning (that probably was the catalyst for the endeavor ), and the work at the end (when they’ve theoretically dialed in their process).

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fypi6dAJB8E

I always see those huge drums of ink sitting around when I’m on press for a print job but it rarely occurs to me to ponder where it comes from. Well thanks to The Printing Ink Company, now we know. It’s amazing the time and the attention to detail they put into each step. Beautifully shot; the whole thing really makes me appreciate printed materials all the more.

Written and produced by Ian Daffern | Directed and Edited by Tate Young

Video Source

A Collection A Day is a blog by Lisa Congdon chronicling her daily obsession with assorted ephemera. I’ve always held onto little scraps and tokens like these, but none are as good as the stuff Congdon has on display. I often find this kind of stuff even more inspirational than straight-forward design, particularly the airline tags.

Source A Collection A Day via Grain Edit

Shailesh has some excellent examples of various matchboxes up on his flickr. I forgot where I found this link but I’m going to take a wild guess and say it’s from Dave over at Grain Edit, who has a very impressive matchbox collection of his own.

Source

Pascal Tremblay aka Makeshift is a graphic designer based in Montreal. I am usually not a fan of anything resembling postmodernism, but Pascal’s eye for color and composition make him an excpetion for me. I am not sure how Pascal renders his images, but they sure look hand done, at least for some of the watercolor-like textures.

I also noticed you can most of his work here, sometimes at really massive sizes (yet still affordable).

I believe this is a catalog for Aries Kits, a company which manufactured modular synthesizer kits during the late 70’s in Massachusetts. I love how the limitations imposed by 1970’s printing technology actually fostered good design in a lot of cases. I wonder if the designer put much thought into the layout of top portion; it looks very purpose-driven. That “Explore Sound” wire-frame logo was probably super high tech at the time.

I forgot where I found that image, any ideas? (Tineye was down at the time of this posting)