Graphics
How does a graphic designer’s garden grow? With CMYK coloured flowers of course. When Peter Saville was asked to re-design St Luke’s Gardens in Clerkenwell he paid homage to the area’s history as London’s printing district. Even the typeface planned for the installation was designed by a local in the 18th century while the beds are laid out in the form of a printer’s registration mark.
Saville’s garden will be blooming in the spring, two other gardens by artists Georgie Hopton and Gary Hume will flower in 2007. The project was conceived and commissioned by the ever cool Scarlet Projects in partnership with EC1 New Deal for Communities and Islington Greenspace. Drawing by Frances Christie.
David Rainbird
Posted on Monday, 13th of February 2006 Permalink
Daniel Eatock, the designer of the Big Brother eye (we’ll keep referring to it until he stops re-designing it) never ceases to amaze me. His work is smart, he has superhuman pattern recognition (see the pictures on his site) and now I see he is a natural balancer. His movie of him leaning back on a Robin Day chair is oddly engaging.Link
David Rainbird
Posted on Thursday, 9th of February 2006 Permalink
Any re-interpretation of the London Underground map is usually “an event” for graphic designers but Dorian Lynskey’s History of 20th century music in The Guardian today is disappointing. Attempting to chart the branches and connections of 100 years of music onto the London Underground map was always going to fail but he’s had a go anyway. However much he admits it’s shortcomings, it’s redundant as a piece of information design - the information isn’t acurate or comprehensive enough to really learn anything from it. Here’s some other attempts both serious and silly.
David Rainbird
Posted on Friday, 3rd of February 2006 Permalink
OK I admit it - I will spend hours of trying to pick colour combinations and get nowhere - I literally become blinded by the choice. Now I need only choose one colour and ColorBlender, created by Kim Jenson, will do the rest. It all started in 2001 when Jenson designed ColorBlender as an entry into the annual 5k website competition which challenges programmers to design and produce a website that is less than 5120 bytes (that’s tiny). Kim won and has now released the souped up version with many extra features. Now if I could just pick the first colour…
David Rainbird
Posted on Thursday, 2nd of February 2006 Permalink
Whilst browsing through a dusty old book shop in Prague (hidden well off the beaten tourist track) in December ‘04, I discovered a see-through plastic wallet containing this collection of 16 matchbox covers from the 1960s. Needless to say a collection that proved to be too tempting for this graphic designer to pass up. However the Kukurice corn-on-the-cob pig does confuse me somewhat. Anyone know any Czech? Link
Nathan Usmar Lauder
Posted on Thursday, 26th of January 2006 Permalink
These striking (no pun intended) matchbox labels depict, what I believe to be, the graphic design language for the Czechoslovakian bid for the 1972 Olympic Games. Simple two or three colour Matisse-esque cut-out shapes create graphic depictions of 21 Olympic sports. I remember being made to shimmy up ropes at junior school when I was a kid but I was unaware that it was an Olympic sport in 1967. Link
Nathan Usmar Lauder
Posted on Tuesday, 24th of January 2006 Permalink
Colour Lovers is a place to view, rate and review colours and colour palettes. It’s quite a good place to stop off for some inspiration, if not for the lovely colours then for the interesting names and contexts the colours are given.
Gary Butcher
Posted on Monday, 16th of January 2006 Permalink
The CAMPER store on Westbourne Grove, London is undergoing some long term restorations. A temporary store has been set up whilst they wait for the larger space to be developed. A simple and extremely effected use of shoe boxes combined with doodled graffiti wall decoration creates a superb, original, useful and recyclable retail environment.
Dave Brown
Posted on Thursday, 12th of January 2006 Permalink
Chad Doane has designed some neat paper in response to a product design meeting where he noticed half the people using graph paper and the other half using legal pads. He’s mixed the two and the result is rather nice. It’s not yet available to order but you can download it for free. Link
Gary Butcher
Posted on Friday, 6th of January 2006 Permalink
