More publications...

This was another calendar I found. I think the picture is bad, I wish there were some closeups, but the description seems interesting. It was made by a collaboration of designers who took much care with the typography, using Avante Garde. They said they used different hanging shadows for each character, giving it extra flair. It also works as a personal planner and comes with a pen.

This was CSPD's annual report. It really caught my eye because they didn't use softwear for the photos and typography. They simply used a camera and a dry erase marker on different surfaces. I thought it was an unconventional spin on a conventional report.

This is the Hudson Gavin Martin Identity book. Its basically an identity based on the idea of things come in threes. It's a great concept because it's a traditional phrase that people have heard growing up and the designers have remade it into an identity. I love the cover of the book, and the back cover photograph.

Winners of the 2009 ID design annual in packaging

I was sifting through ID's design annual and I chose to show some winners from the packaging part.

 

I really liked this one. It's the reinvention of the first aid kit. It has a great integrated handle and it looks clean and simple. If they had redone this product and moved away from the clean minimalistic design, I don't think it would be as successful.

This one was picked because of its  egg carton, eco friendly egg carton material, and homey colors scheme. I like the nest thing going on in the package and the fact that its not a gift box necessarily or a gift bag... its a gift egg carton, that even has some "nest" qualities about it.

 

The other winner was, ofcourse, .... Coke. I have to give them credit, even though they are a huge raging corporate monster; this new aluminum bottle is a great redesign of the their original glass bottle. Its modern yet traditional. 

Design Publications

So I was looking through some popular design publications to get an idea of what the competition looks like. I found four good ones including Print, ID, and How Magazines.

 

Print magazine seems like a good all around for graphic and fine arts. They do a lot of exposes on different media artists which I think is great because you can get an idea of what the professionals are doing out there in different media forms. 

  

I like ID mag because they have simple categories named like live, work, shine, play, trend, eat, wear, etc. They also have a great website where you can download their 2009 design annual. I think ID is a great reference and research magazine.

How Mag is kind of what the title implies, more of the how. How to get a job, how to go to an interview, how to forums which go through a multitude of different subjects. I would say this is less about what is interesting and more about getting you out there to get a great job and produce great work.

 

Typography Products

When I was researching for our publication project, my fellow classmate found a website with really awesome products that included typographical elements. Here are some that I thought were interesting.

 

I've seen shirts out there that say things like eff papyrus or make fun of other typefaces or just have a cool layout of different letters or words. But I liked this one because it's like a type specimen shirt, it includes the whole alphabet.  The other reason I like it is the simplicity of it. There are no colors, no other images, just type.

  

This is a product I've never seen before. I find the colors vibrant and modern. I like that the first word you see is stand. I like the san serif type and I think it would be a very interesting thing to put in your home. Its the perfect product for the typo-pheliac.

 

This is almost a little too intense for me! I feel like I would break it or something. This picture kind of confuses me though, because to the left all the type looks like its on a straight line, but the close up, the type is all jumbled. Either way, I think its another great thing for the grand typographer. 

Some Excellent Examples of Type.. that could be used for production design

 

The biggest reason I was drawn to this piece was because I don't even  know how I could try to create something like this. The type is gorgous because it uses all different faces but somehow it's still coherent. The colors are extremely beautiful in my opinion too. This would catch my attention walking down the street.

I thought this was a good example of photoshop. The shadows on the actual typeface and the shadows on the road look realistic to me. And I really enjoyed the concept because you have this big metropolitan street with nothing but cars and buildings and the message says integrate.

 

I chose to share this one because I thought this could be used in an interesting way in different media. It would like nice on the web, on a poster, other print and product media, etc. I like the 3D effect and the wood effect.

 

This one I actually know how to do, I just picked it out because I like it visually. I did something like this with peas. I like the clearness of the texture, the shadow, and the color contrast. Green's my favorite color, that's probably what got me. Also I think this would work in production because you could do this with a number of things and its simple, people would get this.

Packaging is the New Advertising

So I was browsing through a very creative packaging forum and found a couple packages that I thought were worth showing..

 

I really liked this one because its completely opposite of your average bag of chips. Not only is it not a bag but the shapes in the packaging represent the iconic Doritos shape. I thought it was very well crafted.

  

This package I thought was really nice for the woman demographic. It's clean, interesting, unique; It also comes with a case that protects the phone. I haven't seen anything like this so, to me, its a very nice package design.

 

This one I thikn is really great. There's actually a series of them that I think is even better because the different color headphones have different faces. I love how the logo is the mouth and the product is a pair of winking eyes. It's very catchy; a good use of the product showcasing the package and vise versa.

Type and Stuff

I was looking at the swissmiss design blog and found some different things with interesting concepts that included type.

 

I thought this was really funny because it kind of goes through the timelime of type fads in serif and san serif. You can see a bigger version here since its funnier when you can read the red type. I even just like the simple design of this poster and how it has a dotted line that shows when this person went to art school and learned the differences between serif and san serif.

I also like this poster because of the simplicity, the varying line lengths, and the "owns" going down the middle. Again, it adds a funny quality by putting famous designers next to the material or thing they used in their artwork.

This is the rebranded version of Kulula. I enjoyed this picture because they, once again, use typography in their favor. They point out the co-pilot, the front door, wing #1 and #2, and the one that got me chucking was the "black box"... just in case.