The story of William Drenttel is best told by those who knew him and those who were influenced by his work within the design sphere. His passing in 2013 spurred his colleagues to memorialize his achievements and ethos to elegiac effect, praising the innovation of his craft as well as his character. One such tribute…
Featured Image Courtesy of Eamesoffice.com The “Powers of Ten” was a very well known short film created by Ray and Charles Eames which has been used as a teaching tool for understanding the importance of scale through the system of exponential powers. The film was based on Kees Boeke’s 1957 book, Cosmic View: The Universe…
Featured image Courtesy of Eames.com This was the first of the Eames’s plywood series and it was the Lounge Height (L) Side Chair (C) on Wood (W) Base released in 1945, created by both Charles and Ray Eames, and referred to as “the chair of the century” by Time magazine. It was created out of…
Featured image courtesy of americanwomenartists.org Ray Eames was born as Bernice Alexandra Kaiser on December 15, 1912 in Sacramento, California. She focused her early passions on illustration, poster art, art anatomy, and art history while attending Sacramento Junior College. Wanting a school that treated the arts more seriously, she left to attend a progressive liberal…
Omniplan by Tomoko Miho Throughout her career Miho impacted corporate American through her use of complex identities in regards to brands. Omniplan is an architecture firm and Miho designed their first logo mark in 1970. In this logo mark she wanted to introduce dimensions and illusions that heighten the complexity of the brand in all.…
Varvara Stepanova was a highly talented painter, photographer, and designer, creating everything from posters, to books, to costumes for local theaters drawing off of cubist and futurist influence. This made her an prominent member in the Russian avant-garde movement as well as the constructivist movement later on in her career, paving the way for future…
In another method of combining complex computer programs with creativity and art John Maeda created “Flying Letters”. This interactive rpgr uses a. Mac OS9 emulator and can be known to take a significant amount of time to load up. “Flying Letters” is exactly what it describes, flying letters in white against a black background that…
Requiem is another typeface designed by Jonathan Hoefler. While many of the typefaces were designed in collaboration with Tobias Frere-Jones, Requiem was specifically designed by Hoefler in 1992, being one of his earlier typeface designs. It was sold by his company, Hoefler & Co., for Travel + Leisure Magazine, (“Requiem, Typeface”). Adding to the list…
John Maeda wrote a book entitled “The Laws of Simplicity” that discusses the 10 laws of simplicity. There are three key principles as well. This covers time saving, organization, and even thoughtful reduction. This book contains the information to teach us how to need less but get more. Sometimes though there can be a simplicity…
Yusaku Kamekura’s works for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics are notably what launched the graphic designer into international fame, specifically his work “The Rising Sun and the Olympic Emblem”, which was made in 1961. Kamekura was commissioned by the Olympic committee to complete this project of posters to market the 1964 Olympics. Kamekura’s style is evident…
65 bridges in New York by Tomoko Miho In this poster Miho captures the clean and precise details of this great infrastructure in the city of New York. She doesn’t miss a single line of the bridge and wants the audience to acknowledge the quality of the way she captures it. The red tone of…
Yusaku Kamekura quickly became one of the leading designers in the post World War Two graphic design scene, and one of the pioneers of Japanese graphic design. Kamekura successfully blends both Western and Eastern design techniques, demonstrated through the rational design principles and traditional Japanese elements in his work. To this day, Kamekura is still…
Sibylle Hagmann is an award-winning typeface designer and the founder of the creative studio platform Kontour, based in Houston. Her work appears in many publications and is acclaimed by the Type Directors Club of New York and Japan. Hagmann was born in 1965 in Switzerland and pursued an education in graphic design at the Basel…
The month of April and July (left to right) During the 1970s, a time of technological exploration, designers were able to find new ways of phototypesetting that they could not do with simple cast metal fonts in the past. They started an era of new eccentric and attractive fonts, and Igarashi took full advantage of…
Tomoko Miho came from humble beginnings. She was born in California on September 2nd in 1931. For the beginning part of her childhood she lived in a Japanese internment camp. These camps came into existence shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the US government unjustly forced many Japanese Americans to relocate during WWII. Her…