This image is a photograph of one of Schawinsky’s theater sets as a part of Spectrodrama which existed from 1936 to 1938; it was an experimental multimedia theater set project that is by most standards Schawinsky’s most prominent and enduring collection of works. Schawinksy was fascinated by how light, color, motion, and time intersected and…
“Brooklyn Bridge” is another work by Ruzicka. It is a wood engraving rather than metal. This engraving took a lot of attention to detail. As you can see, even the tiny waves in the water are intricately carved. He uses perspective by making the waves bigger in the foreground and they get smaller towards the…
Agyei Archer is a young graphic designer from Trinidad and Tobago that attended the University of Trinidad and Tobago. He also was a part of the Designing Fonts program offered at the Cooper Union. He’s been in the industry for about 15 years and has worked with many large-scale companies like Google, RISD, and the…
Alexander “Xanti” Schawinsky was born in Switzerland in 1904 and showed immense creativity from a young age. Schawinsky originally aimed to become an architect but had many varied interests. He eventually became known for his interest in photography, painting, and performance art, including stage art and set design. He was one of the founding members…
At the heart of Optimo type design is the principle of timeless modernity, where old ideas and designs are combined with the new to create new cultural impacts on letterforms today. Antique Legacy, designed by Francois Rappo, a core member of the Optimo Type Foundry, was released in 2020 and is available for purchase on…
Here with the featured image we see Geoff McFetridge’s “The Semiotics of Illustration” project for the International Designers Network. This is a series of illustrations and wall designs all drawn on paper and plastered all over the walls of his studio. Like I mentioned in my bibliography post about Geoff McFetridge, we see his use…
Kazumasa Nagai’s “LIFE” series, ongoing since the 1980’s, brings awareness to the damaging of the environment in Japan at the time and even now. This poster series also highlights the change in Kazumasa Nagai’s design style. It’s style abstract in terms of shapes, but now showcases “tangible subjects.” These “LIFE” posters all show some sort…
American Type designer Robert Slimbach was born in Evanston, Illinois, and grew up in the area of Southern California. Although he is now a known designer, he surprisingly attended University of California Los Angeles on an athletic scholarship for gymnastics. He later discovered the love he had for design and typography, and worked to run…
With origins in the late 90s, Optimo Type Foundry is the new generation of Swiss type design. Created in Geneva, Switzerland by the design trio Gilles Gavillet, Staphane Delgado, and David Rust, Optimo was started simply as a project for the three young designers to begin releasing their own fonts. This initiative had…
In 1913 Edward Johnston was introduced to the manager of the London Underground Group, Frank Pick. Pick wanted help in remodeling the Underground to make it more attractive and effective to the public. Then hopefully resulting in an increased income from the system. He also wanted it so it can make everything easier to navigate,…
Another work of art by Farhad Fozouni that I wanted to look further into is a ‘poem’ called Tight Poetry. This piece stood out to me because unlike a lot of his other work this piece is much more interactive. Instead of his typical style of contemporary graphic design, Fozouni created a physical structure made out…
The most recent version of the State Farm logo or brand identity was done by Sagi Haviv and his partners at Chermayeff & Geismar. The State Farm was founded in 1922 and remains the largest insurance company in the United States. The first logo was one oval, and within it was an icon of a…
Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv helped in the rebranding of the NBC logo. The broadcasting company began in 1926 with its logo, lighting bolts surrounding a microphone in a map of the U.S. Over the last century, it has evolved from focusing more on the acronym, NBC, to a more pictorial representation of the company.…
*Image found at: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/image/1613652319 This image shows a bookplate made by Herbert Horne in 1895. A bookplate was used to mark someone’s name or initials inside the cover of a book to show ownership (About Bookplate). Horne made this bookplate specifically for Fred Trehawke Davies, whose monogram is shown in the intertwined perches within the…
*Image found at: https://branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=margaretta-s-frederick-on-frederic-shields-chapel-of-the-ascension The Chapel of the Ascension’s exterior attests to Herbert Horne’s great architectural skill while the interior was done by an artist named Frederic Shields. A wealthy widow of a member of parliament named Emelia Russell Gurney commissioned this build that was completed in 1910 but unfortunately was demolished thirty years later…