Panóptico de Actualidad Gráfica y Visual
Beatriz González eschews labels like “pop artist” and “political artist,” which must be tiresome since most people’s first reaction to her brightly colored work and images of political figures is to call her both. Born in 1938 in Bucaramanga, Colombia, the painter and printmaker has spent her 60-year career employing a biting sense of humor in her eye-catching images. Some...
For some people, January is a moment to press pause on drinking. Bottles get hidden away in the bar cabinet. Seltzers replace the beers in the fridge. We are all for embracing a socially mandated booze break, but everything in moderation, including moderation. In that spirit, we’ve found some low or no ABV drinks whose labels might convince us to...
Name: Dédale Designer: Thomas Bouville Foundry: 205TF Release Date: October 2020 Back Story: Dédale began life in 2017 when Thomas Oudin of graphic design studio Mo-To got in touch with type designer Thomas Bouville about a project he wanted to pitch for: a new visual identity for the Paris Catacombs. Bouville and Oudin went for a meeting with the team...
To see the CIA launch a contemporary rebrand that has been likened to electronic music fliers or a generic tech conference identity, was a start to 2021 that we didn’t see coming. The CIA’s vaguely trendy new look, unveiled on January 1st, which uses typefaces by the independent Swiss foundry Grilli Type, is clearly an attempt to improve the agency’s...
Risograph zines are publications with much aesthetic hype, but they’re also a medium that allows for a democratic and attainable distribution of content, ideas, forms, and techniques. Because Riso-printing tends to favor experimentation over perfection, can be done with relatively inexpensive materials, and is best for small batches, it’s a common tool for self-publishing projects like chapbooks, comics, design specimens,...
In 1996 while on his hospital sickbed, Huang Hua Cheng was eagerly completing two final projects. The first was his own funeral, for which Huang laid out his instructions in detail—what snacks to purchase, what dishes to serve, and a sketch of the stage layout for his final departure. The second, no less important, was the 30th anniversary art exhibition...
Name: F37 Caslon Foundry: F37 Designer: Rick Banks Release Date: November 2020 Back Story: F37 Caslon is, as the name suggests, a new cut of the classic Old Style font Caslon. The F37’s founder, type designer Rick Banks, reckons that we’re seeing a lot of older serif revivals at the moment, “especially in start-up rebrands” as a “backlash to all the...
Designing for clients such as the Museum of Modern Art, AIGA, Knoll International, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press. Exhibiting work at the Whitney, MoMA, the Smithsonian and the Walker Art Center. Teaching alongside Herbert Matter, Paul Rand, Armin Hofmann, Bradbury Thompson and Josef Albers. These are the kind of achievements you would think were guarantees of...
The ossified binary of climate change discourse in the United States has been grievously fractured by reality. Out has spilled a torrent of new questions about how to exist in a society, and on a planet, in crisis. In an effort to tell the stories of our troubled climate, a number of independent magazines have set out to cover climate...
Welcome to Spotted, Eye on Design’s column that turns an eye on the styles and graphic trends you’re seeing everywhere. What are you seeing? Gone are the days of laboring over 1,000 pieces of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night;” in their place is a new breed of the jigsaw puzzle, which has undergone a major rebrand thanks to direct-to-consumer companies promising...
Name: Lektorat Designer: Florian Fecher Foundry: TypeTogether Release Date: October 2020 Back Story: Many a design student dreams of producing a senior year project that might evolve into a professional future. Fecher, a German graphic designer, calligrapher, letterer, typographer, and writer, found a way for his student work to reach a wider audience beyond professors and classmates. He first developed Lektorat under...
2020 was tough. Between a global pandemic, a divisive election, and rising racial tensions, it sometimes felt like the year was a never-ending parade of bad news. But here we are in 2021. A new calendar, a blank page. We think designers have an important role to play in making sure the future is better than the past. (All design,...
