Panóptico de Actualidad Gráfica y Visual
A couple weeks ago, we hosted a workshop at the AIGA Design Conference called Design Writing 101: How Writing Is a Lot More Like Designing Than You Think. When we started planning for the event, we had lots of ideas around what that statement meant. At their core, both writing and design are about storytelling — they are about forming...
Name: Halisa Designer: Jan Estrada-Osmycki Foundry: The Designers Foundry Release Date: September 2021 Back Story: The inspiration for Halisa was a single cut, uppercase-only hand-painted type seen on some old factory signage. Estrada-Osmycki was also influenced by Swiss neo-grotesque fonts but wanted to make something fresh. The designer says, “At the start, the letters were looking too much like a Microgramma/Eurostile...
Tomorrow Today is more than a bookstore. The shop, located in downtown Los Angeles, sells books, magazines, and other printed material, but it’s also home to a rapid response press that community members can access. We asked the shop’s founders to recommend five books that they’re currently excited about. “We (Geoff KixMiller, Gus Depenbrock, and Zoe Axelrod) opened Tomorrow Today...
After living through 18 months of an ongoing pandemic, our social and professional interactions have significantly changed since “The Before Times.” For many of us it’s been a period of isolation that has forced us to learn how to find social connection within virtual spaces or shift to remote work through distributed teams for the first time in our careers....
When Archie Boston Jr., the nationally recognized art director, designer, educator, and author, talks about graphic design, he also talks about God, ethics, activism, race, and legacy—though he doesn’t use that last word when speaking about his career. Boston’s legacy isn’t one that lives in the future, though it will; it’s one that thrives today in the expanding voices of...
Name: VTC Du Bois Designer: Tré Seals Foundry: Vocal Type Release date: June 2021 Back Story: For Tré Seals, history and cultural representation inform his typography. From the Anti-Apartheid Movement to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, his studio, Vocal Type, confronts the racial and gender disparities of our past as a means to create typographical forms. Seals’ latest font, Du...
If you see someone walking down the sidewalk in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, wearing, say, well-worn Doc Martens and a canary yellow bucket hat emblazoned with the title of Sally Rooney’s new novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You, what do you think of them? Maybe you will not think anything because you don’t know what “Beautiful World, Where Are You” means. Or...
“For thousands of years, earth’s resources have been extracted by bodies, most of whom were not free,” reads one of the opening pages of The Extreme Self. “But now, it’s our bodies, and our selves, being extracted. And… mostly we offer it up for FREE.” The word FREE stretches upwards away from the rest of the sentence, its serifs are...
Cheryl Holmes Miller is a graphic designer—a statement that’s true but not sufficient. Miller is also an advocate and activist. She’s a writer, educator, and researcher; a fighter, a theologian, and a survivor. More than that—Miller is a legacy. Miller’s legacy is as much the visual impact of her work as it is her forthright critique of an industry that...
Name: Adelbrook Designer: Philip Lammert Foundry: Vibrant Types Release Date: July 2021 Back Story: Hamburg-based type designer Philip Lammert finds contradictions a favorite source of inspiration, and set out to create a contemporary serif typeface with a debt to 15th-century Humanist styles that would not be a Humanist style in itself. To pull off this balancing act, Lammert endowed Adelbrook with...
During the mid-twentieth century, perhaps no other American company exemplified technological achievement, business acumen, and good design better than IBM. Major advancements in data processing and mainframe computing brought forth an unprecedented investment in R&D within the company that provided a space for design to flourish. External consultant and director of design Eliot Noyes convinced IBM president Thomas J. Watson...
How do you like your drinks? Sustainable? Functional? Merely hydrating? This month’s picks offer more than anyone really needs, but perhaps something you’ll want once that chill in the air brings activities indoors. As summer comes to an end, take comfort in these better-at-home beverages that are made to pour....
