Panóptico de Actualidad Gráfica y Visual
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,...
Writing about design is never just writing about design. Oftentimes, the language of design creeps into other parts of our lives—the way things look, the way things work, how the things we care about are presented to the world. Viewed through that lens, design writing isn’t just the purview of website like our own. Good design writing happens everywhere, and in...
It’s that time of year when we glance back at the last 12 months in an attempt to understand what it all means. And while we can’t promise you all of the answers, throughout the year we do our best to articulate moments that can lend some clarity on where design was, is, and where it’s heading. We’re hesitant to...
