Panóptico de Actualidad Gráfica y Visual
Another year passed, another season of “best ofs” is upon us. It’s time to look back at the last 12 months, reflect on all we’ve published, and wrap it all up with a big batch of roundups. It’s always fun for us editors to dig back through the most popular stories, and this year’s correlated pretty directly to the big...
In 2012, good kid, m.A.A.d city brought hip hop’s finest new storyteller to the attention of the masses. Kendrick Lamar’s major label debut tells the story of a kid growing up in Compton, Los Angeles, circumnavigating the pitfalls of gang life, whether by accident or design. The cover art meanwhile provides two stories, perhaps offering us a glimpse into an...
QR codes have been the subject of various cycles of derision over the past 20 years, and yet, walk around today and you’ll find them everywhere: posted on storefronts inviting onlookers to place online orders, or scan a menu for takeout. They’re used to indicate completed health screenings so people can enter schools and hospitals without having to lift a...
Name: Carta Nueva Designer: My-Lan Thuong Foundry: Sharp Type Release Date: November 2020 Back Story: Type history 101: once upon a time, beautiful cursive handwriting was a fact of life. In the 19th and early 20th century, the grade-school taught Spencerian script (and its simplified cousin, the Palmer method) ensured that the ephemera of daily existence—a handwritten receipt from your plumber,...
Carolina Laudon is a Swedish typographer and type designer living in Gothenburg. Laudon studied Fine Art in Painting (Gerlesborgsskolan), earned her Master’s Degree in Graphic Design (University of Gothenburg), then followed that up studying Book History, Intellectual Properties, and Digital Information (Lund University), Practical Design Research and Compulsory Higher Education Teacher Training (Linnaeus University), and Writing as an Artistic Tool,...
In 2001, students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, under the direction of architect Rem Koolhaas, published The Harvard Guide to Shopping, a wide-ranging survey of the spaces, techniques, and ideologies embedded in contemporary retail experiences. Moving from early village markets to the first arcades, then into malls and airports, they argue that shopping has infiltrated every aspect of...
Benedetta Crippa is an Italian designer living in Stockholm, where she works as lead designer at Stockholm Environment Institute, teaches at Konstfack University, and otherwise leads a robust independent design and consultancy practice. Her richly colorful, densely ornamental work is grounded in feminist and post-colonial design theory and, in her words, works to address that which throughout history “has been...
Name: Hejira Foundry: Sudtipos Designer: Gastón Fuoco Release Date: October 2020 Back Story: Gastón Fuoco designed Hejira specifically to defy expectations of what a type family should look like, and how uniform it should feel. Gazing at all the different versions of Hejira together, the similarities become obvious. When viewed separately, only the most astute viewer would be able to...
When Democrat Jon Ossoff’s U.S. Senate race in Georgia was forced into a runoff, his campaign changed up its social media strategy. Throughout the campaign, Ossoff’s Instagram account posted screenshots of his tweets set against a dark navy background, but a few weeks after Election Day, the screenshots began featuring colorful gradient combinations of pink, yellow, purple, and blue. These...
Abounding with warmth, character, diversity, irrepressible charm, and wit, the work of Seymour Chwast has always been the antithesis of the Modernist aesthetic. In 1954, he co-founder the influential Push Pin Studios with fellow Cooper Union alumni Milton Glaser, Edward Sorrel, and Reynold Ruffins. Their expressive approach, which explored and re-interpreted design and illustration of past eras to form an...
Let’s face it, it’s been a long year. The last thing you have mental space for is figuring out the perfect gift to give your brother-in-law or coworker during your mandated Zoom holiday party. Fortunately, for even the least giving and least talented gifters among us, there’s a gift guide waiting to smack you in the face in every magazine...
Name: Tongari Display Designer: Émilie Rigaud Foundry: A is for fonts Release Date: September 2020 Back Story: Both Tongari Display and its companion Tongari Text are inspired by the razor-edged blades of samurai swords. The typeface comes in seven weights, from light to black, each standing in for one of the seven samurai of the legendary Akira Kurosawa film of...
