Fabien’s quirky online home-decoration workshop has been updated with some new posters. Take a look at the shop, the sticker sets are lovely.
I’m all but finished on Mischa’s new Zyotism ident. I’ve got a small exercise to complete in producing the logotype and then working the identity into his new site conceptual but its all looking good. The iconic has been designed to be very simple to recolour using a couple of soft gradients for inside and outside faces. The iconic also allows for a sort of pearlescent finish by running gradients over the top of each other. More on this soon…
Design And Design Yearbook 2009
Quantum Mortgages stationery is included in this years Design And Design Book of the Year. The book documents a different piece for every day of the year, weighing in at well over 750 pages – its a great collection. Available through Index Books.
More at Design And Design
Quantum Mortgages Corporate Identity case study
I’ve read a lot of critical debate over ffffound both on the web and in the likes of Creative Review and its ilk recently; a sign of its blooming popularity no doubt. I have to disagree though, i think ffffound is a fantastic resource and has become one of my most trusted inspiration sources. With precipitation has come opportunity. As long as we’re all discovering, we’re all growing. Lest we forget that the medium is here to enable everyone to publish anything. We don’t need people filters.
An identity for Jan and Hilde’s new fashion photography blog Porn & Beauty. As Jan writes in summary; “It’s a place for us to present photography we adore, respect or just plain find interesting. Contrary to what the name suggests, we will not post a whole lot of porn here, so put it back in your pants” the logo is a playful and equally contrary take on the two keywords. The identity, though, revolves around the all-important ampersand.
Finding the right one for this identity was crucial – it holds both words together and forms the foundation for how the identity is to be read. Emigre’s Missionary face (Miles Newlin 1991) was perfect for this; the flowing, whimsical flourishes collect into an elegant and playful open face that perfectly toys with legibility, avant-garde enough to compliment the strong, stark forms of Linotype’s Alternate Gothic No.2, which is currently enjoying something of a renaissance. The blog features a simpler non-textured version. This one was just for fun.
In 2006 we successfully rebranded mortgage broker Quantum. Since then they have had a great ride, winning awards year on year and gaining recognition in their industry. Work has now started on a slight evolution to that original exercise to promote a wider spectrum of services. The new umbrella offering; Quantum Money will come into being after April with a new website and stationery.
Michael Feihstel – Hello Sundays! Pt. 6
An old friend of mine Michael Feihstel has just released a wonderfully laid back mix. Michael is an accomplished, eclectic producer. Genre in and around prog. mood pretty chilled. Definitely worth a listen.
Gareth Long’s lenticular series Untitled (Stories) is well worth a look. From his site: A series of nine lenticular prints based on the four paperback novels of J.D. Salinger that use and manipulate the iconic but anonymous cover designs. The six-foot prints reconfigure and animate the brightly coloured geometric lines of the book covers, suggesting the modernist art historical precedents of abstract painters such as Stella and Lewitt, Minimalism, or even the Op Art movement. As such, questions arise as to Salinger’s position towards modernism and modernity and the subsequent appropriate—or perhaps inappropriate—design of these books.
Recently i’ve been working on a sub-folio to Baseref to deal with the various identity projects i’ve worked on. This format allows me to take a much more in-depth case study sort of approach and to illustrate the process in more detail. Each project is split over two or three pages to show elements of its origin and its final use.
Minimalism Around the Web: Design Inspiration & WordPress Themes
Baseref has been added to David Leggett’s wonderful collection of Minimalist Websites. The article lists nineteen sites and a few lovely WP themes. Also in the list is Thommay’s constantly awesome site.
Established by Jacob Wildschiødtz and Troels Faber, NR2154 has one of the tightest portfolio’s i’ve seen. Graphic design and identity that eschews every possible whimsy. Simply method; bold, stark, lovely method.
Greenwood Brook Dress-Rehearsal
Tonight marks the first public outing for any kind of branding so far on our GB side-project. Still far too early to go into details on that but we’re presenting the concept with on-screen and printed backup. I’m primarily interested in how the noisy imagery goes down, both from an outside perspective and how it prints. We’re only using a digital process for this outing, so have very limited stocks available to us but i see this as a dress rehearsal for using the noisy artwork on much rougher, matt stocks in the future. The printed result shouldn’t be as noisy as the on-screen stuff, which is a little too heavy and sharp.
More on Greenwood Brook in my Identity_ folio.
For two reasons, one of which is the forthcoming Humhum cards project. I got lucky when asked to tackle the Ace of Hearts; a nice, comfortable and somewhat regal card to work with. I wanted to do something in stone – something very austere. A certain somebody close has been cracking hearts recently so i think this was also something of a therapeutic process. It isn’t broken, and is adorned with a sash to indicate a solemn authenticity.
Baseref is featured in Spyline’s Best Portfolio’s of 2008. Some lovely stuff in there, thankyou guys!
I have been working on an identity for Chris’s new outing; Bearfight, an agency vehicle for his motion work. I wanted to work with a set of very strong, very basic geometries, to make the name a statement. Using a FontFont face called Typeface 6 I reduced each letterform down to its most minimal geometry and reworked the ‘A’, ‘F’ and ‘G’ to simplify them further. After a little work balancing the letters to give them more comfortable weights.
Blocked out type like this isn’t anything new, and has seen something of a renaissance recently, especially with phrases split over lines or words broken into syllables. I wanted to bring back the essence of the counters in the letters but using a device that was unique and fitted with the mood of the name. The solution was to crack the letters in line with their counters where possible. The first syllable uses one horizontal crack to allow a simpler, faster reading of the name.
Things are still in their infancy over there right now so anything could happen in the next few weeks, but i hope the logotype survives…