on the lookout for the perfect "D"

I have been on the lookout for the perfect letter to complete my knick knacks. I don't know if I want an uppercase D or a lowercase one. I really like the look of the first one from anthropologie, but the d doesn't have as pretty a pattern as some of the other letters. The zinc one is really minimal and clean, but is that what I want? The metal ampersand is so beautiful.

look here

buy here

color field

This semester, my mind has been blown. There was a piece created by a certain classmate of mine that really got me emotional. I guess you could say that his inspiration was the pioneer himself, Barnett Newman. Barnett Newman inspired many artists after his time. One of those people being the artist Salvador.

Please see for yourself:

Newman's zip painting

Encantado

Just the use of space and athmosphere. Whether the blue line is the foreground or background, it transcends Rothko's use of space. It speaks of simplicity yet a complexity that is not seen at first. It actually makes most people's hearts jump. Please share your love here: where the magic happens.

threadless

In digital illustration, we're designing and submitting t-shirt designs to threadless and I am really impressed with some of them. This project has been really hard because I wanted to do something smart and really well composed (with a healthy dose of obsessive detailing).

Here are my favorites:

All shirts from threadless

aiga

AIGA (obviously) puts out some great posters. It was interesting learning about the start of AIGA in chapter 20 and to see where they are now.

paul rand

Can we all agree on how beautifully animated and relevant this video is?

handcraftiness

I love etsy. I think the idea is great - creating things and selling them to people who are looking for something more personal or hand done or vintage. I've bought a few things off of etsy and sometimes knowing that things really are handmade or one of a kind makes me more likely to spend more on it.

Here are some things that I'm daydreaming of:

think small

We're all familiar with VW's think small poster, which really make negative small a significantly integral part of the design. The other day I came across David Thorne's story about how he designs. This guy is hilarious, he does everything I wish I could do. He makes people feel stupid for asking something stupid (and usually asking for free design work). Below is part of a series of useless posters he made for a coworker.

Read it all here

The use of negative space and scale of the images make me think of each other.

watercolor texture

I love the use of watercolor texture in print, in textiles, in almost everything. This poster for Tyler Perry's movie is completely gorgeous:

I saw this and it blew my mind. I knew I wanted to incorporate watercolor texture for my texture assignment in digital illustration, I would show my final piece, if I had it :(

package design

I usually browse through thedieline or lovely package quite often and usually the ones that capture my attention are either the designs that are so minimal, that it's genius or are so detailed that it's beyond beautiful. These are some that are sitting in my "Packaging Inspiration" folder on my desktop:

so beautiful

I love the logo and the way the fruit and yogurt is packaged. Especially since usually its "fruit on the bottom!" And I also love the way the vibrancy of the colors really shows through.

I love the different textures on the milk packaging. And the use of only white and black and all the greys in between. I think the concept is very cool and modern.

album cover art

For a band or a singer, they know how important album cover art is. The message that is communicated is one that sums up the entire album. There are quite a few covers that are really beautiful. Or ones that just totally rock. Examples below:

Florence + the Machine

Lykke Li

Santogold (now Santigold)

I can't wait to see Florence and Lykke Li this summer!

icons now&then

left: Golden's CBS logo; top right: Airtistic; bottom right: Gentlemen's Writers Club

With chapter 20 all about corporate identity and visual systems, we see William Golden's CBS logo. A good logo is distinctive, appropriate, practical, graphic, simple in form and conveys the intended message of the group.

The two logos on the right side are two logos that I personally really liked. They are not only simple and versatile, they definitely convey their intended message.

papercuts

For my first project in 3D design, we had to work with paper, I ended up doing a whole installation based around these organic and geometric shapes that I describe as collapsing.

My 3D paper installation on the 4th fl of SJH

Here are some other paper artists who have done some really cool stuff:

Emma Van Leest

Both above are Aoyama Hina

Elodole

bauhaus now&then

One area that the Bauhaus has influenced is furniture. My favorite type of furniture has to be book shelves and cases. The Bauhaus had a very sleek, modern look that was definitely ahead of its time. This can be found in the structure and form and overall aesthetic of book shelves #2-7.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 

kandinsky

I am actually quite a big fan of Kandinsky's work. I like how he names his pieces compositions and how he believes that art and music can work hand in hand. How his paintings visually express music to your eyes. His abstraction is really beautiful.

Composition VII

Honestly? This totally blows my mind.

minimalist design

Can we all just take a second to look at how clean and beautiful this set is?

ceramic tray duo

I need one.

back to the futura

Paul Renner designed Futura in 1927; it's a san-serif typeface that was based on geometric shapes and "representative visual elements of the Bauhaus design style". 

Let's look at where its been since then!

futura

futura!

flexible logos

Katie and I are doing a project that had us looking at a lot of flexible logos. And the thing about successful logos is that they look so effortlessly simple. But are still so smart and well-designed and they convey the message that they are meant to communicate.

Here's a really great flexible logo system that I'm obsessed with:

Fiction, a Danny Jones project

london underground + more maps

The map for the London Underground was designed by Henry C. Beck in 1933  and it replaced geographic fidelity with a diagrammatic interpretation. Geographic lines drawn horizontally, vertically, and at forty-five degree angles and bright color coding made the map very functional.

Beck's London Underground

But it's also really interesting to see where these map lines have ended up since 1933, like in Paula Scher's painted maps:

Paula Scher

glee (type)

Every week, I see the glee logo and I've always thought "it's kerned tight" :

oh my glee!

And by process of whatever, it looks to be ICT Avant Garde Gothic Medium. So this is what it looks like, without any kerning whatsoever:

too much!

So this is kerned so there isn't any visual tension or huge gaps:

I love glee.

I don't know why they look like three different weights when it should all be the same. I hate blogger. I like the logo, don't get me wrong. I just wanted to have a really nerdy post, is all.