The excellent film on Massimo Vignelli’s approach to book design by Pentagram for Mohawk, just had to feature on Typetoken — Enjoy!

Info

“The grid is an integral part of book design. It’s not something that you see. It’s just like underwear: you wear it, but it’s not to be exposed. The grid is the underwear of the book.” — Massimo Vignelli

Vignelli’s approach to book design is the subject of a new video created by Pentagram’s Michael Bierut and Aron Fay for “What Will You Make Today?” campaign from Mohawk. In the video, Vignelli discusses his use of the grid as the basis for the layout of a book’s pages, using one of his classic book designs for the architect Richard Meier as an example. Working with an audio interview edited by Hilary Frank, Bierut and Fay animated Vignelli’s sketches for the clip, taking them from skeletal grid to finished publication.

Bierut knew Vignelli’s painstaking step-by-step process well. “Because I worked with Massimo for ten years before joining Pentagram, I was very familiar with his unique way of designing books. He sits with all the ingredients—text and images—and draws each page with a pencil, including every photograph, using a grid as a layout guide,” he says.

The video is accompanied by a small limited edition journal that reproduces Vignelli’s grid from the film. The journal is available from Mohawk’s website, while supplies last.

Vimeo Link

Ten is a magic number by Bunch:

It’s the perfect number for lists, collections and thoughts. A list of ten we can remember and gain adequate insight from – the Ten Commandments, the top ten, let’s count to ten, ten out of ten, ten fingers, ten toes! Any less than ten, we feel there isn’t enough substance. Any more, and we may begin to forget or become confused.

Perhaps this is why Milton Glaser chose the number ten when writing his iconic essay, Ten Things I Have Learned, which was part of the AIGA talk he gave in 2001. His list of ten insights inspired some in the following years to prepare their own lists of ten, while others (like us) were simply grateful for their enlightening honesty.

When considering the design of this book we found the experience of a stock book to be both visual and tactile. One touches and examines the texture, weight and colour of the stock. Perhaps also smelling the paper to substantiate a decision. After that the mind stores a memory of the paper, should we need touse it at another time.

To complement this, we’ve weaved the ten insights into this book. So that as you consider the paper and absorb its qualities, you also take away an insight which might come in handy some day.

The limited edition of 300 entitled “TEN” after Milton Glaser’s essay “Ten Things I Have Learned”, showcases a cross section of paper stocks available from paper merchant, HYPERLINK “http://www.igepa-plana.hr/”Igepa-Plana, with beautifully illustrated statements enveloping the pages. The ten “things” were presented typographically and illustratively via 
a wide range of media.

48 page, cloth-covered hardcover book, 4 colour with gold and silver stamp with 6 different foil covers. Produced in a limited edition of 300.

Collaborators:

OmegaTheKid! Phoenix — Illustration

Ivo Sousa — Illustration

Vanja Solin — Photography

Cerovski — Print

Links:

www.igepa-plana.hr

Milton Glasser

Bunch

The Company You Keep worked closely with Dave Kerr on venue naming and branding, through development of collateral and signage of The Beaufort. A bespoke typeface reflecting iron dock cleats and American sporting insignia’s formed the basis of the identity.

You can see more work at their site — TCYK

Aktiv Grotesk eight new weights

Dalton Maag have today (18/01/13) released eight new styles/weights of the superb Aktiv Grotesk font: Hairline, Thin, Exta Bold and Black, with matching italics. The launch coincides with the font’s use in the English National Ballet brand new identity and campaign.

Dalton Maag Press Release Information

The English National Ballet are launching a radical new brand and advertising campaign that uses Dalton Maag’s Aktiv Grotesk for their new logo. The campaign, by creative agency The Beautiful Meme, features stunning photography of English National Ballet dancers wearing couture garments by Vivienne Westwood.

Dalton Maag’s Aktiv Grotesk was modified to create a unique logotype for the ballet company. The starting point was Aktiv Grotesk Bold, with the spacing and leading of the individual characters being refined to create the perfect typographic balance for the words “English National Ballet”. The most major modification was to replace the standard Aktiv Grotesk “g” with a new two-storey version for greater aesthetic appeal. Aktiv Grotesk was chosen for its clean lines and modernity, which challenge the traditional image of ballet.

Ben Haworth, Creative Director of The Beautiful Meme said: “The decision was made quite early on to deviate from any visual preconceptions of ballet predominantly including script or baroque serif typefaces. We wanted a brand typeface that would reflect and support Tamara Rojo’s artistic vision of communicating a core truth that everyone in the Company has something to say.

Aktiv Grotesk seemed the perfect vehicle to profess the English National Ballet’s new bold and confident position. It’s an exquisitely drawn typeface that has the creative quirks and character to distinguish from other more clinical grotesque fonts. Its clean and contemporary feel also has a degree of neutrality which is key for future collaborative projects across a wide range of the arts to enhance the vision of the ENB being the UKs most creative company.”

Bruno Maag, Creative and Managing Director of Dalton Maag said: “The dancers must take center stage, and the stunning imagery makes this clear. Our Aktiv Grotesk font supports this ambition clearly and cleanly. The choice of a bolder weight is inspired, as it avoids the fashion trap of using very thin styles so often seen in brands related to fashion and art.”

The brand campaign was was shot on location in London, East Sussex and in Holborn Studios by Guy Farrow working with the Vivienne Westwood team. The dancers were choreographed by English National Ballet’s Associate Artist George Williamson.

The Vivienne Westwood collections were chosen specifically to emphasise the non-conventional but classical image. The couture garments used within each image were specially selected from both Vivienne Westwood’s extensive archive and paired with pieces from the latest Spring-Summer 2013 collections to continue the idea of mixing modernity with tradition. Both the clothes and the images created symbolise this feeling of British avant-garde and are seductive and elegant yet commanding. They reference historical dress and British culture, whilst most importantly celebrating the human form.

In Vivienne Westwood’s own words: “My clothes allow you to project your personality, and are theatrical in the sense that they are real clothes, well-designed, and they give you a chance to express yourself.”New weights of Aktiv Grotesk are being launched today to coincide with the font’s use in the English National Ballet campaign.

About Dalton Maag

Dalton Maag was founded in 1991, and designs high quality fonts and logos for its clients. With bases in London, Vienna, Hong Kong and Brazil, the company now employs 39 people from ten countries, and handles a wide variety of projects, many of them large and high profile. Dalton Maag’s international clients have included such big names as Nokia, Ubuntu, the FA Cup, Toyota and BMW. A speciality of the company is our expertise in non-Latin scripts, including Devanagari, Arabic, Cyrillic and Hebrew.

http://www.daltonmaag.com/

—
Thanks to Thalia Teasdale | Dalton Maag for the images and information

Baseline launches the 6th handmade, limited edition ‘Special 06: Ivan Chermayeff’

New 16pp booklet, designed and produced to stimulate and inspire!

Limited edition of only 67.

Every publication contains unique and exciting imagery and thought provoking quotes by designers/artists. The pages are overprinted sheets from the print production of Baseline magazine. For the collector there is lots to explore and discover.

Available from baselinemagazine.com — £9.00 (plus p&p)

Córdova — Canillas is an agency specialising in Art Direction and Graphic Design based in Barcelona, Spain. Founding partners, Diego Córdova and Martí Canillas have forged a partnership whilst working at Folch Studio between 2010 and 2012.

Working in art-direction, photography, graphic and communication design, the studio places emphasis on collaborative projects for commercial and institutional clients in contemporary culture.

Les Habilitats by Andrea Gomez is a 3 part publication expressing the abilities beyond human power.

Ken Garland

Structure and Substance

— Press Info —

Ken Garland: Structure and Substance is the first comprehensive monograph on the entire career of legendary English designer Ken Garland, from student exercises in the 1950s to his self-published photography books of recent years.

The biographical essay, written by Adrian Shaughnessy and accompanied by rare personal photographs, touches on the many sides of Garland: the ethical and political designer; the writer; the teacher; the photographer. It is underpinned by interviews with his contemporaries and peers, and Garland himself co-operated with all aspects of the production of this book.

Now in his eighties, Garland is still as relevant to the (design) community today as he was when he published his famous First Things First manifesto in 1964 (see p.4). He has a strong following amongst young designers and frequently lectures to large audiences, captivating them with his highly personal approach .

Author: Adrian Shaughnessy

Editors: Tony Brook / Adrian Shaughnessy

Design: Spin

Pages: 328

Size: 168x224mm

Format: Paperback

http://www.uniteditions.com

http://www.uniteditions.com/blog/announcing-ken-garland-monograph/

Logotype
Michael Evamy

Logotypes – wordmarks, monograms and single-letter marks – are where the verbal becomes visual; where elements that are usually designed to speed the eye across the page invite it to linger; where the choice of font is never less than meaningful; where spaces and spacing are significant; where the composition of words and characters carry weight; where letterforms and even fragments of letterforms can evoke attributes, atmospheres, emotions, events,places, personalities and periods in history.

Once it has become familiar, a logotype is registered by the brain in much the same way as a symbol: as a single, visual entity rather than a set of related verbal ones.

Featuring more than 1,300 international typographic identities, by around 250 design studios, this is an indispensable handbook for every design studio, providing a valuable resource to draw on in branding and corporate identity projects.

Examples are drawn not just from Western Europe and North America but also Australia, South Africa, the Far East, Israel, Iran, South America and Eastern Europe. 

Contributing design firms include Pentagram, Vignelli Associates, Chermayeff & Geismar, Wolff Olins, Landor, Total Identity and Six as well as dozens of highly creative, emerging studios.

Retaining the striking black-and-white aesthetic and structure of Logo (also by Michael Evamy) and Symbol, Logotype is an important and essential companion volume. Logotype will be available from September 2012.

*Competition*

Win a copy of Logotype

Typetoken are running a ‘reweet to win’ competition

Laurence King Publishing will randomly select from the retweets a winner of the book.

Keep an eye on + follow the typetoken twitter feed for details.

Follow on twitter here:  @typetoken

More Info

Laurence King

@LaurenceKingPub

Michael Evamy

@michaelevamy

OPX were invited to create all the marketing communications. We looked at the printed items (brochures and invites) and addressed the wayfinding system within the gallery. In 2011 visitor numbers exceeded 10,000 people in four days, so devising an effective signage system was critical.

This event is the premier destination for anyone passionate about buying the very best in contemporary craft.

The event ran from 11th May to 14th May.

 
Design OPX http://www.opx.co.uk/work/project/collect
Photography Marcus Ginns http://marcusginnsphotography.co.uk
Map by Russell Bell http://russell-bell.com

«An edding can write on anything.» Thanks to the new Büro Destruct font «edding 850» it even keeps that promise on your computer. End of story? Quite the opposite, actually: Together with Hamburg based ad agency «kempertrautmann» & «shift» this idea is the core of a new campaign «Type-For-Type.com» for the german brand «edding» – famous for their permanent markers.

Our design/development of the font was portrayed by director Kai Sehr that paid us a visit with his crew in Bern 2011. Kai Sehr is well known for his music videos (from Bad Religion to Backstreet Boys…) and commercials. With his documentary «Skateistan» he got highly awarded at film festivals around the globe.

Type-for-type describes the deal: You contribute something to the collaborative realtime text-editor. Once you’re done, the «edding 850» opentype font is available for download. It comes together with a PDF-magazine that features the most liked designs from the project gallery, basically the blog side of the site, where everybody can upload anything using the font. Sounds complicated? It isn’t. Have a look: BD edding Elk is already part of it.

Central Avenue was originally created for the graphic identity of an exhibition celebrating Birmingham’s infamous 1886 exhibition of Local Manufacturers and Natural History.

The core of the identity was the bespoke typeface that we created based on the hand-painted signs from the original exhibition. The typeface style that they employed wasn’t the typical decorative Victorian face, it was a simple sans serif – much more industrial and much more relevant for a contemporary exhibition of its kind.

What was essential was to not loose the essence of the original designs through digitising. We wanted to make sure that we managed to retain some of the awkwardness and personality that the hand painted letter forms had. Rather than imagining the lowercase characters, we decided to keep it ‘Victorian’ and designed a superscripted alternative that enables the user to create their own word logos.

Thanks to Hamish Makgill | StudioMakgill for the images and information

StudioMakgill

Colophon Foundry

Booki.sh

Booki.sh is a complete web-based platform for distributing, selling and reading ebooks. With the intent to make reading ebooks fun and approachable, Booki.sh takes away the technical barriers. The identity had to reflect this ease in a warm and welcoming manner. A quirky bespoke typeface based on a pair of spectacles was created, lending a playful approach which was flexible enough to work as a stand-alone mark and housed within a ribbon device. We took reference from classic literary production techniques such as gilded page edges on the side of books as a nod to the past and used bookmarks as promotional collateral, adding a whimsical sense of irony to the identity. Inventive Labs designed the online environment with illustrations by Lachlan Conn and Ben Sanders.

Milkbar

Expatriate Australian owners of antipodean café Flat White in London approached A Friend of Mine to design their second café Milkbar in Soho.

Careful not to overstep the cultural cringe barrier, the identity had to hold true to its Australian roots whilst not being over the top. A bespoke typographic identity was created based on the pouring of steamed milk into espresso. Hints to the Australian roots added in signage and interior elements such as sign painted door graphics emulating colourful rubber fly curtains found in suburban Australian milkers.

Pixelflix

Pixelflix is a digital production and editing company, specialising in tailoring content for the online environment. A Friend of Mine created a bespoke identity visually exploring the nature of their work, which often begins with various confusing scenes out of context being rearranged and transformed into a comprehensive legible whole. The identity story always seen in a series of 3 states also references the in flux nature of the online environment in which Pixelflix specialises.

Skin + Bones

‘Skin + Bones’ is an exhibition focusing on the parallels between fashion and architecture held at Somerset House in London. When developing the identity for the exhibition, pin and thread art from the 1970s formed the inspiration: a craft which merged both fashion elements (thread) and architectural foundations (pins). Signage extended this material literally whilst a graphic approach was applied to the typographic identity for the printed exhibition catalogue and invitations.

Produced whilst working at Multistorey, under the creative directorship of Rhonda Drakeford and Harry Woodrow. Shown here with their kind permission.

Lovely bespoke lettering work from Australian based studio — A Friend Of Mine

A big thank you to Rhys & Suzy for making this possible.

Lavafilm is a small and courageous film company based in Oslo, Norway. They deliver almost everything in filmmaking and is inspired by fashion and contemporary art.

In the development of their identity, we explored the interaction between the classic and the contemporary. We have experimented with a solution, where the sum of the visual elements are the cornerstone of the identity, as opposed to the standard, where the logo stands out as the most important element.

This project was made in collaboration between Henrik Wold Kraglund and Ludvig Bruneau Rossow.

Visual identity, font design, packaging for sparkling wine.

Made by Stoëmp

Each year, Typopassage features the work of a small set of typographers and designers. Each exhibition is documented with a catalogue, featuring a newly designed font and purchasable for 2 euro at an on-site vending machine.

http://www.ruizcompany.com

http://www.studiomakgill.com