Guerrilla artist/graphic designer Shepard Fairey is world famous (um, notorious) for papering the alleys, underpasses and abandoned storefronts of the world with starkly powerful images limned in black, white and red. I still remember the first “André the Giant Has a Posse” sticker I ever saw, somewhere in the San Francisco Mission District in 1989 [...]
“Bring bad design to justice!” So command the Design Police.
It’s already old news that technology has placed the ability to commit design atrocities well within reach of the grubby hands of the masses, but as Sam Clemens remarked about folks who complain about the weather, “no one does anything about it“.
Until now.
The pen may [...]
If you were a schoolkid in the ’70s who like to read, just seeing the words “Scholastic Book Club” will make your heart beat a little faster:
I remember in grade school how freaking fun it was to place an order for these inexpensive kids books, and that there may have been no greater thrill than [...]
Gorgeous modernist signage for a cabinet maker’s shop in the Bergmannstrasse, Berlin, dating from (I believe) the late ’20s — early ’30s. The typography, the colors, the arched entryway and even the textures of the metal and painted surfaces … beautiful.
I can’t get enough of photographing signs, type, and even graffiti in Berlin … the [...]
“Does this guy have some kind of cult?”
We’d just seated ourselves in the packed auditorium, and my colleague was eyeing the dozens of glazed-eyed autograph-seekers lined up for their moment with Edward Tufte. His seminar “Presenting Data and Information” had sold out well in advance, and the place was quietly buzzing with conversation and — [...]
The fabulous commie sign over “Alex”, the famous train station in east Berlin more properly known as Bahnhof Alexanderplatz. It’s a beautiful sign, severely elegant — installed (I believe) during a retrofit in 1964.
This style of 3-D illuminated letterform is seen all over Germany’s capital city, a look that’s so appealingly tactile that I [...]
The Kehlet Typewriter Company of Sacramento has finally thrown in the towel after a quarter-century in the business. It’s the end of an era — or perhaps, since this little shop opened at the tail-end of the Analog Age, the end of the end of an era.
I’ve walked past this storefront of jumbled office machines [...]
I’m tempted to call it a miracle, but look — they’ve already put “Magic” right in the name.
Vector Magic is an online tool designed to convert bitmaps to vector files. The interface is simple and clean, the results are better than anything on the market (hello Adobe), and the cost? Thanks to the brainiacs down [...]
Milk-out-the-nose funny!
‘Cause milk squirting out of your nose isn’t just funny… it hurts. This sharp little video spot is a graphic designer’s nightmare. In a vivid parody of those late-night Ronco television ads, an entire panoply of designer’s client-request horrors dances in front of your eyes.
“Make My Logo Bigger” cream is just the start… “White [...]
One of the pleasures of strolling the streets of another city is the discovery of visual quirks native to that spot. Berlin is one of my favourite places to play this game. There are lots of examples in Germany’s densely layered Hauptstadt, and exhibit A can be seen just about everywhere — it’s the striking [...]
