West Virginia
Here’s a nice find… from Westvaco’s Inspirations for Printers 1953-1955, designed by Bradbury Thompson. Inspirations for Printers was a graphic arts publication issued by the Westvaco Corporation (formerly named the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company) with the objective of showing typography, photography, art work and other graphic inventiveness on papers manufactured at its mills. (Via Parisian graphic designer Peter Gabor’s Galeries Pédagogiques de Design & Typo).
Confoederatio Helvetica
Bibliophiles and typophiles alike will enjoy this richly annotated collection of “book (design) stories”—from new typography to swiss style—here (with a full index showing the nearly 600 titles here). Takes me back to growing up in Basel-Land (just a few km from Münchenstein, where Helvetica was designed) in the early 1960s…
Images (from top): Stile Olivetti designed in 1961 by Walter Ballmer; Typographische Mitteilungen, 1925, by Jan Tschichold; Der Film, 1960, by Josef Müller-Brockmann, Jörg Hamburger, and Serge Stauffer; and Pontresina (ski-resort map) designed ca. 1935 by Emil Schultheiss.
The International Womens Day turns 98 today; the official website is here.
Images (from top): Europe Supported by Africa and America (detail—explicitly ‘Eurocentric’), 1796, William Blake: The Sabine Women Enforcing Peace by Running Between the Combatants (detail, the Louvre), 1794-99, Jacques-Louis David; The Musician, 1929, Tamara de Lempicka.
Churchill, Manitoba
These shots just in from good friend Mike Grandmaison, who’s been hanging out with local polar bears in Churchill again, (on Hudson Bay, about 1000 km north of Winnipeg). Enjoy more of Mike’s outstanding photography—spanning the entire breadth of Canada—here. (Images ©2009 Mike Grandmaison).
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Noah Richler (son of the often acerbic Mordecai Richler) has written a glowing tribute to Winnipeg in today’s Toronto Star—all I can say is I fully concur… and I feel very fortunate to have anchored my design career in this very special place. Read the article here.
(Thanks to Oliver Oike for the heads-up, and to Mike Grandmaison for the great photo looking across the mighty Red River).
Rockport, Massachusetts
Here’s a fantastic reference tool “for the purpose of appreciation and categorization” of book cover designs and designers—browse by title, author, designer, art director, photographer, illustrator, genre, publication date, publisher, or typeface used (with extended links): The Book Cover Archive.
Thanks to Ian McCausland for the link.
London, U.K.
It’s hard not to be inspired by da Vinci—his sheer genius is undeniable. I was delighted to be able to take in an exhibition of 60 working wooden models of Leonardo’s inventions (faithfully recreated from his drawings by a team of skilled Florentine artisans) while visiting Wellington, New Zealand last November; the Leonardo da Vinci Machines Exhibition. So it was with great pleasure that I came across a post by Carleton Wilson re: the Universal Leonardo website, as inspiring and comprehensive an online resource regarding the great Italian master as the title would suggest—and definitely worth exploring.
Images of inventions from the ‘Browse’ section of the website: Leonardo’s self-propelled cart, flying machine, and giant crossbow.
Vancouver, Providence, Stockholm, Adelaide, New York…
My girlfriend Ev and I received a large box filled with wine-making paraphernalia from her parents for Christmas (admittedly I had enthused about the brilliant home-made dandelion wine I’d encountered last summer at friend Stefanie’s place in Banff, made by her Park Interpreter roommate Laurie Schwartz from prolific back-yard gleanings)… so, naturally, wine-making and wine labels are now on my radar.
Although I’ve encountered some beautiful labels over the years (some were included in the Communication Arts magazine feature I wrote re: design in Australia a few years back), I’ve never really designed any (other than informal labellings for libations given out at Circle from time to time). Serendipitously, a variety of wine label references have crossed my desk over the past week… and shown above are a few that caught my fancy. (Thanks to Gerald Brandt, Mirko Humbert, and Matt Warburton for the links.)
Images (from top): Garagiste Wines (a clever name for “guys who make wine in their garages”) by Matt Warburton; Whatchamacallit for Spit Decisions by Brandever; Dirty Laundry, also by Brandever; B Frank by Talia Cohen; Esule by Mash; Oriel Wines by Julia Hoffmann; Sav (made of birch sap) by Stockholm Design Lab.
