Monday 20th May 2013

Centre of Attention

Posted on 01/08/11.
Filed under Design / Graphics

Web Designer Simon Foster has set up a lovely site dedicated to the artwork, graphics and logos of record centre labels, and has just added a new section all about cover art. Makes for nice tea-break browsing…!

Link: http://centerofattention.me/about/

Google subtly roll out some elegant refinements

Posted on 01/07/11.
Filed under Design / Web Design

Over the last week we’ve been watching the Google search results page subtly evolve into something quite elegant. They have managed to retain their essential google-ness (rich blue text links, plenty of whitespace) but have introduced some new styling to page elements that make the whole google experience feel more aesthetically considered.

The different Google services are now presented in a black bar across the top of the screen; previously these were blue link text on white. Underneath these, the Google branding and search box are now in a lightly tinted strip instead of floating on white. Finally, the search refinement options on the left are now grey text on white, with brick-red headings. All in all, the page feels more structured, and more pleasant to look at (and use).

So, hats off to the Google design team who have quietly made some great visual improvements to the search.

Link: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=bellamy+studio

Koloman Moser

Posted on 07/06/11.
Filed under Art / Graphics / Illustration / Print / Typography

Koloman Moser (1868-1918) was an Austrian artist who exerted considerable influence on twentieth-century graphic art and one of the foremost artists of the Vienna Secession movement and a co-founder of Wiener Werkstätte. Beyond his graphic work for books, postage stamps and magazines, his designs in architecture, furniture, jewelry, and textiles helped characterize the work of this era. Moser drew upon the clean lines and repetitive motifs of classical Greek and Roman art and architecture in reaction to the Baroque decadence of his turn-of-the-century Viennese surroundings. In 1901/02, he published a portfolio of elegant graphic designs for tapestries, fabrics, and wallpaper entitled Die Quelle (“The Source”). Along with Gustav Klimt and Josef Hoffmann, Koloman was one of the designers for Austria’s leading art journal Ver Sacrum.

Julius Klinger

Posted on 07/06/11.
Filed under Art / Graphics / Illustration / Print / Typography

Julius Klinger (1876-1942) was an Austrian painter, draftsman, illustrator, commercial graphic artist, typographer and writer. In 1895, he found his first employment with the Vienna fashion magazine Wiener Mode. Here he became acquainted with Koloman Moser, who would later be his teacher. In 1897 he relocated to Berlin, where he worked extensively as a commercial graphic artist until 1915. Together with the printing house Hollerbaum und Schmidt, he developed a new style of functional poster design that soon gained him international reputation. Beginning in 1918, Klinger designed a comprehensive and noted campaign promoting the “Tabu” company’s cigarette rolling paper, that was advertised all over Vienna in 1918/19. Klinger devised a promotional strategy, spanning from small newspaper ads to huge billboards.

Web type is coming of age

Posted on 02/06/11.
Filed under Design / Web Design

This week Typekit have announce that Paul Renner’s classic geometric typeface Futura is now available as a web font. It looks like a lot of time has been spent on getting this just right, and to many designers it will represent a real milestone in the advancement of designing for the web.

Link: http://blog.typekit.com/2011/06/01/futura/

(Thanks to Johnny Chung Lee for posting the film.)

Five months of Kinect

Posted on 16/05/11.
Filed under Culture

This short film outlines just some of the innovative ways that creative developers have started to explorer the different opportunities opened up by Microsoft’s Kinect. It’s fantastic to see interaction being explored in so many ways, and that such a relatively inexpensive piece of hardware can make all this possible.

Whilst their operating systems may be lagging behind and their browsers often be a source of frustration, Microsoft really do seem to be leading the way in experimental user interaction, which is a hugely exciting field, thanks to Kinect and their latest ‘Surface 2’ touchscreen. Whilst their own interfaces trail behind Apple, by opening up the field to developers worldwide, really exciting possibilities can be explored. We’re watching this space closely.

Further excitement comes from news that Nintendo are also set to unveil their new Wii console at E3 next month. Having totally revolutionized user interaction some four years ago, it’s exciting to speculate about what they might have lined up next month.


Tom Eckersley

Posted on 15/04/11.
Filed under Art / Graphics / Print / Typography

Tom Eckersley (1914-97) was an English artist and one of the foremost poster designers and graphic communicators of the twentieth century. In addition to poster making and book illustration he also produced magazine covers and logos. His designs often employed an abstract like quality and collage to convey their message, marring simple text and imagery to relay complex messages in a direct way. There is one of Eckersley’s Transport for London posters in the Wolfsonian, Miami Beach, at the moment. The use of bold colours and simplified form ties in with other posters on show, but the use of Helvetica rather than Johnston Sans gives a more neutral European look to the work.