Feeling the need for a design escape more than ever? Us too. For that reason, as our dev team works on the new PRINT website behind the scenes, we’ve decided to start releasing some of our brand-new columns and recurring features early—such as The Brandventory, by Jason Tselentis. If you had to count the number of brands you interact with on a daily basis in real time, could you keep up? We come into contact with them from the moment we wake to the moment we land back in bed—and sometimes even in our dreams, if we pay close enough attention—only to restart the cycle the next day. This column, the Brandventory, explores not only brands themselves, but how and why we connect with them, and what those relationships say about us. Those relationships start early, before we even know the word brand. As children, we accept and trust the brands presented to us. Perspectives sharpen during our formative years. We define ourselves by being for or against a brand. Parenthood changes everything with the onslaught of new products, services, foods, even cleaning products. (Are you a Huggies or Pampers parent? Scented or unscented wet wipes? You don’t have a Diaper Genie? WTF?) We present our brands back to our children, and the circle goes round. With infants, it’s easy to find yourself spending money like crazy, but one designer asks: “Do you have to?” After what he calls “the gnarliest year ever,” here, type designer, educator and brand-new parent James Edmondson shares his views on life, design, parenting and, of course, the brands that are ubiquitous in his life.
The OH no Type Company principal confesses that he can’t necessarily buy clothes off the rack—owing to his six-foot, seven-inches stature—so he’s less than enthusiastic about fashion. At home in his studio, in the classroom and at type conferences, you will likely find him wearing his own merch: like, say, the Ohno baseball cap above. “It’s fun to design that stuff,” he says. “In my marketing I use Life’s a thrill, fonts are chill and Death to weak fonts on occasion, and I’m constantly putting stuff out there. But I’m starting to think about Ohno more loosely—not as a brand—I don’t paint myself into a corner. Ohno is adaptable. I think the best thing I can do for the longevity of my own curiosity, and the sustainability of the business as a creative outlet, is to make Ohno interested in change. This can mean genres that are new to me (learning more about existing conventions) or new to everyone (experimental). The worst thing I could do is double down on similar-looking things over and over. That might make for a faithful audience that likes those sorts of things, but eventually I would end up bored.” Edmondson has his finger on the pulse of his own creative endeavors and how to move them forward, but he says he has a hard time identifying with many brands. “At the end of the day, I’m pretty anti-consumerist on many things. This makes me really critical of marketing and advertising across the board. Even among font foundries, there are only a select few that really move me.” So what brands do matter? For this San Francisco native, it comes as no surprise that typography at large matters a lot. Form and function have significance too, whether it’s an Apple computer or his cherished vacuum.
“I do love my Dyson. It is probably one of my favorite purchases, and the only Dyson product I’ve ever owned. It’s a Dyson V7 Animal+ and it makes all other vacuums I’ve ever used look completely stupid. I don’t love the visual look of it—a bit too steampunk for my taste, but it’s quite powerful, and the battery life has been pretty good. I will be buying Dysons for the rest of my life probably, but I am not a huge fan of other Dyson products I’ve come into contact with. Namely, the Airblade that you see in a lot of public bathrooms. I don’t think it’s that great. Also, the brand feels a little pretentious. Before the Dyson, I had a Kirby vacuum that I loved, but it was built like a WWII tank, and about as heavy. The Dyson won’t last as long as the Kirby, but is so much more mobile.”
As for tech, “I’m definitely a Mac person. I remember getting my first iMac G5 when I was a senior in high school—I was 17 or 18—installing all the design software that you dream about using! My Apple thing is tied up in some amount of nostalgia because I first experienced graphic design on an iMac. I remember looking through the manual thinking, They’ve printed it with grey text.” Edmondson currently uses a 2017 MacBook Pro 15-inch, with the newly designed but much-maligned butterfly keyboard, plus what some have dubbed the gimmicky Touch Bar. “The keyboard doesn’t bother me a bit. The Touch Bar is lame, but it doesn’t really bug me either,” he says.
And then there’s the tools of his trade. “Robofont is where I’m most comfortable. I know how to write scripts, and it was created by some dude, Frederik Berlaen, in Belgium. I also use Adobe software. I like their fonts—they care about type.” As for the Bay Area at large, “There’s this farmer’s market, so to speak. A type community. Years ago, San Francisco had this influx of type people, and Stephen Coles hosted these picnics, these community gatherings. I also want to do what I can. I want to support that world. The more I love type, the more it loves me back.”
Tunes? “Funk and soul music. Tower of Power, also Earth, Wind & Fire.” Edmondson also plays. “Guitar. Fender. … Seeing Fender’s logotype, they had the best script. All the other brands with a script—Coca-Cola, Lucky Grocery, Ford—those were just the best.” Finally—the baby gear. “We were stoked to get this one highchair, the Stokke Tripp Trapp. It changes sizes, fits a child for years, eventually becoming a chair for a 4-year-old. So needed! It’s not planned obsolescence, it’s planned adaptation. There’s also this crib, the Stokke Sleepi, that can become a bed—we are not $800 crib people; we got it used on Craigslist for a good deal. But we don’t use the crib—we thought we were being smart, but the crib’s become blanket storage. Everyone wants what’s best for their baby. People will spend like crazy. I’m more of a minimalist.” Edited from a series of telephone and email interviews. The post What Brands Make You Tick? appeared first on Print Magazine. via Tumblr What Brands Make You Tick?
0 Comments
Albert Camus’ The Plague is a dark novel … but it’s also a hopeful novel focused on an outbreak of bubonic plague in the Algerian city of Oran in the 1940s. While it’s one of my favorite books … I’m more in the mood these days for alternative forms of escapism, and the furthest I’ll go down a literary quarantine rabbit hole is Erik Larson’s nonfiction portrait of London during the Blitz, The Splendid and the Vile. Still, the four editions of The Plague spanning the 1950s to the present on my bookshelf have been calling my name lately, so with rubber gloves and a homemade face mask by our side, let’s find some joy in the many designs of the book over the many decades. 1947, first edition 1948 1948 1957 1960 1962 1962 1965 1966 1968 1969 1971 1972 1972 1989 1993 2000 2002 2012 Current, by Helen Yentus The post ‘The Plague,’ in 20 Book Covers appeared first on Print Magazine. via Tumblr ‘The Plague,’ in 20 Book Covers PRINT is back. And soon, we’ll be relaunching with an all-new look, all-new content and a fresh outlook for the future. Stay tuned. By Guest Contributor Emily Cohen To state the obvious, the next few months will be difficult and will involve some tough decisions, smart thinking, thoughtful planning and a good degree of reasonable risk. But what we shouldn’t do is panic. I’ve developed and curated a list of six strategies that will help you avoid making poor decisions that sacrifice your business as well as our industry’s long-term sustainability and health in exchange for short-term gains.
If you do choose to take on clients simply to pay the bills, try to be smart about how much you are willing to sacrifice. You may lower your fees, but perhaps you also deliver fewer concepts/revisions or you don’t sacrifice your terms (e.g., usage rights and the right to use the work for self-promotion). If you do take some projects that are outside your positioning, make sure they represent no more than 25% of your workload. And, when you do take on these clients, you should be ready and willing to fire them when the economy recovers, which it will. Ultimately, you should continue to be kind and generous to your clients, staff and vendors, but not to the level that will have a long-term impact on your business and in situations where you are making all the sacrifices without any gains. The following are two great resources developed by my colleagues that are also extremely helpful. We all have different voices and may share similar strategies (with a few differences, of course) so, take a look--
A brutally honest consultant, Emily Cohen has been honored to consult and work with many leading design firms across the country. Through these experiences, she has developed, tested and curated key business insights and strategies that have helped firms become more effective, profitable and fun to work at. Emily conducts strategic business planning retreats and provides confidential, best-practice insights and advice on staff-, client- and process-management strategies. She loves sharing her expertise through speaking engagements, guest posts, her courses on LinkedIn Learning/Lynda.com and Skillshare, her industry activism and, most recently, in her new business book for creatives, Brutally Honest: No-bullshit business strategies to evolve your creative business. The post Don’t Panic: 6 Business Strategies for the Era of COVID appeared first on Print Magazine. via Tumblr Don’t Panic: 6 Business Strategies for the Era of COVID Seven exceptionally good boys and girls. That’s roughly what it took to give me a much-needed lift last week. Should you find yourself in a similar place at some point in your COVID-19 quarantine, I urge you to consider these 30 Dogs of Design. (And if you’re in need of additional creative canines after perusing this list, we’ve got you—oodles more can be found in the original Twitter thread.) Stay healthy, friends, and don’t forget to pet your pet.
The post COVID-19 and the Dog Days of Design appeared first on Print Magazine. via Tumblr COVID-19 and the Dog Days of Design What are you using to read this right now? I’m going to guess it’s your smartphone. And if I’m wrong, I’m willing to bet said smartphone is within arm’s reach. These ubiquitous black mirrors reveal the intensely personal. You can learn volumes about someone simply by looking at their phone—which is precisely why we tend to squirm in horror at the thought of a stranger grabbing ours. The questions that arise are many, and wide-ranging: Does placing your apps into folders mean that you’re a neat freak IRL? Is your favorite band your background, or is it a photo of your family? When was the last time you went on a date with someone you didn’t meet through one of The Apps on there? In this column we go beyond the screen with designers, writers, artists and creatives-at-large to see how much we can learn about them based on their phones. Up first: artist and author Adam J. Kurtz. If you spend any time at all on Instagram, there’s a good chance you’ve seen some of his work. Or if you’ve been to Urban Outfitters. Or a bookstore. Maybe you’ve seen him speak at 99u, Adobe MAX, HOW Design Live, or one of the many other events he’s done. (He has his fingers in a lot of pies.) Most recently, Kurtz has been focusing on his own business, his relationship and, naturally, Alanis Morissette. Read on. So, your lock screen—that’s your husband, Mitchell, right? Do you remember where and when that picture was taken? Do you ever collaborate? If so, what’s that like? A lot of your artwork is focused on real life. What sort of influence would you say your relationship has in your creative life? Moving on to your app screens—who is that on your homescreen? And why this photo? You have an app folder called “never”—what’s that about? It looks like you also have a folder devoted to photography. Do you have a favorite creative app? Or an app that you think every creative should download? Which game on your phone would you never delete? Why? What’s the most embarrassing thing on your phone that you’re willing to share? Can we see your favorite Boomerang?
Rapid fire either/or: Cash App or Venmo? Uber or Lyft? Google Maps or Apple Maps? Spotify or Soundcloud? Messenger or WhatsApp? Any other weird phone-related trivia we should know about you? What’s the most recent project you’re proud of? The post What’s on Adam J. Kurtz’s Phone? appeared first on Print Magazine. via Tumblr What’s on Adam J. Kurtz’s Phone? PRINT is back. And soon, we’ll be relaunching with an all-new look, all-new content and a fresh outlook for the future. Stay tuned. With the help of Pentagram, the publisher Thames & Hudson—titan of the world of books on the creative arts—has a new look. Walter and Eva Neurath founded the company in 1949 to create a veritable “museum without walls” with an international focus—and so they named their enterprise after the rivers that run through London and New York. They carried this concept to their logo, with its signature dolphins, representative of the connection between old world and new. “This new identity is part modernization and part restoration of the brand,” says Pentagram partner Harry Pearce, whose team worked on the mark. “The original inspiration for the Thames & Hudson visual identity was two dolphins swimming east to west, respectively, and the initial letters of the two rivers referenced in the name. We recreated the cartouche to allow these elements to appear together in a single mark once more. The new modernist sans wordmark has a suggestion of the artisanal nature of bookmaking through the subtle detailing of its letterforms.” The publisher has long been known for its “World of Art” series, launched in 1958 and containing more than 300 books (perhaps most notably Michael Levey’s A Concise History of Painting). Plans to relaunch the line (set to debut in April, with design by the Dutch studio Kummer & Herrman) led Thames & Hudson to reexamine the existing mark. The new identity will appear on all releases moving forward, in addition to sales and marketing materials, starting with the catalogs below, which were also designed by Pentagram. The post Pentagram Designs a New Identity for Thames & Hudson appeared first on Print Magazine. via Tumblr Pentagram Designs a New Identity for Thames & Hudson Need a little levity today? We do too. As it happens, we were hunting for a particular image on a stock website this morning when the news dropped that the stock market had just plunged more than 2,000 points. So, we instinctively moved to the search bar and typed “stock market crash” to gauge the visual times, as we are wont to do. Here are 14 results that might make your day just the tiniest bit better … and, who knows, might just show up in a media outlet near you. The post The Stock Market Crash, in Stock Photos appeared first on Print Magazine. via Tumblr The Stock Market Crash, in Stock Photos Print has been acquired by an independent group of collaborators—Deb Aldrich, Laura Des Enfants, Jessica Deseo, Andrew Gibbs, Steven Heller and Debbie Millman—and soon enough, we’ll be back in full force with an all-new look, all-new content and a fresh outlook for the future. The battle was fierce this primary season. In our Democrat candidate logo bracket, there were decisive defeats. There were upsets. There were, admittedly, contenders we were surprised to see advance at all. There were … bright green logos? The skirmishes have been fought and a victor has emerged in our 12-candidate single-elimination contest. But first, a recap of the results that brought us to this point. Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Ultimately, we were left with two final contenders: As voters made their picks over the past week, Print diligently lingered outside public libraries and churches nationwide to conduct a series of exit polls. Here’s a sampling of what the Biden logo supporters said:
And here’s a sampling of what the Warren logo supporters said:
So: Who won? America’s Graphic Design Choice Is: . . . *Drumroll* . . . . . . . . *Builds tinfoil shelter around computer to ward off election interference* . . . . . . . . . Congrats to the Elizabeth Warren for President graphic design team for claiming 65.3% of the final vote. Print has reached out to the crew for a Q&A about the logo, and will follow up before too long. In the meantime, we also polled voters on what they wish they would see in candidate logos at large—and the results might just offer some clues for the next wave of presidential designers.
The post And the Winner of the Dem Logo Bracket Is … appeared first on Print Magazine. via Tumblr And the Winner of the Dem Logo Bracket Is … |
Charles Gorton
Archives
April 2020
|