"
Gridiron League is a collection of idealized NFL insignias that pay tribute to each team's history and geography in a period-specific aesthetic that glorifies the Vince Lombardi-era over the
Cold-Activated-era. This is not an exercise in nostalgia but an interpretation of the league's founding principles through the symbols that we, as football fans, identify with most."
[more inside]
posted by Doleful Creature
on Jan 25, 2012 -
45 comments
Swissted New York graphic designer
Mike Joyce takes vintage flyers from punk, hardcore and indie rock shows and redesigns them "into international typographic style posters. Each poster is sized to the standard swiss kiosk dimensions of 35.5 inches wide by 50 inches high and set in berthold akzidenz grotesk medium, all lowercase. Every single one of these shows actually happened."
posted by BitterOldPunk
on Jan 11, 2012 -
36 comments
Penguin announces a cover contest for John Green's An Abundance of Katherines. John Green, one half of the
VlogBrothers (
previously on metafilter), is also a
Young Adult novelist. His upcoming book,
The Fault in Our Stars, has topped pre-order lists since its title was announced in June of 2011, thanks in no small part to Green's promise to
sign all pre-ordered copies of the book (150,000 total, as determined by his publisher).
Since the upcoming novel's title release,
fan-made covers have made the rounds on Tumblr, some for which Green has expressed
admiration himself. As it turns out, Penguin went with a
professionally-designed cover for TFiOS, but has also announced a contest to determine which fan-made cover it'll use for the next printing of Green's second novel,
An Abundance of Katherines.
posted by litnerd
on Oct 19, 2011 -
18 comments
"Anyone who was around New York City in the late 1980s and early '90s couldn't have missed the work of the
AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, better known as
ACT UP. Its group's activism reached a fever pitch during the early '90s, when the iconic black '
Silence=Death' posters and t-shirts seemed ubiquitous downtown and served as somewhat more defiant symbols for the Gay community than the rainbow flags that took over to serve that role slightly later. ...
So what were we to think as we wandered through
Barneys Co-op in Chelsea yesterday when we spied a whole shelf full of
T-shirts featuring ACT UP's famous imagery [priced each at $50 ... 'a portion of that price tag will go to the activist group'] as if they were magically transported there from 20 years ago?"
[more inside]
posted by ericb
on Mar 14, 2011 -
48 comments
Don't Make Excuses - Make Good! Between World Wars I and II, the U.S. economy was booming - workers had choices and employers competed for their time. How to motivate and gain loyalty from a labor force that knew it could walk out the door and find more work soon?
Charles Mather, head of a family printing business in Chicago, offered employers a solution: the
first motivational posters for the private workplace market. Printed between 1923 and 1929, Mather's "
Work Incentive Posters" used strong imagery and short, clear messaging to encourage workplace values like
teamwork, punctuality, safety, and loyalty. Today, some of his 350 designs can be seen in
traveling exhibitions and
poster galleries, and
Antiques Road Show - or you can soak up some motivation from his modern-day successors at
Successories - or
generate your own.
[more inside]
posted by Miko
on Oct 12, 2010 -
25 comments
Canter’s Deli font comes full circle. Graphic designer makes actual typeface family out of casual script seen on sign for classic L.A. deli, Canter’s. (
Wins award!) Youngest, hippest member of the family that owns the diner later independently Googles
"Canter's Deli" + font, locates type designer, then hires him to custom-design a Canter’s “gourmet food truck.” “[W]hat was interesting to me was that this whole scenario could not have happened without the magic of the Internet and search engines.”
posted by joeclark
on Sep 13, 2010 -
37 comments
Paul Rand was one of the great graphic designers of modern times, designing among other things, logos for Westinghouse, ABC, IBM and UPS. The website has
galleries of
book design,
posters,
logos, and much more (open images in new tab or window to see the full-sized image, some books have image galleries, look for a "see inside" button). You can also read his
thoughts on design,
watch interviews and videos about him, and follow the
many links to interesting online Randiana.
posted by Kattullus
on Aug 9, 2010 -
24 comments
John Mayer gets some really bitchin’ typography. House Industries (last MeFi mention:
1999!) designs a limited-edition tour poster for the crooner who constantly steals the show on
TMZ. “[U]ntil they come up with a JPEG format that makes metallics shimmer like a
Solid Gold dancer’s outfit, there just isn’t a substitute for physically walking around a serigraph and watching the light bouncing off metallic and fluorescent inks.”
[more inside]
posted by joeclark
on Feb 25, 2010 -
35 comments
Remember AOL Time Warner, the poster child of dotcom corporate hubris? It's still around, if only for a few more days. On December 9, the current media megacorp will fraction off former computer network behemoth AOL as a web portal firm and online brand. And what will that brand be? It will be a stock photo superimposed with
a white Helvetica "Aol." And, well,
that's it.
[more inside]
posted by ardgedee
on Nov 23, 2009 -
145 comments
Custom Letters is an evolving category that includes calligraphy, sign painting, graffiti, stone carving, digital lettering, hand lettering, paper sculpture, and type design.
posted by minifigs
on Jun 18, 2009 -
17 comments
"Pryde and I came across it one day in an old stable, on a sack of fodder. It is a good, hearty, old English name, and it appealed to us, so we adopted it immediately."
That's how
The Beggarstaffs, a short lived but influential paring of graphic designers, got their name.
[more inside]
posted by Brandon Blatcher
on Jun 16, 2009 -
9 comments
