Category: Graphic design

Fray Identity

I’m in love with Fray’s 2010 identity designed by London based graphic design consultancy, Build.

From the choice of typeface, to the paper stock selection, the end result just bliss. It’s the lack of elements that opens up to more possibilities.

Fray is a new venture from Simon Waterfall, and looks to change the way design agencies work, and hints that they are already working with 3500 staff. The minimalist business cards acts as a template, allows staff to write their names in the debossed blank spaces. The letter/invoice letterhead is another fantastic detail as well.

How do you react to minimalist identities and how minimal is your business card?

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Round Calendar

I’m totally in love with this Round Calendar.

In one view you see all the dates, year-round – literally. This makes it not only beautiful, but also a really practical and visual planner for the year ahead. Just jot down your notes in the white space surrounding the dates.

The Round Calendar is a side-project of Petr Bykov from Russian design studio Saccade. You can purchase the calendar via their web shop (Russian).

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The Geometry of Pasta

I love pasta meals and, as being a visual designer, icon like illustrations and infographics. I fell in love with the  The Geometry of Pasta book.

The Geometry of Pasta, with recipes of  Top Michelin starred chef Jacob Kennedy, shows you “how to develop an instinct for matching pasta and sauce. We explain how to team up pasta with sauce to maximise taste and texture and to turn you from an average into a great pasta cook.”

This cookbook is not like the average cookbook. You won’t find any photos of a steaming plates of fine pasta. Instead you find nice illustrations by Caz Hildebrand, creative partner at Here Design, of pasta shapes, arranged in bold and simple patterns printed in black and white.

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Landschaft Mit Haus

Moscow based corporate identity designer and freelance illustrator Maria Zaikina creates landscape art titled “Landschaft Mit Haus” (English: “Landscape With House”).

Maria is inspired by travelling around the world with her camera and Wim Wenders‘ movie Alice in the Cities, in which the mean character Alice is searching the cities of Germany for her grandmother, whose name and address Alice can’t remember. The subject of journey is very close to her she says.

“Melancholic contemplation during a journey is evoked by landscapes drifting past the window, where details merge into stripes and colours. The scenery floats past in front of our eyes, changing our mood or remaining as a background for thought, leaving perhaps just an implicit impression in the memory. Our eyes glimpse a house standing lonely amongst the fields.”

Each of the illustration of the series houses is like a stopped frame of a film.

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Identity Art & Architecture St Luc Institutes Brussels

Clean, simple and elegant were the first words which came to mind when I saw the identity for the Art & Architecture of the Saint-Luc Institutes in Brussels.

The consistent use of typography, the amount of white space and the small details are a big inspiration for all minimalist minded people. You can download a digital version of magazine #11 for some more inspiration.

The identity for this Bi-annual magazine is designed by the French graphic designer Carine Collin who lives and works in Brussels. She has a good portfolio and her website is also a clean piece of art. I think I am in love!

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Mash Creative Calendar

East London / Essex based design studio Mash Creative designed an A1 calendar poster in a limited edition of 100. Okay … we kicked-off 2010 already almost 2.5 months ago, but it is never too late to put a nice calendar on your wall.

These nice, typographic, minimalist calendar posters are lithographs printed in two colors on 170gsm Cyclus offset with a 60% cyan shiner to achieve an extra rich black. Each poster is hand numbered and signed by the designer.

The calendar is available for purchase at Counter-Objects.

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WE Collective opening posters

Israelian friends Luka Or (multi disciplinary designer), Orian Canetti (interior designer) and Elad Ziv (developer) joined forces to form WE Collective, a new design studio.

To celebrate the start of this new venture, Luka Or designed these colourful minimalist posters.

I love how they do away with the popular notion that minimalism has something to do with the absence of colour, which is completely wrong of course (it’s merely the number of colours).

So: hooray for colour, and welcome WE!

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Homework

Since 2003, Polish design studio Homework, a duo comprised of Joanna Górska and Jerzy Skakun, have created posters for a range of cultural events.

Regardless of whether you can read Polish or not, the designers’ portrayal of the events in question, particularly the Hollywood movie references, gives you good idea about what is being advertised with minimal effort.

Actually, there’s a game in this: visit Homework’s website and see how many events you can guess the relevant posters are for. Unless you understand Polish of course, in which case you’d be cheating.

An exhibition of the studio’s work at London’s Kemistry Gallery begins on March 5th.

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Rebranding the Swedish Armed Forces

A project group of Hyper Island – Robbin Ingvarsson, Fredrik Holmberg, Kristina Herngren, Anke Buchta, Simon Schlüter and Waldemar Wegelin- rebranded the Swedish Armed Forces. They turned the usual function of camouflage around and used one of the basic shapes of geometry, the triangle, to create a new type of camouflage that is all about showing yourself. The goal is to reflect the diversity with the Armed Forces.

The focus for Swedish Army is peacekeeping abroad. In order to fullfill their missions they want to attract new talent – brain rather than muscles.

The challenge of the rebrand was to change the Swedish Armed Forces from a traditional defensive institute into a modern employeer.

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Movie posters by Eduardo Prox

Wow, it’s raining minimalist movie posters! We’re really not going to post them all, some are better than others, but these are great.

Inspired by Albert Exergian’s set, Brazilian graphic designer Eduardo Prox made his own alternatives. One shape, two colours – that’s all, folks.

So far, he’s only made three, but maybe we can expect some more… Eduardo?

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