Category: Graphic design

Orange Hive Identity

Emanuele Cecini designed the identity and branding for new creative agency, Orange Hive, based in Frankfurt, Germany. The designs included the creation of a logo, print stationary, website layout and art direction of the branding photography.

The logo finds a surprising and elegant balance of lines and empty spaces, the branding is straightforward and uses a limited number of elements and information, and the pop of color provided by the orange accents gives the ensemble a nice twist, preventing it from being boring instead of the classy minimalism it achieved. I’m especially fond of the signage application!

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dOCUMENTA (13) notebooks

dOCUMENTA (13) — 100-notes-100-thoughts are a series of 100 notebooks designed by Italian design company Leftloft and published by German art house Hatje Cantz, in order to mark the occasion of this year’s edition of the 100-day arts festival that takes place in Germany once every five years and will be running in Kassel from June 9 until 16 September.

Comprised of facsimiles of existing notebooks, commissioned essays, collaborations, and conversations of artists, scientists, philosophers, linguists, psychologists economists and political theorists involved in the event, the notebooks appear in three different formats (A6, A5, B5) and range from 16 to 48 pages in length.

The idea is to document and share the musings and thought processes of many influential figures, in a true It’s the journey that matters philosophy, as said by the organizers:

A note is a trace, a word, a drawing that all of a sudden becomes part of thinking, and is transformed into an idea.

Bold colors and understated typography make these books into simple and desirable objects… I’d want one of each!

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Uniform Wares: printed collateral

Timepiece company Uniform Wares commissioned UK-based creative consultancy Six to design a series of promotional mailers, stationary suite, gift vouchers, watch box inserts and supporting gift wrap materials for their wristwatch collections.

All of the printed material was designed to reflect the simplicity of the company’s pared-down aesthetic, based around a philosophy firmly rooted in classic British design and contemporary styling. The use of strong, contrasting, albeit neutral colors is used throughout the series, finely complementing the wristwatches’ minimalist designs.

I’m especially in love with the subtle use of the identity on the watch box, as well as the bold simplicity of the gift voucher numbers. The vector illustrations of the designs are beautifully expressive as well… Also, I’m having a hard time choosing a favorite watch!

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Octavo Publicaties Pocketbook Collection

Based on the development of a  self-organising, programmatic and rhizomatic design, Atelier Carvalho Bernau created this series of deceptively simple, geometric designs for Amsterdam-based publishing house Octavo.

Briefed with the wish for a collection of cheaply published books that are functional, durable and beautiful objects, the designers approached this project with an awe-inspiring and thought-provoking methodology of research of both the physicality of books and of  how their data could be used to make readable connections between the individual titles visible.

The results are a design system in which each book is unique but relates to the others, so that what sits on the shelf is a visual continuum.

Every book has its unique cover through a unique position on the map in relation with other publications, its colour scheme and placement of typography. No parameter is random, all data can be read: it is possible to understand that books with the same colour(s) bear some relation with each other; that the point to which the triangular areas point indicate yet another level of relation between the titles.

Having had the opportunity to attend a conference in which they explained the entire process of their design research and systematic, I can say it was a very exciting and inspiring observation!

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Windows 8 Logo

Around the web we can find many minimalist versions of logos and packaging of well-known brands, and these examples are usually made by students or designers as personal work.

However in this case, Microsoft has developed a new logo, for its new operating system, Windows 8, based on the concepts of simplicity and clarity and using just a single blue colour. I think this is the most important point about the new logo. A representative explains:

It was important that the new logo carries our Metro principle of being “Authentically Digital”. By that, we mean it does not try to emulate faux-industrial design characteristics such as materiality (glass, wood, plastic, etc.). It has motion – aligning with the fast and fluid style you’ll find throughout Windows 8.

The new logo design has been made by Paula Scher at Pentagram and I really enjoyed it when seeing it for the first time.

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SMPLFD

Simplified Clothing, or SMPLFD, is a north-american collective from Detroit that believes firmly in “less is more” and strives to deliver thoughtful imagery by means of bold, clever and simple designs. Despite that straightforwardness, they aim to be thought-provoking:

We feel an enigmatic demeanor is more fashionable than the opposite so our designs merely elude to ideas, rather than state anything definitely. In other words, they are a door to enter, rather than a billboard that talks at you.

What I like about SMPLFD is their freshness. The world today is saturated with t-shirt designs that are a dime a dozen, and these just catch the eye in the middle of that busyness. I especially like the quirk of the featured cardigan and the reductionist Marlboro logo tee (which, admittedly, took me a moment to figure out).

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Contemporary Moroccan tiles

Swedish design and architecture studio Claesson Koivisto Rune has created beautiful reinterpretations of traditional Moroccan cement tiles for company Marrakech Design.

Using traditional materials and an old artisanal production process, the studio created three clean, beautiful patterns – Stone, Dandelion and Casa – that are obviously inspired by classical Arabic geometry as well as Japanese aesthetics, with a Scandinavian twist to them.

Available in several colors, the three tile designs can be arranged in various ways, offering several different macro-patterns for each. There is also the possibility to dispose the tiles in random ways, providing non-repetitive formations.

This is an exciting, genuine hybridation of traditional craft and contemporary design, and I positively would love to have a patio floor filled with these patterns…

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Airport Runway Screen Prints

Chicago based architect and designer Jermome Daksiewicz of Nomo is the mind behind this unusual series of screen prints of airport runways. One for the airport enthusiast perhaps, but these precise screen prints present interesting industrial patterns with an attractive simplicity to them.

The continually growing series in which new suggestions can be made, include such runways as John F. Kennedy International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, and London Heathrow Airport and measure 18″ x 24″ in size.

Something a little different, but I like them.

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Bubble Calendar 2012

Designed in Brooklyn, NY by Bubble Calendar LLC, this poster-sized calendar (122 x 46 cm) has a bubble to pop for every single day of the year.

Set in Helvetica Neue and with a very simple and elegant design,  it’s a very appropriate tool for both design-conscious and modern homes or offices as well as a fun learning tool for kids (who are we kidding, adults would love to pop those bubbles too).

Days of the week and all major holidays and weekends are marked in bold for easy reference (there is also a version with weekends marked by black backgrounds) in English, French, Spanish, German and Italian. The calendar is printed on thick paper (80 pound cover stock) and can even be customized with a personal logo.

I’m very sure that I’d have a hard time not popping all the bubbles in one go…

Photography by Alex Kotlik.

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My Book

Milan based Italian designer and architect Denis Guidone, a Minimalissimo favourite for his minimalist watches, has recently created My Book for Nava Design.

Guidone has taken a minimal, yet unusual approach to the concept of this book. He explains:

It is a blank book with a pretext to imagine a story, a book that you could write yourself, day after day; It is a white space to imagine, you can also leave the pages blank and  fill them in with simply your thoughts.

I like the idea it is not a notepad or a sketchbook per se (although it could perhaps be used as such), but instead it is a book to encourage storytelling. My Book is available in brightly bound red, white and black.

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