_idea_mag

The best thing about Idea Magazine is that it's only ever about one subject from cover to cover. When you get one on a subject you're interested in, it's a pure joy. There are pages of generous reproductions, of great Letterpress books all beautifully laid out with some great close up details.

The magazine uses various formats well designed combining both English and Japanese's language on each page but still is able to stay fresh and unclogged. They use many stocks of paper well suited to the subject matter at hand in its issues. As though no expensive is speared feels like every penny you spend on idea magazine is going straight into making this a fantastic publication well worthy of a spot in my collections. a high point on the magazine is the lack of breaks caused by advertisement in all other design magazines this creates a book like feel and a seem less flow between content. it is designed so its easy to pick up and turn to any page and be quenched of the thirst for knowledge as well as being able to read from cover to cover. or simply take advantage of is it as a graphic designers resource for aweinspiring imagery and design.

For example

IDEA NO. 323 : Wim Crouwel

Special Feature: Wim Crouewel's adventures into the experimental worlds
Introduction / Poster / Book design / Stamp, Logotype, Typeface / New Alphabet / "The WC Alphabets" Text by Sergio Polano, with William Bottin /
"Type Design for the Computer Age" Text by Wim Crouwel /
"Typography: A Technique of Making a Text 'Legible' " Text by Wim Crouwel /
Comments on Wim Crouwel

2,829 JP Y

Special Feature: Wim Crouewel's adventures into the experimental worlds Wim Crouwel (born 1928) is of the most influential dutch designers in the 20th century. His typographic designs, envisioned through his unique combination of functionalism and aesthetics, have been influential on designers of younger generations. This issue of Idea specially devoted its 190 pages to Wim Crouwel's representative design works, including posters, book designs, logotypes, stamps, typefaces and others. His legendary New Alphabet is also introduced with full details. Two historical essay's by Crouwel and comments from imporatant design figures are also featured. [CONTENTS] Introduction [Japanese Only] Works of Wim Crouwel: Poster, Book design, Stamp, Logotype, Typeface, New Alphabet The WC Alphabets Text by Sergio Polano, with William Bottin Type Design for the Computer Age [1970] Typography: A Technique of Making a Text ¡ÆLegible¡Ç [1977] Text by Wim Crouwel Comments on Wim Crouwel Karel Martens, Hamish Muir, Helmut Schmid, Lars Muller, Wolfgang Weingart, Shigeru Watano, Ian Anderson, Experimental Jetset, David Quay, Tony Brook, Bibliotheque, Bryan Edmondson, Michael C. Place

uni_everything

Universal Everything was founded by Matt Pyke in 2004, as a multidisciplinary creative studio, operating worldwide as an ever-expanding, modular team of designers, programmers, animators and musicians.

Working with art, music, fashion, architecture, automotive and technology clients including Apple, Audi, Nike, London 2012 Olympics, Manhattan Loft Corporation, MTV, Nokia, Warp Records and Channel Four.

Universal Everything, founded by designer Matt Pyke after 8 years at renowned international firm The Designers Republic, embodies the very idea of cross-discipline design of all kinds. It seems he has put together a international superstar network of designers. Their capabilities span across their matrix of talent to new media, sound, advanced interactive, motion graphics, and even straight-up branding, print and advertising.

Working with art, music, fashion, architecture, automotive and technology clients including Apple, Audi, Nike, London 2012 Olympics, Manhattan Loft Corporation, MTV, Nokia, Warp Records and Channel Four.

As an example of their cross-discipline approach, for this work they constructed a real-time software-based wind tunnnel (programming by Karsten Schmidt). Something about this reminds me of the audiovisual performance and computer/human interaction work of Golan Levin, an MIT Media Lab alum. Universal Everything and Karsten Schmidt programmed this wind tunnel model in an open source software environment called Processing, created by the Aesthetics and Computation Group at the MIT Media Lab (coincidence?). The more I explore their work, the more I am struck by how beautiful it all is. This also speaks volumes of their work from a creative direction perspective. With such a wide spectrum of work across a large network of colleagues and geography, there is always a characteristic aesthetic.

wolff olins

British design consultancy for almost four decades with particular prominence in the fields of corporate identity and branding, Wolff Olins has offices in London, Madrid, Lisbon, New York, San Francisco, and Tokyo. It is part of the Omnicom Group. Founded by Michael Wolff and Wally Olins in London, the latter in particular has done much to define publicly the discipline of corporate identity design and has published several books on the field. In these texts he made it clear that successful corporate identity work is about much more than logotypes and visual imagery, rather embracing a wider and deeper understanding of individual corporate business practices, patterns of behaviour, and aspirations. The consultancy's identity strategy clients have included the Q8 oil company (1984), British Telecom (BT, 1984), Orange telecommunications (1994), Honda, Renault, the Heathrow Express train (1998), the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Tate Gallery (1998 onwards). Wolff Olins's clients are drawn from many fields including automotive manufacture, business and financial services, consumer goods and services, the cultural industries, education healthcare, manufacturing industry, information technology and media, and transportation. Wolff Olins's programme of brand management of BT typified the consultancy's approach to corporate identity, bringing about changes to BT's culture and its relationship with the public it serves. Such an approach has been carried through in most aspects of the company's work including the Portuguese Tourist Board, the 2004 Athens Olympic Committee, the South West Development Agency, the North Staffordshire Design Initiative (2003), and the World Gold Council. The kind of impact that Wolff Olins's identity work can generate is exemplified by its work for the Tate Gallery that began in 1998 with the aim of developing a new brand that would bring together its collections, three existing sites, and a fourth site that would open in 2000. This resulted in the ‘Tate’ brand and the four galleries: Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool, and Tate St Ives. The newly branded Tate had 7.5 million visitors in its first year 2000-01, an increase of 3.5 million on the previous year.

Daniel Eatock is a London-based designer known for his conceptual approach to solving traditional client problems as well as those of his own choosing. Eatock graduated from the Royal College of Art and worked as a designer at the Walker Art Center before returning to England to create Foundation 33 and most recently Eatock Ltd. His work has consistently employed a systematic but not necessarily dogmatic rigor that privileges the elemental over the extraneous—a philosophy neatly embodied in his motto: “Say YES to fun & function & NO to seductive imagery & colour!” His work for entertainment and cultural clients ranges from such projects as the graphic identity and promotion for the British television hit Big Brother to a street exhibition of Warhol billboards for Channel 4 to a collaboration with artists Oliver Payne and Nick Relph for an exhibition catalogue with sound chips, a flip book, handwritten notes, and a cover wrapped in the upholstery fabric used on London transit seating. Eatock’s idea of “entrepreneurial authorship” has led to the creation of numerous self-published limited-edition works such as Untitled Beatles Poster, which includes the lyrics from every Beatles song, and the 10.2 Multi-Ply Coffee Table, fabricated from an entire single sheet of plywood.

_Six_degrees - Non Format

renowned and heavily publicized founders of Non Format Kjell Ekhorn and John Forss (founded in 2000) built their foundation art-directing album covers. Each encourages highly critical of views each others design ideas. Everything coming out of the studio is the result of collaboration between the two of them. Ruthless in there approach working for sometime on a project only for it to be scraped at the last moment. Also known for there art direction of magazines (such as The Wire and currently Varoom magazine), design and illustration. They do allot of there work in the music industry and this is a major shared interest of theres. Designing for such company's as The Leaf Label, Lo Recordings, Mute Records and Domino Recording Company.

The Wire
Non Format were approached by the editor-in-chief of The Wire magazine Tony Herrington, who wanted a new art direction for the magazine. They agreed to take on the project under the premises they would be able to completely redesign the magazine. They responsible for almost 50 issues of the magazine working on the magazine for 4 years the decided to move on and allow another director to take the magazine in a new direction.

There work

For me Non format has 2 very contrasting styles in there illustration and typography and i guess there overall approach to design. On one hand they create very heavy and strong typefaces that are very simple lacking much detail just enough detail allowing the reader to identify they shapes of the type. And on the other hand they create very ornate and complex images of type.


There connecting work
This is the title sequences for a channel 4 program called the perverts guide to cinema.

_six degrees of separation.

_rap represented in mathematical charts and graphs

the visualizations of Hip-hop / rap lyrics.