_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.