NMCA 08/06/2010
 Esquire 1962  Esquire 1960 Some people take their hobbies very seriously, as you can see on the National Magazine Cover Archive. Their home page sums it up, "The Nation Magazine Cover Archive (NMCA) is a non-commercial 'hobbysite' devoted to helping keep inspirational magazine design alive. These are strange days for editorial designers with homogenisation and closure of many well known (and loved) titles and independent publishers emerging to fill the gaps. Just don't forget to vote with your feet! Support quality magazines. Don't let them die." — The Management Now it may look like just a collection of covers, but there is a wealth of visual culture here, even if it is mostly from the USA. Click on any cover to see the range and depth of that particular magazine. Covers range from photographic and illustrative, to stark minimalism and those with amazing conceptual value. There is the wickedly funny Esquire magazine, and that all-time classic, Time. There are some new unknowns such as Etapes, an international design magazine from France, which has some pretty interesting covers. Check out the 1960 issue of Esquire (image above) which has an article titled 'India's Future After Nehru". I wonder what they predicted back then, and how much of it has transpired. Another great one from Esquire is the one shown above, with the contents typed out on the cover. For illustration-lovers there is 'Little White Lies', a cinema buff's magazine, which only has a range of illustrative covers. Some magazines pull out all stops when it comes to being experimental. Neo2 and Tokion, both of which manage to pull off the unique and daredevil covers of each issue, with finesse. Layout and typographic treatment are radically different everytime, which must take considerable vision and hard-work. And the best, a range of covers from one of the most creative magazines ever, Mad. The covers are just a mild flavour of the rib-cracking, rollin-on-the-floor humour and satire inside. Great humour is rare, and it's an expression of real creativity. Mad had it all, with one-liners, amazing cartoons, caricatures, and satirical commentary. The variety of the mastheads could be a study in itself. I could go on and on about it, but its best you visit the site. A great resource site for magazine lovers. Happy browsing. By Armeen Kapadia  Mad  Mad 1976 2 Comments Re-nourish 01/13/2010
 Re-nourish.com is all about doing just that, re-nourishing the environment, using the power of design. (special attention graphic designers!) Many designers want to know the environmental impacts of their projects, but don't have the right resource to turn to. Re-nourish is such a resource, that tells us all about making better design decisions for a better environment, and calculating the environmental cost each project has. Some of the useful tools on their site are the project calculator and the paper finder which help you get an idea of how much you are wasting or saving. There is also the Sustainable Graphic Design Standards page, where you can fill out their online application and they will assess how sustainable the project is. As explained, "There is currently no universal, reliable set of sustainability standards available to graphic designers, their clients, or consumers—no way to know, quickly, whether or not a project, or a studio, is legitimately sustainable. As a result, studios struggle to educate clients about their environmental efforts, clients don't know where to begin the decision-making process, and everyone ends up either confused, mislead, or just disgusted with the whole business." Yes, how true. Designers are often too flummoxed by the whole process to advise clients correctly. Dispel confusion by a good read-through of Re-nourish.com. Do read their Introduction to Sustainable Design, which dispels the myth that sustainable design is difficult, or clients won't want it. A must read is the Sustainability Design Roadmap. This tells us how we can actually be more responsible and take better design decisions, right from the start of a project. And its pretty simple to do. There is also a good amount of information on greener paper, greener printing, greener ink and greener materials, for all of us designers who were foggy about these issues. As said on their site, under resources: print design, "Without most us even realizing it, print design has been traveling an unsustainable path for years, relying heavily on virgin wood fiber and toxic manufacturing processes. This path seemed to make good business sense because it cost less, and it was easily accessible. But the pulp and paper industry is now the fourth largest industrial polluter in the United States; paper takes up 26% of our country's landfills, and uses 40% of the world's wood harvest. (source: Green Press Initiative) It's pretty clear by now that the real costs of remaining on this path are just too high.More and more, though, print designers are taking small steps along a new, more sustainable path. We're discovering that small changes become large when multiplied by thousands of other designers making similar decisions. Need an example? Given a typically tight budget to produce a catalog, two University of Illinois design students assumed that recycled paper would be cost prohibitive. But using the Re-nourish Project Calculator, they discovered that if they trimmed just 1/4" off the book height they would save around 1,000 press sheets. This saved them $3,000, allowing them to specify a high quality, 100% recycled, FSC-certified paper. With a little design thinking, they saved 9,717 gallons of water, 13 million BTUs of energy, 942 pounds of solid waste and avoided 2,255 pounds of greenhouse gases. Now imagine what you could do with the right tools." Modern packaging is another thing that is eating into the environment at an alarming rate. As they say, the greenest packaging is no packaging at all. This can be extremely feasible for some products, such as T-shirts, which can just be rolled up and secured with a product tag. Of course the 'no-packaging' approach cannot work for many products, and in those cases one needs to be more aware of materials, re-usability, and mode of transport. While we may not have a network of greener printers here in India, there are other simple steps to ensure that a project is at least somewhat sustainable. Do have a look at their Case Studies page as well. Definitely read their Glossary, also explaining Eco logos (those little things you may see on sheets of paper, products, packages, and you don't know what they really mean). Re-nourish is a great site to visit, and read through thoroughly because it makes sustainable design accessible to us all. It tells us how simple design decisions can go a long way in creating positive impact, and its really just a question of designers changing their way of thinking, of being aware and alert, and willing to change, during the design process. Sooner or later (hopefully sooner) sustainable design will form a core part of design curriculum worldwide. Till then, we can take the help of such exhaustive resources such as Re-nourish. As said on their site, "Now imagine what you could do with the right tools." By Armeen Kapadia Braun at 50 08/12/2009
 Phonotransistor TP 1, 1959, Braun  Sixtant SM 31, 1961, Braun Braun, a company that’s practically synonymous with great product design, has a 50-year design legacy. Braun has designed many daily use household products from juicers and irons to shavers and hair dryers. Braun’s origin goes back to the 1920s, but it became the global icon it is only post 1950. More than the products themselves however, it is interesting to see the way Braun has documented their 50-year history online. (click on Braun Design World after clicking English) The timeline starts at 1955, and extends to 2004. One product is showcased in each year. You can toggle between the product description, and the context, which is very interesting, and rarely seen in such detail in design documentation of such a large company. For example, for the first 8 products, the context explains the events at the time, which led to, or influenced the creation of these products. It tells us about the internal climate at the company, the success they were having, the products accounting for most of their sales, and Braun’s expansion and take over of other companies. Products designed back in the sixties have appeal even today, such is the classic timelessness of these pieces. Look at the Phonotransistor TP 1, from 1959, or the Sixtant SM 31 from 1962. These pieces look modern, and easy to use even fifty years later, today. From 1965 to 1974, products have a different context, with the company expanding, collaborating and entering more overseas markets. The Aromaster KF 20 Coffeemaker, from 1972, though unique in design, was too costly to stay for long in the market. (in 1984 they brought out its successor, the highly successful Aromaster KF 40) From 1975 to 1984, Braun decided to move more into the personal appliances market, especially oral care, an idea the visionary Braun brothers had been hatching since the sixties. You can also view the products by designers, and the list of these is formidable. Some were very influential designers of the time, such as Dieter Rams, Hans Gugelot, a teacher at the Ulm school, among others. These designers were strongly from the ‘form follows function’ school of thought, and it shows in their work. It is said that Ram’s designs have had a great influence on Jonathan Ive of Apple. Listed below are Dieter Ram’s ten principles to good design, which hold true to anything, in any era. Good design is innovative Good design makes a product useful Good design is aesthetic Good design helps us to understand a product Good design is unobtrusive Good design is honest Good design is durable Good design is consequent to the last detail Good design is concerned with the environment Good design is as little design as possible Braun celebrated fifty years of Design Innovation in 2005, and its products live its philosophy of innovation, quality and design. By Armeen Kapadia Designer of 2015 07/30/2009
 AIGA asked a question. How can we define the designer of 2015? AIGA teamed up with Adobe to answer that very question. It is good for a budding designer to know what is expected of him or her, before they step into their designer shoes. The industry has already begun to look for a new kind of designer. Traditional skills alone aren't necessary to find a design job; problem solving skills are key. The survey conducted uncovers the challenges for designing design curriculum. The answer is in five sections: competencies, trends, next steps, editorials and timeline. Competencies 01. To create and develop visual responses to problems 02. To solve problems 03. To articulate context 04. To respond to audience 05. To utilize tools and technology 06. To be dynamic in practice 07. To manage and communicate 08. To have understanding of systems 09. To construct verbal arguments 10. To work in a global environment 11. To collaborate 12. To be ethical 13. To evaluate projects The list is nothing new. Most of us may be aware of it, but I liked the fact that it is well-articulated. Here are few more competencies I extracted from the user comments: 14. To be savvy in strategy/business 15. To know more about how we think rather than what we think about Trends Through this research, six trends were spotted, along with the challenges they pose. 1. To draw on experience and knowledge (emphasis on social sciences and humanities) 2. To address scale and complexity at the systems level (emphasis on anticipation of problem) 3. To shift from mass communication to narrow audiences (emphasis on ethnography) 4. To get used to attention economy (emphasis on understanding clients and markets) 5. To share creative experiences (emphasis on involving customers/users) 6. To do human-centric design (emphasis on sustainability) One particular point that got me interested: the thinning of personal and private lives with the use of social networking, blogging, etc. How will design react to this trend? Comments welcome. Source: AIGA Lovely as a tree 07/29/2009
 Paper pulp mill, New Zealand © Greenpeace Although we know we need to use paper economically, and avoid waste, it’s hard to get information on which papers, and printing processes are eco-friendly. Lovely as a Tree is a site that gives some insights on the environmental impact of different printing processes, papers, and other issues that can help graphic designers make better decisions regarding production. The site, though UK centric, gives information on things that we may hardly think about while designing, but now probably need to be taught as part of design studies. Such as the impacts of paper making, recycled paper, how exactly its made, and sustainably sourced paper. As the site says, “With so many questionable ‘green’ claims out there, it’s important to stick to a certification system that’s trusted and watertight.” The site gives information on the different paper certifications too. Within recycled papers too, there are various grades, with a big difference between post and pre-consumer recycled waste paper. (news to me) The site explains how ‘sustainable forestry’ as a broad term is pretty meaningless, unless we have a deeper understanding of the issues involved. The print issues section has information on the issues of energy, emissions, water, waste, solvents, and inks on each of the printing processes. It tells you the plusses and minuses of using each process. For example in a year, a large offset printer could chuck out around 65,000 litres of waste solvent and 85,000 litres of waste developer. That’s quite a bit of waste, and printers need to be made aware of their responsibility. In digital printing there are more energy efficient printers entering the market such as Konica Minolta’s Bizhub C550 and C6500; and Océ’s VarioPrint 6000, which reduce the amount of energy used during its production. Another section worth a look is the glossary, which covers terms to do with print, paper and environmental certification schemes. There are also tips for choosing a printer, a paper, and deciding on your paper specs, for more efficient printing. In a time where even small design decisions can go a long way in making a difference, these are basic aspects that any designer, client, and printer, need to consider. By Armeen Kapadia Magno: The wooden radio 06/10/2009
 magno-design.com Products are extensions of the human body in some way, and not just inanimate objects to use and throw without a thought. A product that lives this philosophy better than any other is the Magno, a beautiful handcrafted wooden radio born in Indonesia. Bakker's autonomous design 05/22/2009
 Aldo Bakker's vinegar flask Aldo Bakker, a product designer from the Netherlands, exhibited his tableware series in Milan. His philosophy would raise many questions on the very definition of design. According to him, design that is well thought out would turn out to be clear and sober. He believes that such an approach fails to show the character of things. Jacek Utko: Frontpage is a poster 05/11/2009
 The newspaper industry has not evolved in terms of design for decades now. Although established newspapers have taken a leap in designing online content, print versions seem dated. A designer from Warsaw, Poland, Jacek Utko, has changed the way we interact with the newspaper. His philosophy of treating the frontpage as a poster, which seems like an ordinary idea, has yielded extraordinary results. Warsaw is considered the mecca of the poster revolution. Poster culture still survives in Poland. Many consider the medium of poster as either dead or declining in Europe. |   Every monthSeptember 2010 CategoriesAll |
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