Found this great designer's work via bookcoverarchive.com where he is often featured.
Oliver Munday is an American designer, currently working in Washington DC, where he has founded a design studio. His work is very wide ranging and goes beyond just print applications, and the sheer size of his portfolio and quality evident in his work is inspiring. He is also a long-time contributor for the New York Times, often responsible for illustrating articles and publications.
He definitely has his designing career pretty much sorted for the near future, and his immense body of work should mean that he never has trouble finding employment or new clients. Seeing other successful designers always motivates me, and his level is definitely something to try and aim towards in the next few years.
Though i've never had a particularly great interest in animation or the origins of the 'cartoon', since learning of the Felix the Cat cartoons' existence i've been meaning to blog about them, but never got round to it until now. Felix the Cat is a often overlooked animation series that began in the 1920's and has been running off and on in various forms since then (apparently due to make a comeback sometime in the near future, having all but disappeared for the last few decades).
It marked the start of the popularity of animated characters in the silent film era of the early decades of the 20th century, and actually existed a fair few years before Disney began their Mickey Mouse cartoons, arguably making it responsible for Disney's success with the character (whose shorts marked the start of specifically recorded soundtracks in animation).
The animations are brilliantly executed considering the limitations the artists had at the time, with a lot of care and attention put into the themes, art direction, and cultural relevance. The character Felix himself shares a lot of similarities in fact with Mickey Mouse, so it's sad that the character that inspired Disney's breakthrough animations was in the end killed off by them, since Felix's popularity dropped as audiences preferred Disney's non-silent style of film.
Part of what I thought makes the 1920's/1930's Felix films great is the offbeat, surreal nature of the animation and storylines. Below is the 'Woos Whoopee' film from 1928 (during the 'Prohibition' period in the USA), in which Felix goes to an illegal 'speakeasy' club to get wasted, which US audiences lapped up at the time. It's strange and fascinating to see this sort of cartoon art style mixed up with controversial and 'adult' themes, but for me these films seem to have a lot more personality and charm than a lot of modern-day equivalents, and it's a shame the character never really got the widespread recognition he deserved.
One of the greatest things about this particular film is the timeless nature of it. Audiences today (at least those that drink) can relate to it, even nearly a century later and in completely different societies/cultures. Who can honestly say that when drunk they've never danced on top of a table, or stolen someone's drink, or got completely lost on the walk home and ended up getting back at 6AM? Though i'm not so sure about being chased by elephants or following walking lamposts...
Though the value of the typeface (or lack of it) is becoming an incredibly tired 'debate', the reputation of Comic Sans, as well as the history and reasoning behind its creation, is well documented in an interesting BBC article that appeared on the site yesterday.
Particularly interesting was the discussion of how typeface has become an ever more considered element of everyday work, whether it be graphical or otherwise. Before the dawn of computer technology for the masses, the general public would not give a second thought to the application or choices of different typefaces in the world around them, whereas now every man and his dog, not just the designer, has an opinion on them and is prepared to go to great lengths to let the world know about it via the medium of the internet.
Also noteworthy was how the trend to slag off the typeface has almost come full circle, and it's threatening to 'make a comeback' and gain some sort of value as a retro-chic/ironic typeface choice. Hopefully that day never comes, and it rests within the primary school signage/comic strip speech bubble applications where it belongs.
As part of a current university design brief we have been tasked with building up a brand identity, so when I saw this post on Under Consideration's 'Brand New' blog, I immediately found it fascinating, not to mention highly useful. It documents US kid's TV channel 'The Hub' and their recent rebranding effort, complete with a chart of unused brand mark options that were explored during development of the new identity.
It's not often you get an inside look like this into the process of a major rebranding effort, so it is a good opportunity to get some information about what sort of range of exploration you should undertake when developing a new mark.
As you can see from the image above there are well over a hundred executions considered (though there are ranges of very similar efforts but with slight adjustments). Though it may not be necessary to always go into such depth to find a good mark, the fact that the new identity is being received well shows that it pays off to exhaust all the possibilities before settling on a final execution.
Found this great packaging for new coffee brand Brothers Coffee Roasters on the 'thedieline' blog.
"Coming from a science background, Nathan (the roaster behind Brothers Coffee Roasters) has approached roasting coffee with the same methodical reasoning as science. Using this as inspiration, the marque created for Brothers takes reference from the periodic table while the full logotype is inspired from the process of roasting the coffee. A whole range of 12 blends are in production, all featuring a different coloured circle on the packaging to appropriately represent the blend."
I'm really liking the minimal and clean design, with the focus on the colour coding of the different blends and the nicely executed logotype and supporting information. I always find it refreshing to see retail packaging go for a sophisticated 'less is more' approach, rather than bombarding the consumer with pointless information and offers plastered across the box with little thought towards weighting or placement.
Found this infographic via coolinfographics. Love the simple visual style and presentation, though perhaps the designer has included a few too many films/tv shows to make the infographic as legible as it should be.
These water fountain installations by William Pye use an interesting dynamic to completely flip the normal idea of how a water fountain traditionally works. His cylindrical acrylic structures are filled with water, pumped in a circular motion and programmed to rise and fall within the cylinder, which creates a 'vortex' air pocket in the center of the cylinder. I love the simple style of his constructions and visual effect they produce.
This installation was placed in the departure lounge of Gatwick Airport North Terminal, but he has done similar installations in other places around the UK.
