Some unposted gems from 2018

Murray GM December 31, 2018

Here are a few items that I didn’t feel I could put a full post together for back in 2018. Either it’s because they only have a few pics or they were items I’ve spied elsewhere so didn’t have much extra info for them.

Coca-Cola Advertising Manual

Spotted this at the Letterform Archive back in June. It’s a massive landscape brand and advertising guideline for Coke. And it’s amazing, covering approach, point of sale and adverts. I think it’s from the 50s but will need to check with the guts at the archive.

This page is particularly amazing. An interactive point of sale planner with ‘mind of the viewer’ annotation.

The insanely skilled printing of Ramano Hänni

This is another Letterform Archive gem. The piece Typo Bilder Buch is incredible as it’s hand printed on kitchen towel! I think I remember Ron from the archive saying that one of the pages has over 13 passes but I might be wrong - it could have been even more.

Court by Nirvana Paz from Gato Negro Ediciones

Came across Gato Negro Ediciones at the 2018 SF Art Book Fair at Minnesota Street Project. Fantastic small press from Mexico City specialising in riso print. I picked up this fabulous photo essay book. The black print makes it feel almost like these are charcoal sketches - incredible photography and production work.

Braun Design Guidelines - “The Realization of a Corporate Concept”

Murray GM January 13, 2018

On my last visit to the Letterform Archive I got to have a look at some of the Braun design guidelines. These aren’t the Dieter Rams principles for good design, they are the translation of the Braun design philosophy into a set of brand guidelines. I do admire Dieter Rams and his work but I’m in no way part of the whole “Dieter Rams design cult” that seems to have sprung up over the few years in the UI/UX space, for me there's more to design than minimalism. However the guidelines have four parts and The Realization of a Corporate Concept part is chocked full of great design insight - a wonderful translation of product design into practice and on into brand.

Here's a selection of pages from the guideline:

These have some real gems on them, like:

Braun design is teamwork - I love this, so often we focus on the individual, but at the end of the day design is always a collaboration. It takes a lot more than 1 person to bring a product to life.
Design is not an applied technique of embellishment - damn right! Design is core to the essence of a thing; how it works, the intension of use, the expereince of the thing.
Design is not a transforming mask, nor an added after-thought - hence; "you can't put lipstick on a pig", "you can't polish a turd" ("but you can role it in glitter" as an old colleague of mine used to say).
The design must contribute to the use of a product and Design forms part of a greater whole - it must always be meaningful, it must support the overall purpose.
Consistency is an expression of our design philosophy - this hits home for me, it creates that underlying almost invisible sense of belonging and being part of the same family, so key for any organisation.
Communication and product must compliment each other - often there's tension between product and marcomms teams, but everything must feel part of the same overall aesthetic/ideals or there's an unsatisfying shock when someone experiences one then the other, mismatched marcomms can make a customer feel duped.
For us, good design means as little design as possible - not so sure about this, I'd say that the impression of 'little design' is still a lot of design work - at least in the technology field.
Our design is orderly - I love this as it seems to cut straight to the cultural heart of the brand.

And here's part of the guidance for comms work:

Whatever you feel about Braun and the elegance/tyranny (delete as necessary) of the modernist Northern European design aesthetic, these guidelines offer some great advice for product/brand teams and how they can come together.

Also take a look at Dieter Ram's now infamous Ten Principles for Good Design.

Inside the design process of the great Lance Wyman

Murray GM February 26, 2017

What seems like a very long time ago I sponsored the Lance Wyman Visual Diaries project on Kickstarter. Another amazing and ambitious project from Unit Editions. Yesterday the swag arrived, and boy was it worth the wait. The pack included; a boxed version of Lance Wyman: The Visual Diaries 1973-1982, 3 gorgeous enamel badges (classic Wyman logos), 5 postcards, 5 bookmarks (a must as the book is vast), an awesome T-shirt AND Lance Wyman: The Monograph!

The Visual Diaries are a reproduction of 16 of Lance Wyman's sketchbooks (or diaries) from 1973 to 1982. It's a massive (60mm thick) and incredible graphic design resource, revealing process, obsession and genius. It's yet another beautifully designed publication from Unit Editions, who are quickly becoming my favourite design publisher. Their commitment to the integrity of the projects and the quality of the production and design is going to cost me dearly, but improve my design library no end.

What's amazing looking at both The Monograph and The Visual Diaries are how Lance Wyman's themes and design concepts are so interrelated. Ideas worked through, and played with over and over, with never an idea wasted. Here are some pages from The Visual Diaries.

The Monograph in contrast is another great (again beautifully designed) reference for a variety of his commercial projects. It also includes some great articles and essays. But what I love most about it is how it highlights Wyman's amazing skills at creating Design Language Systems and then pushing them to the limits. Check these page spreads:

I love the amount of crossover his work has into physical spaces. The scale and dimensionality of many of the idents and logos is awe inspiring.

On top of all this visual system design is a sense of fun and humour that permeates everything. Something else that is pure gold in the book are the typefaces created for the various brand identities and systems.

Here are a selection of his incredible display faces (sorry the distortion is my fault - page curve).

And last of all here's this brilliant piece from the Mexico 68 work - love the guy looking intro the camera.

Letterform Archive - brand and design guidelines

Murray GM February 1, 2017

As you'd expect, the Letterform Archive has a lot of identity and brand guidelines. Many of these are not very glamorous, often simply presented in ring binders, but they are graphic design gold. On a recent visit I spent some time cataloguing them.

Here are a few highlights from these original IBM, NASA (see the book reissue) and Olivetti guidelines:

Here's a close up of Paul Rand's wonderful reference to Jan Tschichold on quality in the back of the IBM book.

Seriously geekish purchase: Reissue of the Nasa Graphic Standards Manual

Murray GM May 12, 2016

This is a graphic design and 80's child, double hitter. Nasa was so cool growing up (even in the UK). I think it was mostly due to the Space Shuttle with a little help from Moonraker. This reissue of the Nasa Graphic Standards Manual (Danne & Blackburn) from 1974, marks the identity change from 'meatball' to 'worm'. It's bound as a book and wrapped in a 'space aged' reflective foil envelope. The original was presented in a ring binder with hole punched pages, and it's those pages that have been scanned (including the holes) and used in the book. The reissue design team (Jesse Reed and Hamish Smyth) have reproduced all the fold out pages to create an accurate and loving (but bookshelvable) version.

For me the Nasa identity is something that screams space! Much more than Star Wars or Star Trek ever did because Nasa was (is) real, making the impossible possible and the bringing the unimaginable that bit closer. The style of the 'worm' mark firmly places it historically in the 70's/80's but somehow remains a timeless expression of space age design. I love the collapsed leading and condensed tracking on the full name National Aeronautics and Space Administration. As you'd expect the manual covers logo use, typography and colour as well as grids and layouts. But the really cool parts are the vehicle decal examples - it's not often that you get to show an example of your logo on a satellite and a Space Shuttle.

This is the first reissued standards manual I've picked up, but there's quite a trend for them at the moment. I think this is partly because they are beautiful objects that reflect the discipline and skills of pre digital graphic design, and partly because it's way more acceptable to be this geeky these days.

Grab a copy from the website https://standardsmanual.com/

For more standards and guidelines take a look at the marvellous United Editions imprint from Tony Brook and Adrian Shaughnessy https://uniteditions.com/