In the 1590s, life as a Huguenot in France was tenuous. Daniel Mignot, a trained goldsmith, must have felt this acutely, for he left his native France and re-established himself in the city of Augsburg, in present day Germany. While Augsburg offered him the religious freedom to live openly as a Protestant, the city’s laws...
There are many ways to celebrate an anniversary. To commemorate a decade of working together as the design duo Non-Format, Kjell Ekhorn and Jon Forss did not opt for the traditional gifting of tin, pewter, or aluminum. Instead, they pooled their creative energies towards a personal project that drew upon their shared love of David...
In the age of Instagram, it is easy to forget that there was a time—in fact, most of time—when information about what an animal looked like was passed between continents by sketches and word of mouth. If this rhinoceros looks a little funny, with whiskers under his chin and scale-covered plates, it is because Albrecht...
In 1970, Steven Frykholm was working as the in-house graphic designer for the furniture manufacturer Herman Miller, Inc., when a company vice-president stopped by his desk. Every summer, the VP said, Herman Miller hosted a company picnic. Perhaps Frykholm would make up a poster for the event? Frykholm already had a passion for screenprinting, a...
Years ago, I was out sick the week that my fellow high school students studied the periodic table. I’ve always blamed missing that foundational moment of scientific education for my very poor mastery of some basic chemistry. But there are certain concepts that I have had the opportunity to learn through personal experience. Every day...
The turn of the twentieth century was an exciting time to be a graphic designer in Berlin. The city, which had once been the sleepy capital of the Kingdom of Prussia, had rapidly transformed into a booming metropolis, bustling with the energy of industrial progress. At a moment when everything seemed to be changing, the printed poster offered an exhilarating opportunity to explore the alliance of art and industry, particularly to one precocious young man.
On March 16th, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum hosted a fascinating demonstration of the process of a traditional form of Japanese stencil carving (katagami) and its use in the technique of resist-dyeing textiles (katazome) at the Cooper-Hewitt Design Center in Harlem. The event had its origins in a visit that Yuki Ikuta, Assistant Curator of the...
In 1931 when he designed this poster, the Swiss artist, designer, and architect Max Bill had already completed several years of study at the Bauhaus under the guidance of artistic luminaries Oskar Schlemmer, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky. Bill had returned to Switzerland in 1929, and it was while living in Zürich that he received...
Stare into the electric blue shades of this woman’s sunglasses and what do you see? Even if you know what you are looking for, the blue letterforms come together to form coherent words only with sustained visual focus. If you were to advertise a concert that you wanted people to come to, would you make...
