Author: Delphine Hirasuna

Visual Merchandising

Shopping Bag Puns

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Aside from the fact that we find these shopping bags funny, they show the possibilities when designers literally think outside of the bag. When approaching an assignment, designers typically focus solely within the boundaries of the product itself, whether that is the edges of a page or the shape of a three-dimensional object. But sometimes the cleverest design answer presents itself in the way and in the environment in which the product will be used. What’s terrific about these shopping bag designs is that the user unwittingly is made part of the graphic solution. It takes the user’s participation to complete the visual pun.

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Public Art Programs

Cancun’s Latest Tourist Attraction

By Delphine Hirasuna |

One is reminded of the mysterious stone heads on Easter Island and the terracotta warriors unearthed in China, but the underwater sculptures unveiled at Mexico’s Cancun Marine Park last week are brand new. British artist Jason de Caires Taylor made 400 life-size statues, casts from molds of real people, from an 85-year-old nun to a three-year-old boy. Then the concrete figures were sunk in shallow water that could be seen by divers, snorkelers and from glass-bottom boats.

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Illustration

Saying a Lot in a Little Space

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Fernando Volken Togni, a 27-year-old designer from Porto Alegre, Brazil, illustrated this series of colorful drawings for Qatar Airways’ Oryx Magazine. Each illustration presents 24-hours in the life of a world-renowned city by presenting iconic scenes of the city through an assemblage of pictograph-style shapes. Togni also expresses each city in a different color palette to convey its cultural uniqueness. Especially when viewed in an international airline magazine, this illustration says a lot without the use of a single word – or the need for translation.

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Brand Language

826 National’s Unnatural Marketing Strategy

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Bear with me. This is hard to explain. We got interested in this story because we loved the graphics and packaging for the new Museum of Unnatural History in Washington D.C., which isn’t a museum and not a real store either. It’s the Washington D.C. location for 826 National, a nonprofit tutoring, writing and publishing organization founded to assist kids aged six to 18 with their writing skills. It got its start at 826 Valencia Street (hence the name), a storefront location in San Francisco’s Mission District. To make the place seem “cooler” to kids, the 826 founders decided to disguise it as a “Pirate Store” and stocked it with pirate supplies like peg legs, message bottles and hooks. Kids loved it and sales helped support the tutoring programs.

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Interviews

@Issue Publisher Peter Lawrence on Good Design

By Delphine Hirasuna |

A tireless advocate of good design in business, Corporate Design Foundation Chairman Peter Lawrence recently talked to Fast Company magazine about why design matters. CDF has been the publisher of @Issue: Journal of Business and Design since its inception 16 years ago.