Announcements

AGI Designers Wax Eloquent About Type

By Delphine Hirasuna | December 3, 2012September 4, 2014

The words “typeface” and “character” are fitting terms to describe fonts. When listening to good designers talk about them, you would think they were gossiping about people. They talk about their emotional qualities, complain about what they perceive as their flaws, get blushingly specific about their physical beauty. For them, some typefaces are casual flings, good for a quickie when the mood strikes and the lighting is right; with others, they are in love and ready to commit for life. For many designers, a studying letterforms is more engaging than reading what the collected letters have to say.

Printing Techniques

Sappi Standard 5 Begs to Be Touched

By Delphine Hirasuna | May 18, 2012September 4, 2014

When you are given an assignment to demonstrate the awesome special effects possible on paper, you need subject matter worthy of such dazzling printing feats. Superheroes. Pirates. Bigfoot. Weird larger-than-life creatures. Spies. It didn’t take long to figure out where to find all of them in one place – at 826 National, a nonprofit network of tutoring, writing and publishing centers for kids, ages 6 to 18. The 826 centers are “disguised” as retail stores, selling gear for “real” working pirates, superheroes, time travelers, bigfoot researchers, robots and so on.

Brand Logos

Designing a Logo for a Beloved Icon

By Delphine Hirasuna | April 30, 2012September 4, 2014

Lately street banners with a logo of the Golden Gate Bridge have been popping up all over San Francisco to mark the 75th birthday of the city’s most beloved icon. Designed by Studio Hinrichs, the anniversary logo features the Bridge’s familiar vermillion red (aka International Orange) color, its soaring 746-foot-high tower and the Art Deco-styled sunburst border of the rivets that bolt the Bridge together. Applied to everything from signage to souvenir merchandise, the 75th anniversary logo was created to work in one-, two- and four- colors and remain crisp whether etched onto glass, cast in metal, or stitched on fabric. Along with the logo medallion, Kit designed a special Bridge typeface, called Golden Gate Girder, for a commemorative poster, single alphabet letter keychains and other uses.

Typography

Vernacular Typography Featured in
2012 Typography Calendar

By Delphine Hirasuna | October 18, 2011September 4, 2014

Some typefaces aren’t meant for everyday use. They often aren’t readable as running text or even for headlines. Most will never be licensed for public use nor are they commercially available. But they set the mood, add their own graphic interest, and tell their own slice of the story. That is the case with several of the typefaces featured in the 365 Typographic Calendar for 2012.

Take Girder, for example. Asked to create the identity for the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge next year, Kit submitted an alphabet as part of his presentation. The alphabet took its inspiration from the riveted girders that formed the unpinning of the bridge. The immediate association with San Francisco’s most famous landmark offered a visual linking device in the visitors’ gift shop, and made a distinctive image for all kinds of tourist souvenirs, from key chains to coffee mugs.

Photography

Corbis All Day, Every Day

By Delphine Hirasuna | February 2, 2011September 4, 2014

Corbis doesn’t lack for products. With more than 100 million rights-managed photographs and illustrations and royalty-free images, Corbis continually faces the challenge of communicating the depth, breadth, diversity and quality of its vast collection and getting designers, art directors, publishers, editors and filmmakers to think of Corbis as their one-stop source for all stock image needs every single day.

That design brief quickly suggested to Studio Hinrichs the idea of creating a day-at-a-time calendar, featuring an event that happened that specific day in history and an image that tied the story together. This approach would allow Corbis to showcase the range of its many collections – celebrities, sports, fine art, science, architecture, cultural, outer space, historical, etc. –and give recipients a fascinating factoid for the day. What’s more, it addressed Corbis’ desire to make this program accessible across multiple platforms and to provide something that would be appreciated by everyone from top-level newspaper editors to wannabe designers still in school.