I recently wrote about visiting the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography at NYC’s Cooper Union. But what I didn’t discuss in that post was the show in Cooper’s main gallery—Swiss Style Now—which, as it turns out, included not only contemporary Swiss designers, but also a few retrospective pieces related to our favorite typestyle, Helvetica.

We got to see the first pamphlet, designed in 1958, promoting Neue Haas Grotesk (as Helvetica was called prior to 1960), as well as an oversized business card for Alfred Hoffman, son of Helvetica father Eduard Hoffman. The younger Hoffman began working for the Haas Type Foundry in 1951, retiring in 1989.

Before we left, the curator pulled off the shelf a very rare piece: a Neue Haas Grotesk specimen book designed in 1960 by famed Swiss designer Josef Müller-Brockmann. Back in the day, when designers actually used math when working on page layouts, specimen books consisted of pages of dummy text organized according to different point sizes and leadings.

posted by: CK Anderson  |  category: the design life  |  comments(2)

It’s Elmore Leonard’s birthday today. He would have been 91.

Fifteen years ago Leonard published “Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle” in the New York Times—part of the newspaper’s “Writers on Writing” series. Here’s how he begins:

These are rules I’ve picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I’m writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what’s taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.

The rules that follow that short introduction have been shared thousands of time over the years, and for good reason: They’re no less applicable to marketing communications or business writing than they are to a novel or a short story.

For more on the man Stephen King called “the great American writer,” here’s an Atlantic article from a couple of years ago.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the writing life  |  make a comment

So this article calls Midcentury Modern design “the pumpkin spice latte of the design world.”

There’s a lot wrong with that comparison. After all, Midcentury Modernism is characterized by clean lines, elegant forms, and an honest approach to materials and intent, while pumpkin spice lattes are an abomination in the eyes of our creator.

But if the author is merely trying to express (however clumsily) the ubiquity of both, well…she’s probably right.

Which raises an interesting question: Is abundance inherently bad? Hipsters will say yes, but I’m not so sure. Plus, nobody cares what hipsters say. So let’s ask the question another way: Are Eames chairs more beautiful when fewer people have them? Of course not.

The irony, of course, is that Midcentury Modernists set out to create beautiful design for the common person. And now that the common person has access to it, the cultural gatekeepers aren’t very happy about it.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the design life  |  make a comment

Is a robot gunning for your job? If you’re a telemarketer, it’s already happening. And if you’re a bank teller, there’s a 98.3 percent chance you’ll be automated in the next 20 years. That’s according to a pair of Oxford researchers via NPR’s handy automation calculator.

It turns out that if your job requires you to come up with clever solutions or be able to negotiate, it’s less likely to be automated any time soon. Which explains why graphic designers (8.2 percent) and writers (3.8) are relatively safe.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the design life the writing life  |  make a comment

A few weeks ago we changed out our office display case content to feature one of the best graphic designers ever to walk this planet: Herb Lubalin (1918–81). A typographical wizard and a master of conceptual typography, Lubalin created some of the most iconic logos ever conceived, as well as some of the most progressive magazine layouts ever produced—like U&lc and Avant Garde, to name just two.

So it was a real treat to discover the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography on a recent trip to the Big Apple. Housed at the Cooper Union in Manhattan’s East Village, the collection proves Lubalin’s place in the annals of design history. Flat files within the center are full of his original tracing paper sketches, along with print samples and advertisements. (Lubalin also surrounded himself with some very talented folks, most notably Tom Carnase and Alan Peckolick, both fantastic designers in their own right.)

But if a visit to New York seems a little over the top to look at a collection of great graphic design, you’re welcome to stop by the office for some Lubalin inspiration.

posted by: CK Anderson  |  category: the design life  |  make a comment

On a recent visit to the new and wonderful Whitney Museum in downtown Manhattan, we came across an exhibit of the works of the American painter Stuart Davis (1892-1964). His bold, graphic colors and abstract shapes—along with an inherent playfulness—reminds me of our very own backyard artist, Harold Balazs.

posted by: CK Anderson  |  category: the design life  |  comments(1)

Remember back in June when I used this space to rail against the misuse of the word curate and its various inflections? No? Stop right now and read it. I’ll wait.

Caught up then? Great.

Seems I was on to something. Bartom Swaim published a piece in the September 9 issue of the Times Literary Supplement (the piece can be read in its entirety over at Medium) pretty much making the same case:

“This usage has begun showing up in all sorts of places, typically where something is being sold, as a fancy substitute for ‘chosen’ or ‘selected.’ It’s a way to give a commonplace statement an aura of aesthetic sophistication.”

Swaim then goes on to poke fun at collaborate, bandwidth, stakeholder, and other stains on the language left by corporate America. Curate is merely a symptom, it seems; the disease itself is far more pernicious.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the writing life  |  make a comment

Occasionally my dad sends pictures updating me on his life. As a bush pilot of 36-plus years working in Alaska, you can probably guess that these are not your typical photos. More often than not they’re aerial shots of the Brooks and Alaska Ranges, shot from his plane and usually containing a wing or a tire in the frame. Half the time they’re blurry or crooked. The other half of the time they’re his airplane. Just parked. Nothing else. Just that. Like it’s his fourth kid and he’s just so proud to see it head off on its two thousandth flight.

This has always been normal for me. This was my life growing up. My dad showed off mountains and his planes from all over Alaska. I flew in Super Cubs and Cessnas and had friends who owned sled dog teams. We wore bunny boots and when I wanted to go to a friend’s house I just hopped on the snow-machine and drove there. We cross-country skied in elementary school gym class (barf) and had midnight sun soccer tournaments where the older you were the later you got to play (the last games started around midnight). We drove 6.5 hours to get to the closest state tournaments and in the winter we drove on the completely frozen river—in our car—to either get the best view of the northern lights (which were ridiculous, by the way) or to just get to the airport faster.

I’ll be the first to say it, my childhood was weird. But looking back and comparing it to my life now, it was pretty damn cool.

posted by: Courtney Sowards  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment