Shillington College

Vintage Irish Book Covers

Hitone: Vintage Irish Book Covers features book and booklet cover designs from the Irish state’s first 50 years. The blog is updated and maintained by Niall McCormack, a graphic designer based in Dublin, Ireland.

Process is Form - Book Launch

Team will be having a launch event for their eagerly anticipated book, Process is Form, in Manchester on Thursday 2nd September in conjunction with INC. All INC members will receive a free copy of the book on the evening. 

The event will feature a talk by Design Project, the designers of the book, on the thinking behind the project which analyses the relationship between the process and mechanics of print production and the practice of design and communication. 

Practical and informative, beautifully designed and printed, the book is number two in a series with the first book completely selling out. The extensive use of special colours (24 colours, plus different foils and finishes throughout) really gives a taste of the range of print and finishing services available to designers. 

So if you want to find out more about how a highly complex book of this nature comes together, make sure you don't miss this one-off opportunity to hear the designers talk specifically about the project.

Thursday 2nd September, 6.30pm

The Hive
47-51 Lever Street, 
Manchester  M1 1FN

 

We all need a little Ellen Lupton for our pockets. Thinking with type.

Ellen Lupton is a writer, curator, graphic designer, lecturer and all round know it all in things typographic. Her website 'thinking with type' covers a lot of the fundamental aspects of typography. They are well explained in a straight forward fashion. Good resource. She has also made some of her teaching tools up there or anyone to see with some interesting projects that any student would benefit from doing.

The above piece of work above is by one of Lupton's students (Andy Mangold). Ellen has a flickr page dedicated to her syllabus, which is available for everyone to read and you can view some of the interesting works by her class.

If you like what you find at her site and flickr page you might consider reading her book 'Thinking with Type'.

Another thing Jen and I enjoyed, was playing the silly type games, sort of first generation looking arcade games, where you have to stop a roman typeface being illegally italicised or catch the incorrect quotation marks. Of course we only played it during our break time.

Type geeks if you can't beat em kern em.

 

The Distant Hours by Anderson M

As London and Manchester are currently pondering a hand made cover for their favourite book or CD, I thought this might provide you with some inspiration. The Distant Hours by Anderson M Studio promotes the novel of the same name by Kate Morton and is a darkly beautiful animation by the same studio who recently produced an acclaimed short for the New Zealand Book Council.

JOOST GROOTENS

I was just flicking through the latest edition of Grafik Magazine (#183) and came across the work of Joost Grootens, a dutch designer who has produced some very sexy maps and atlases as well as other publications. Makes me want to run out and buy the Metropolitan World Atlas right now. (I have a strange love of staring at geographical statistics, particularly when they look this good).

Check out the Grafik interview here.

Fully Booked. David Pearson and Jim Stoddart talk about Book covers.

Check out this little interview with Pearson and Stoddart contributors to the book 'Fully Booked'. A book about cover art and book design.

 

Here a few samples from the book itself. Mmmmm! Very tasty spreads.

 

 

 

Massimo Vignelli is the 'Canon' of design.

If you are not familiar with Massimo Vignelli you should be. He is an old school designer born in Italy and has been working out of New York since the 50's. His mutli-disciplinary studio is entitled 'Vignelli Associates'. Massimo is most famous for bringing the 'Swiss style' graphic design to America, where it became known as the 'international style'. He has worked on some infamous jobs such as creating the NY subway map and signage to corporate identites for Benetton, American Airlines and Knoll.

Being a true supporter of design he has kindly put his book 'The Vignelli Canon' online for free download as a PDF. So, if you are looking for some pearls of wisdom relative to using grids, typography and some insight into the inner workings of a living graphic design genius get downloading.

So often we overlook the wisdom of the old(er). It is too easy to say 'times have changed' and 'that those rules no longer apply'. But there is still much to be learned from those who have devoted their whole life to graphic design and Vignelli is definitely one of those whose ideas and insights are as valid today as they will be tomorrow.

counter-print.co.uk

Counter-print.co.uk sells art and design related print material. Often out of print, limited edition or hard to find, they have some gems for sale. If you have a bit of Chrimbo money burning a hole in your pocket you might be interested in their winter sale.

Inkymole

Sarah Coleman is Inkymole, and Illustrator with a penchant for beautiful hand rendered typography. Sarah Says she is, 'Inspired by the penmanship of a more elegant era and with a muscular, if pedantic, grasp of the English language, I've wrapped these perma-stained fingers around words and pictures for advertising, identities, packaging,record sleeves and a trillion book covers.'

Manchester Music scene.

Unfortunately the website for the studio 'Music'  like most design agencies is under eternal construction. This is the life of a busy and talented design agency, the paying jobs always come first. Their holding page did put a smile on my face.

You only have to look at the work 'Music' do to see why they don't have the time to design their own site. These examples were published on the Creative Review blog. 

A perfect example of how less is more and how a dry subject like the economic state and potential of the city of Manchester can be transformed into a delightful surprise.