I love these “real world” information graphics by Peter Orntoft. They are part of a design school project called Infographics In Context. The project deals with data collated from an opinion poll from a major Danish consultancy surveying social interests of the Danish people. Appealing for me is the simplicity of the images, the whitespace and the minimal text on a grey background leave tons of room for impact.

The image below is Interest no.6 is Law and order. The question being have the Danes changed their behavior because of gang related crime.

This next two images are Interest no.4 – refugees and immigrants. Do Danes think its ethical to wear religious symbols in public professions.

You can see more of the information graphics and Peter’s graphic design work here.

Saw this in the paper and thought it was quite amusing. Lydia Leith, a UK based graphic designer has created a piece of unusual piece of royal wedding memorabilia. She has screen printed a number of sick bags with Prince William and his Mott-to-be and put them up for sale.

Images are from Lydia’s site. You can get your Royal Sick Bag here.

Raygun, the magazine founded by David Carson in the 90’s is to be relaunched as C A R S O N magazine. Raygun was published from 1992 – 2000 and was renowned for its interviews with musicians and the unusual/mental typography created by David Carson. The new magazine will cover art, culture, design, fashion and current events and will be published 6 times per year.

I heard and saw David Carson speak (twice) at the Offset Illustration conference in Dublin last year and he was a complete joy. Very charming and witty and of course a complete design genius. He talked about how he didn’t know the rules of graphic design and just forged his own way not worrying about it. He told so many funny stories and had so much work to show that the questions and answers at the end had to be moved to its own slot the following day – hence the reason I heard him speak twice.

One of the stories he told was about an interview with Brian Ferry which was scheduled to run in the magazine but David felt the interview was so boring and not up to scratch that he set the type in Zapf Dingbats, basically rendering it unreadable.

Here’s a few covers and inside pages of old Rayguns.

This is a long over due post. Two weeks ago I went down to Galway for the Irish Blog Awards (which were really great fun) and for a photowalk had been organised for the same day (which was also good fun).

The prop master for the day was Fran Hollywood who brought along a giant polystyrene iPhone on the photowalk and later provided a foam coffin, headstones and mini coffin trophies to the winners at the Blog Awards. Fran is the founder of Made In Hollywood, a company which specialises in designing and creating 3D objects in polystyrene foam.

Fran gave me a BIG polystyrene version of the photowalk.ie logo that I designed a few months ago and for which I want to say a big public thank you. Much of my graphic design work is for clients that I never actually meet in the flesh, so after the design is finished I rarely see the final printed work, so to get a giant photowalk.ie logo made out of foam was very, very cool and it’s taking pride of place in my office.

This is me with Fran and the logo towards the end of the night. (I’ve had a fair few drinks at this stage thanks to the excellent Ladies Tea Party where the wine was flowing and the fact that Captain Morgan’s rum sponsored the Blog Awards. Oh and because I like drinking Guinness too.)

Made In Hollywood are Ireland’s best foam designers and if you haven’t seen the kind of thing that they create take a look at their portfolio. I had no idea of the kind of work that can be produced using polystyrene – everything from architectural and garden features to logos like photowalk.ie to giant promotional pieces including amazing chocolate bars.

Everything you can see below is created by the team in polystyrene.

So thanks again to Fran for the superb logo and if you’re looking for some interesting marketing and promotional materials please check out Made In Hollywood.

If you’re interested in Letterhead design, Letterheady is a Tumbler site devoted to very cool old original letterheads from people as diverse as Johnny Cash to Hitler. Some of the designs are minimalist to say the least, while others have the most elaborate designs that nearly take up half the page. Here’s a few I picked out as favourites, but there’s tons more over on the Letterheady site. 

Walt Disney Productions 1938

Nikola Tesla Company circa 1900

Churchill 1940

Jim Davis 1987

Elvis 1965

Chester Gould (Creator of Dick Tracy) 1962

Charlie Chaplin Music Publishing 1916

Gene Autry The Singing Cowboy 1949

Converse 1932

And finally, not leaving much room for writing …

Walcker Orgelbau Pipe Organs 1892

What do you think of these old letterhead styles?

When I was growing up I remember lots of old Penguin paper back books being around our house. They were mostly my Dad’s books but I used to like looking at the covers. I had no idea that the covers were designed by someone, all I knew was that some were appealing and some looked very boring to me.

This one here on the right is one that I remember and I think it was the big orange sun that I loved. I gravitated towards the more colourful covers which were often made of simple shapes. I’m still very much attracted to that type of design now.

So years later, now as a designer, I have more of an appreciation of the genius that is the grid layout on many of the Penguin book covers, In 1946 German typographer Jan Tschichold was  appointed head of design and devised rigorous design templates for all Penguin’s books and also accepted illustrated covers for some books.

Inspired By Penguin

Last year, illustrator M.S. Corley created some absolutely wonderful Penguin inspired covers for Spiderwick Chronicles and Harry Potter and Littlepixel designed 39 Album covers in the classic Penguin style.

And so to my own efforts. As part of my own “create something new everyday” quest which is really more of a weekly thing, I decided to take a few well known cartoons and design Penguin style book covers for them. It keeps me off the streets

Betty Boop

Bugs Bunny

Captain Caveman

Foghorn Leghorn

Hong Kong Phooey

Popeye

Books About Penguin Covers

Last year I bought the book “Seven Hundred Penguins” which is a nice thick showcase of Penguin book covers, one cover per page. It’s a great source of inspiration and a nice one to have in the book case.

Links

If you’re interested in Penguin book cover design there’s tons of great info out there. Here’s a few links you might find interesting:

The Penguin Blog (Design Posts)

The Penguin Blog Covers On Flickr

Things Magazine Pelican Project

Penguin & Pelican Book Cover Set On Flickr

Design Museum – Designing Modern Britain

 Allen Lane Wikipedia

Jan Tschichold

Jan Tschichold Wikipedia

Reading The Cover

Excerpt From “Penguin By Designers” On Creative Review

So any cartoon character you’d like to see on a cover?