Archinect - News

Herman Miller debuts new modernist rebrand for 2024

2024-01-04T17:10:00-05:00

Herman Miller is heading into the new year with a changed branding identity inspired by its namesake founder’s 1960s-era experimentations with the Helvetica typeface, delivered by the Brooklyn-based design agency Order.

The move comes a year after Herman Miller’s 100th anniversary was celebrated with special exhibitions, a retrospective publication, and other programming. The prolific furniture maker’s signature ‘M’ logographic design from Irving Harper was preserved in the rebrand. The company says it is hopeful the refresh will help guide its next century of creative excellence.

“The last brand identity served Herman Miller well for 25 years, but that system predated many of the touchpoints we now have with the Herman Miller customer,” Herman Miller Creative Director Kelsey Keith recently detailed in It’s Nice That. “What we needed was an evolution of the brand, and a complete design system, one that could flex from a mobile phone screen to a physical space and everywhere in betwe...

On the mystery and magic appeal of LA's iconic visual language

2022-05-19T16:51:00-04:00

The apartment signs of L.A. announce location through flair, decadence, strangeness, absurdity, signification. When you see an otherwise unremarkable name affixed to a building in your neighborhood, you know — probably to the exact number of paces or miles, if you counted — how much further your intended destination is. That’s the thing about L.A. apartment signs — they point you toward where you need to be: home.

The LA Times has a really cool new series I am personally obsessed with wherein the “architecture of everyday life” is explored in and around the city. In this iteration, the Times’ style editor Ian Blair waxed poetic about LA’s midcentury typographical elements, best embodied on the facade of Paul Revere Williams’ iconic Beverly Hills Hotel, that are now synonymous with the visual imagination of Southern California feted by David Hockney and so many others.

Image courtesy Joe Wolf via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

Blair spoke to the alien nature of the language contained in apartment typeface, commenting on their need to communicate intimations of luxury and class in a way in which words alone become a most effective means of conveying the interiority of space (no matter how illusory).

“Apartment signs affect us because of the amount of effort put into the premise: Please stop, look, come inside, see if you desire to belong here. There’s innuendo baked into the concept; the main selling poi...

People are having fun with IKEA's sofa planner — and the SOFFA SANS font is born

2019-07-03T14:00:00-04:00

Ikea has released a free font called Soffa Sans, inspired by all the memes born from its online “Design your own sofa” planner. The tool allows for customers to design the layouts and configurations of Ikea’s couches, from the Vimle sectionals to the Vallentuna modular sofa series. Once it was discovered that the planner allowed for basically any configuration with no limit to the cost, it inspired some Sims-like creativity from users.

The SOFFA SANS font was developed in partnership with UK agency Proximity London and is available for download here.

Some of the examples people used the sofa planner as a block-y drawing tool (which inspired the font) below.

pic.twitter.com/o75DdhB3D5
— forever (@perspectivator) June 23, 2019 there are 2 types of people. those who walk to the center, and those who hop. pic.twitter.com/HDe8n8HPip
— Morgan (Mostly Garbage, Partially 2 Day Old Bread) (@MeButInPogForm) June 23, 2019 If someone could give me £2,105.00, I'd put it to good use pic.twitter.com/XfXkrSUrtt
— Bamboolean (@bamboolean) June 23, 2019 I call this the "married but don't like each other." pic.twitter.com/uVo9auGKy0
— The Jenneral (@thejenneral) June 24, 2019 Sofa Bot 3000 welcomes you to his comfort party. pic.twitter.com/ofcQTxfzrM
— Sean (@seanlacey) June 24, 2019 Let's be honest, it was only ever going to end one way....... pic.twitter.com/7RbflIXgQ7
— James McLaughlin (@JS_McLaughlin) July 3, 2019...

Seeking identity through city fonts

2015-01-20T13:53:00-05:00

Decimated by manufacturing losses, some smaller cities are turning for help to an unlikely group of people: typeface designers. Can new fonts really breathe life into the postindustrial city? [...] Type has a lot of effect on the atmosphere of a place, he says, calling it “the voice of the city”: “I think cities that don’t have this very dynamic energy, they don’t feel the need to change their identity.”

Ruedi Baur: Architectural and Urban Inscriptions

2013-11-08T10:59:00-05:00

Ruedi Baur will discuss, based on examples, the necessary synergy between designers, architects, landscape architects and lighting designers to create a city that goes beyond functionality to improve the quality of life for everyone.

The Type Directors Club and Parsons The New School for Design present Ruedi Baur: Architectural and Urban Inscriptions, a presentation by this leading European designer on the occasion of his first major U.S. commission, a wayfinding system for The New School’s University Center, a new campus center designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill that will open in January 2014.

Baur will present his approach to the question of orientation and identification of public institutions. He will share his thoughts about information design in a society dominated by commercial signs. He will discuss, based on examples, the necessary synergy between designers, architects, landscape architects and lighting designers to create a city that goes beyond functionality to improve the quality of life for everyone.

Baur will be introduced by Tim Marshall, Provost of The New School, who will speak briefly about the university’s commissioning of Baur and his studio, Intégral Paris, for this landmark projec...

A Rational Approach

2012-08-21T13:57:00-04:00

When asked, the German-born “Father of Fonts” insists that there is nothing similar about designing a typeface and designing a house. “They’re totally different,” he says, in excellent English peppered with correctly implemented expletives. “With a typeface, you design a space. A letter is defined by the inside space, more than it is by the outside. You design for shape, but also for function.”... “In either case,” he concedes, “the design is as much about function as it is about aesthetics.”