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Massimo Vignelli, the award-winning designer whose influential signature minimalist style balanced architecture and graphic design in the later half of the 20th century, has died at the age of 83 after a long-term illness. Born in Milan on Jan. 10, 1931 and inspired by Mies van der Rohe and Le... View full entry
Israeli designer Avner Gicelter gives loving homage to Tel Aviv's array of architectural styles in his illustrated "TLV Buildings" project. In the continuing series, Gicelter faithfully represents each building's facade in simple, colorful, almost 8-bit renderings, sometimes retaining small... View full entry
Rendered into clean lines and bold graphic hues, Oporto-based architect and illustrator André Chiote draws some of the world's most iconic contemporary structures designed by their equally iconic architects. He began developing this project by choosing specifically-programmed buildings... View full entry
Love Deborah Sussman? Woodbury University's WUHO Gallery in Los Angeles began the "Deborah Sussman Loves LA!" Kickstarter on Oct. 25 with a goal to host the first retrospective dedicated to the iconic graphic designer this December. Funding will mainly support installation of the exhibition as... View full entry
From the sparsely dotted Chinese walking man to the top-hat-wearing, cane-bearing Dane, almost a hundred “walking men” are displayed life-size on banners that line the sidewalk.
“It’s important to me that they are on human scale because they really represent us,” said Ms. Barkai.
Only rarely are the icons depicted as women, she noted. Of the hundreds of images in her collection, Ms. Barkai has only “about six or seven women, mostly from European countries.”
— blogs.wsj.com
The Buckminster Fuller Institute has unveiled the eleven finalists of DYMAX REDUX, an open call to create a new and inspiring interpretation of Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Map from 1943. — bustler.net
UPDATE: Buckminster Fuller Institute Selects DYMAX REDUX Winner View full entry
A selection of GSD events posters has been acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago for its permanent collection...Zoë Ryan, Chair and John H. Bryan Curator of Architecture and Design, described the acquisition as "an invaluable addition to the department's holdings." — Harvard GSD News
In the archives of the Architecture and Design department of the Art Institute of Chicago are one-of-a-kind drawings and models. These are artifacts of built and unbuilt projects documenting the process and ideas of architects from Adler and Sullivan to Jeanne Gang and Diller + Scofidio. There... View full entry
Chicago has many truly great buildings. It sits firmly on the map of global architecture and is the birthplace of the skyscraper. Creating a short video about just five great buildings is doing this city a massive disservice, as there are many and this is simply my thoughts. — vimeo.com
The Draftery is a curated drawing archive with multiple platforms. We promote graphic works by lesser known architects, artists, students, and other practitioners. Along with our web-based Archive, we also publish Figures, our printed biannual. It is the only journal that we know of that... View full entry
While the old-school images might seem odd, the new production method and a barrage of features both seen and unseen will make the licenses, officials say, virtually impossible to forge. — nytimes.com
New York has unveiled a new design for their driver’s licenses, showcasing Santiago Calatrava's WTC Transit Hub in the background. View full entry
Frank Gehry, Michael Graves, Zaha Hadid, Robert A.M. Stern, Margaret McCurry, and Stanley Tigerman have designed rugs for Arzu Studio Hope’s new Masters collection. However, Arzu’s mission is about much more than making beautiful carpets—the Chicago-based not-for-profit organization is dedicated to improving the lives of Afghan women weavers and their families, based on a model of social entrepreneurship. — architecturaldigest.com
Creators of an online petition opposed to the change say the new logo "loses the prestige and elegance of the current seal." They want the 10-campus system to use the traditional circular medallion that shows an open book, the motto “Let There Be Light” and the 1868 date of UC’s founding. Or find a dignified alternative. The petition had more than 39,000 supporters so far. — latimesblogs.latimes.com
UC's brand guidelines can be found here. View full entry
When I finished my studies, I decided I wanted to go into urban planning and I moved to LA. It seems funny, but I really played down the fact that I’d won this competition. I was afraid it would make me look like a graphics guy, rather than an urban designer. I didn’t even mention it on my résumé. Also, the symbol itself languished for a while. I remember seeing it once on a bank statement, but then it disappeared. — ft.com
The Financial Times has an interesting story about Gary Anderson, an engineer/architect/urban planner that designed the famous recycling logo in a competition in 1971. View full entry
In Frank Lloyd Wright: Graphic Artist (public library), Penny Fowler examines Wright’s ingenious and bold graphic work — his covers for Liberty (some of which were so radical the magazine rejected them), his mural designs for Midway Gardens, his photographic experiments, his hand-drawn typographical studies, the jacket designs for his own publications, including The House Beautiful and An Autobiography, and a wealth more. — brainpickings.org
Around the world, only a few hundred people make a living as fulltime typeface designers. Two of them happen to live in Chattanooga, Tennessee, population 167,000, where they've embarked on an ambitious project to distill the city's artistic and entrepreneurial spirit into a font called Chatype. The goal is to help the city and its businesses forge a distinct and cohesive identity through custom typeface [...]. — good.is