The next installment of our 50th Anniversary “readers choice” survey is now at the printer. (C’mon, you remember: ink, paper, presses.) The first installment listed the great designers. There was controversy, of course, but a consensus built nicely around Milton Glaser, Saul Bass, and Paul Rand. Now the focus turns to great design projects. Here there is less accord, in part because of the “apples and oranges” quality to the question. How do you compare the 1984 Olympic Signage to Massimo Vignelli’s NYC Subway Map to Shepard Fairey’s Obama Hope poster? And did you vote for your personal favorite or the most historically influential? Consistency aside, it should again be fun when the next installment arrives by mail. (C’mon, you remember: postman, stamps, something real in your hands.) You can see all 20 of the Top Design Projects here and you can see the Top 25 Logos here. We always love to hear from our readers so let us know what you think in the comments section.
I love newspapers. I read an (unnamed) New York City tabloid for 45 minutes every morning. When I hold a newspaper, I grasp an achievable and enjoyable goal, a process I want to return to every day.
When I see a news site designed like a newspaper, the feeling is much different. I consume a lot of my online news through aggregators, often ending up at a predictable handful of established “old media” sources. Yet I have no desire to click around the twenty sections and sub-blogs of those dailies just to see what the paper is offering today. The navigation lacks joy, lacks flow, those UI elements that make you want to explore further. It isn’t nearly all it could be. It is a dangerous time for establishment news organizations: a time of deep Lock In.
Lock In is a peculiar problem – it sneaks up on industries, it takes them over, it renders them structurally obsolete.
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Last evening, Chevrolet unveiled it’s highly-anticipated new Corvette, and with it a refresh of the iconic Corvette logo.
The 2014 logo, a re-imaging that thematically matches the redesign of the car, is bolder, busier, and more aggressive. There’s exaggerated form and shadowing, a nod to the modern demands of scalability and device readability; it will be as recognizable at 80 miles per hour as it will be at 114 x 114 pixels on your iPhone screen.
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Today is the birthday of Massimo Vignelli. When I first met him some five decades ago, I was wearing pajamas. But I am getting ahead of the story.
Mr. Vignelli’s grace, style, and talent has been a constant source of astonishment to all who know him — not to mention a source of reportage in GDUSA over the entire 50 year lifespan of the magazine. As we prepared for our 50th anniversary editions of GDUSA magazine, I came upon quotes by Mr. Vignelli in both the January 1980 and January 1990 editions. In 1990, for example, he glimpsed the future of design and wrote: “The challenge of design should be met by responsible and well-educated professionals, otherwise design will fail its task and we will be polluted by meaningless products. Design without culture becomes kitsch. Design that follows trends is totally irresponsible. The design task for the nineties is more than ever a design really integrated in the production process. At the level of production, the computer will play a bigger role. No one can do a stupid job in an intelligent way better than a computer.” No one sees things more clearly or says them more convincingly.
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