Food for thought‘[...] do not think that good design can make a poor product good, whether the product be a machine, a building, a promotional brochure or a business man. But [...] good design can materially help make a good product reach its full potential. In short, [...] good design is good business.’
Thomas J. Watson Jr., IBM CEO

Toilet signs from around the world

August 13, 2007, 1:16 AM

Very nice to see different styles, cultures, etc through the toilet signs. Complete colection here. Two examples as apetizer :) :

toiletsigns.jpgtoiletsigns2.jpg

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Design and architecture through art

August 10, 2007, 6:23 PM

It’s all clear to me now why Zaha Hadid and Paula Scher are so good and original at what they do. It’s simply because they are neither architect (Zaha) nor graphic designer (Paula). They’re artists that happen to express their creativity through architecture and design. They don’t follow rules like we do, they simply create. It’s then up to people like us (designers that are often limited by our own education and profession) to develop and eventually realize the artists’ dream/idea.

Here are two interesting article/interview about Zaha’s lack of rigorously sketched notebooks (ID Fuel) and Paula’s failure of adapting to computers, but still drawing type by brush (interview by Hillman Curtis).

In spite of them beeing more artistical in their approach, here are two examples of great architecture/design. Paula’s Jazz logo:
jazz-paula.jpg
Zaha’s Centre for Islamic Art and Culture:
zaha1.jpg
and last but not least, take a look at this great typo-packaging by Paula:
5paulascherpeanuts.jpg

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J. Alex Stamos

, 12:51 PM

Great illustrations from J. Alex Stamos (you should also check out his blog):

cherrytree.jpg
locust.jpg
herd.jpg

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Shoe lacing – an art in its own :)

August 6, 2007, 7:41 PM

Almost everybody’s seen flocks of emos (or other hip teens) wearing large shoes with brightly coloured shoe laces, woven in the most crazy ways.

There are many ways of lacing, some very esthetic, some very practical and some just plain useless. But if you want to know all about it there’s one place to go: Ian’s Shoelace site.

And he’s been kind enough to add to his site a design I made (didn’t know it already existed, but then again, it’s darn hard to be original these days). It’s called “Army lacing”. Here’s the photo, the Chucks belong to a good friend of mine (would’ve linked him if he had his site running :P – hint):
armylacing-fofo.jpg
You can also see it here, on Ian’s site.

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