Evidence

Sean Adams
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Sean Adams found the best examples of the next generation of designers and artists in the field of large scale environmental graphics.



Sean Adams
Bad Color
Advice on creating color palettes from the author of The Designer’s Dictionary of Color.


Sean Adams
The Strange Case of the Designer
What makes a graphic designer strange? Is it the obsessive attention to kerning on street signs, arguing whether PMS 172 is orange or red, or collecting odd scraps of paper on every European vacation?


Sean Adams
The Design of Comfort
What I found in the typography of Disneyland was an incredibly dense design solution beyond typography with intentional choices to create a specific experience.


Sean Adams
Blinded by The Light
I found the world of black light posters in late 1978, when I was in middle school. At the time, the fluorescent posters represented rebellion and a bad-ass attitude.


Sean Adams
Smiley Smile
“The image we have would be impossible for Mickey Mouse to maintain. We’re just normal people.”


Sean Adams
When the World Was Young
When I started in the profession, I was the youngest such and such for a long time. Somewhere along the line as the generation before me retired or moved on to greener pastures, I became the old guard. This happens to all of us, which is better than being hit by a bus.


Sean Adams
Fake News: Blow Up
We are conditioned to understand that a photograph is an honest record of an object, time, and place.


Sean Adams
Hope is The Thing with Feathers
A closer look at NBC’s peacock.


Sean Adams
The Meticulous Bruce Rogers
Classical structure and typography, paired with a modern aesthetic, typified Bruce Rogers work.


Sean Adams
Gateway Drug of Dessau
The typography and graphic design at the Bauhaus represent the most religious allegiance to Modernism. But, it is the photography at the Bauhaus that serves as a gateway drug.


Sean Adams
Admiration for the Bland Subject (and Beautiful Design)
When presented with dull content, Sean Adams recommends designers “reframe, augment, or interpret the content and redesign.”


Sean Adams
Remembering Clive Piercy
Without Clive the world will be a little less colorful.


Sean Adams
Mixing Metaphors
This conceptual approach of the “fused metaphor” combines symbol “A” with symbol “B” to produce a new result.


Sean Adams
Hey
Sean Adams extolls the virtues of a narrative told with minimal means and a strong ideas.


Sean Adams
Joe Orton: Dangerous Collage
Is it graphic design?


Sean Adams
Manifesto of Surrealism: 3 Tragedies
We pass through our days creating fictions to make sense of the world.


Sean Adams
Return of the Standards Manuals or Revenge of the Rigid
These are not systems to be messed with.


Sean Adams
John Astrop and Eric Hill, Booze, 1967
Historic design work, linked to the cultural standards of its time, is often unacceptable now. Does that make it bad? Should the creator be vilified? Should the offending design work be eliminated from a classroom or book?


Sean Adams
Mary Blair: The Grand Canyon Concourse Mural
Mary Blair’s Grand Canyon Concourse mural in the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World is a super-graphic that transforms the architecture.


Sean Adams
Phyllis Tanner
“It is a cut-throat business. Be good at negotiating. It is not just about ART.”


Sean Adams
Jennifer Morla: El Museo Mexicano, 1995
As a designer, does the work we create subjugate and presume superiority over another culture, or does it attempt to authentically represent it?


Sean Adams
Marget Larsen
Marget Larsen’s design work bridged post-war American modernism and 1960s hedonist psychedelia.


Sean Adams
Will Burtin
Will Burtin was a graphic designer with no sense or boundaries in media.



Observed


A number of prominent—and progressive—initiatives that once promised to attract women and people of color to the tech industry (including Girls In Tech and Women Who Code) are closing. Three reporters at The Washington Post dig in: “The drop in support for programs that tech companies once touted as a sign of their commitment to adding women, Black people and Hispanic people to their ranks follows a right-wing campaign to challenge diversity initiatives in court.”

Celebrating Black Business month with two inspiring design legends, Kevan Hall and TJ Walker – the founders of the Black Design Collective.

Book cover design is a careful navigation between creativity and brute-force market logic. But is it also inherently racist?

Designer's weigh in on … the Olympics!

Billed as a “color trend intelligence service,” Pantone Color Insider provides global data on use of all 15,000 shades in the company color matching system. This year's color? Peach Fuzz!

Lunacy on LinkedIn.

Brian Johnson—one of the founders of BIPOC Design History,  Creative Director at Polymode, and a member of the Monacan Indian Nation — has spent years researching Indigenous design in an effort to help decolonize graphic design by speaking to the field’s racial biases. Links to his essays for Hyperallergic  (including the brilliantly-titled How Can a Poster Sing?) are here.

Bring Them Home is a documentary film that highlights a small group of Blackfoot people on their mission to establish—on their own ancestral territory—the first wild buffalo herd since the species’ near-extinction a century ago, an act that would restore the land, re-enliven traditional culture, and bring much-needed healing to their community. The film, directed by Blackfeet (Niitsitapi/ Siksikaitsitapi) siblings Ivan and Ivy MacDonald alongside filmmaker Daniel Glick, has just won a climate justice award.

What knots in our histories do we need to disentangle? What future relationships do we need to re-weave? Who and what is missing from the connections we make and unmake with our systems and technologies? Spend two days this month in Sweden at The Conference and "you’ll walk away with new mindsets and materials, teachings and tools, practices and parallels to help get us out of “oh fuck,” and into “now what?”  

There are only 75 Māori architects among New Zealand's roughly 2,000 licensed practitioners (and fewer than 10 Pacific Islanders), despite these Indigenous groups making up more than 25 per cent of the country's population—but Elisapeta Heta is one, and she's got something to say about this—and why it matters. "It's no wonder that our built environments don't necessarily reflect who we are as people," she observes. "There's no diversity in it because it's all been designed through the same Western lens."

Through his charitable organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Michael Bloomberg is giving $175 million each to Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, and Howard University College of Medicine in Washington. These donations are believed to be the largest ever to any single H.B.C.U.

An indigenous design camp for teenagers is the first of its kind in the United States (or maybe anywhere). The goal is to teach Indigenous teens about the range of career options in architecture and design, a field where Native Americans are notably underrepresented.

The functional design elements of the new Michael Graves Design for Pottery Barn collection leverage ethnographic research across several communities, from those aging in place, to individuals with permanent, situational, or temporary disabilities, to those who are planning for the future without compromise, and those who want their homes to be welcoming to everybody, all without sacrificing good design.

“There is no doubt that domestic harmony is endangered by having a designer about,” Mr. Grange told The Daily Telegraph in 2012. “If you are good at your job you cannot avoid looking at everything and, given half a chance, affecting it. I even have an opinion about a tea towel — I just cannot help it.” British industrial designer (and Pentagram co-founder) Sir Kenneth Grange has died. He was 95. 

It's August! You may be heading out on that much-needed vacation! And how will you get there? Map lovers—and travelers all—rejoice! And look no further.

Did you know there is a way to dig in deep to stories about the Olympics that are design-focused? You do, now!

A design-focused conversation about coding, communication, and the beauty of simplicity.

TBD*—the  in-house design studio of the CCA in San Francisco—is looking for local nonprofit/civic partners needing design help this coming fall. Details here.

What does it mean to bestow a “good design” award in today’s design landscape—especially within the context of public space?

A logo conspiracy theory—about the Olympics?

The recent handoff from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris obliged the campaign's designers to launch a new Harris for President logo in just three hours: they also crafted an entire brand refresh—including ads and print collateral AND a website—all of which they built out in just over a day. More on this massive (and speedy) undertaking here.

Our friends at WXY Architecture and Jerome Haferd Studio are among four firms that have won a competition to design a series of cultural venues for historic Africatown in Alabama.

“Our mascot, Phryges, is based on the Phrygian hat, which is a powerful emblem in France on everything from coins to stamps. Phryges is gender-free, which feels appropriate because this is the society we live in. Toys should be for everyone, and not gendered.” An interview with Joachim Roncin, the designer of the Paris Olympics.

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) recently announced that it would eliminate the term “equity” from its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) language. “What organizations like SHRM may or may not realize is that abandoning the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion causes real harm and serious pain,” says Amira Barger. “By sidelining equity, SHRM’s move may unintentionally exacerbate something called ‘dirty pain.’”

“As a person who spent the first part of my career as a graphic designer and art director, I immediately saw the visual power and nearly infinite graphic possibilities of this image.” In today's New York Times, Charles Blow discusses the irrefutable power of an iconic photograph.

In New York City, The Design Trust for Public Space is looking for photographers with “unique lenses on an equitable water future for New York”. Deadline for entry is 11 August. More here.

One artist's (musical) cry for help—or at least, fewer fast-food franchises in North Adams, Massachusetts.

“My design philosophy is to make people happy and comfortable in their environment,” says the 83-year old Irish designer known simply by her first name—Clodagh. “Since I don’t know the rules, I can actually break them all the time.” 

Design for accessibility, blessedly, is on the minds of architects and builders all over the world. Given the fact that an estimated 15-20% of the population is neurodivergent, commercial buildings are increasingly working to become more welcoming, inclusive, and comfortable for all individuals.

“While designers are eager for praise and acclaim and create an aura of ostensibly cultured and intellectual pursuit, often involving awards and accolades, design itself takes no responsibility for what happens when things go wrong.” An excerpt from Manuel Lima's latest book.  



Jobs | November 01