Jolly Old Saint Nicholas

Merry Christmas!

Steven Heller explains how Santa Claus came to be known for his snowy white beard and red suit by looking back at the illustrators who gave life to this now iconic image.

The Santa above is by Raymond Pratt from the 1952 "What's New" by Abbott Laboratories.

Dig Steven Heller's: ’Twas the Icon of Christmas.

That's Right,

HMK

Gracias: AIGA and ElectroSpark for the groovy Santa image.

Stencil It In

I love stencil fonts, always have. And according to Steven Heller, one of my favorite design gurus, stencil lettering never really went out of fashion, yet it’s coming back in style.


In the same way that booming martial rhythms have been incorporated into classical and popular music, stencil-lettering style has long influenced sophisticated typography and graphic design.

The top logo is something I did back in 2001 for the Sabas Trio featuring my friends Joe Reyes, Greg Norris and Mark Rubinstein. The District 9 poster is by Ignition Print and below is the poster and GUI for the iPhone app I did for the Rackspace Cloud Lounge Party. This was in collaboration with the wicked smart and cool folks at 2 Pixels + GetApp for SWSW this past March, 2009.



Learn more about stencil fonts from Mr. Heller's latest design article for the New York Times: Stencil It In.

That's Right,

HMK

Steven Heller, a former art director at The New York Times, is a co-chair of the M.F.A. Design Department at the School of Visual Arts and a blogger and author.

Satchmobama

Although caricatures won’t sway an election, they can influence public perception. Through caricatured distortion President Lyndon Johnson, with his elephantine ears and hooked beak, and President Richard Nixon, with his exaggerated five o’clock shadow and witches peak, were made equally buffoonish and demonic.

The visual satirist’s time-honored role is to make mountains out of physical molehills, thereby reducing their targets to comical icons, knocking the pomposity right out of them.

Read the rest from Steve Heller's NYT article Drawing the Candidates.

Satchmobama by Rick Meyerowitz.

That's Right,

HMK

A Game Of Evolution

This photo really says it all, don't you think?

Paul Rand on the Play Instinct:

Q: You design as though you were playing a game or piecing together a puzzle. Why don’t you just settle on a formula and follow it through to its logical conclusion?

A: There are no formulas in creative work. I do many variations, which is a question of curiosity. I arrive at many different configurations-some just slight variations, others more radical-of an original idea. It is a game of evolution.

Paul Rand was America’s leading modern graphic designer in the disciplines of advertising, book, and corporate design. He studied at Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute, and the Art Students League, all in New York City, but was primarily self-taught in the ways of modernism.

Do yourself (and your clients) a favor and read the rest of Play Instinct, originally published in Steven Heller's “Design Dialogues”, Allworth Press, 1998.

Have a great weekend.

That's Right,

HMK

Thanks to the folks at: paul-rand.com.