Hasta La Ideas

Young designers turn back the clock on design

As food, clothing and home goods have skewed toward an old-timey vibe with a focus on handmade, locally crafted wares, so too has graphic design turned back the clock to the pre-digital age. Gestalten‘s latest release, Echoes of the Future, profiles emerging designers that mix current technology with letterpress printing, vintage imagery, dated photographic processes and hand-lettered type—or at the least the illusion of it. There are nods to modernism, abstract expressionism, futurism, retro color palettes and the birth of the gridded layout.

As you page through one muted, mid-century color palette to the next, the influence of past designers can start to feel a little heavy-handed, begging the question, how much style can you assimilate without sacrificing your own voice? But they don’t borrow as much as you might think. Tenfold Collective‘s illustration for a “Winter Wyoming Getaway” comes off as kitsch until it is compared to a true example from a 1950s travel brochure. The side-by-side comparisons showcase just how original these new designers are.

The book also makes the interesting assertion that the draw towards time-honored design work indicates an “aspiration to visual longevity”. The introduction continues, “In these times of visual uncertainty more and more brands, products and businesses are using designs that promote the impression of stability.” Take the new Hertz campaign, illustrated by Chris Gray for DDB. The bold, three-color palette, the shading technique and heavy typeface are clearly inspired by the European and Russian futurist movement—and it’s great. We can’t help wondering if this is a way to make a statement or to play it safe, something only time will tell.

Echoes of the Future is now for sale from Gestalten and on Amazon.

A massive compilation of the Japanese master artist’s sketchbooks now available in a single book

One of the best-known artists of the Edo period and famous for his ukiyo-e series 36 Views of Mount Fuji, which includes his ubiquitous wave print, Katsushika Hokusai greatly influenced artists from Monet and the Impressionists to Picasso. Hokusai began painting at age six, instigating a lifetime dedicated to both serious and casual art-making, which he viewed as an expression of self-help. He was also known as a marketing maverick, popularizing his work and attracting students with a series of sketchbooks he called manga; he produced 12 during his lifetime and three were published after his death. The hugely impressive collection includes an array of seemingly effortless sketches and studies of people, animals, nature and more that capture emotions with impeccable detail.

Typically the notebooks are sold separately or in a multi-volume set, but this new edition combines all 15 of Hokusai’s notebooks into a single tome. The 970-page anthology contains more than 3,900 individual drawings, paintings and woodblock prints “sketched at random and in a carefree manner.”

The massive book opens with a brief tutorial of sorts in “geometrical construction.” Hokusai breaks down his subjects to their most basic forms, components so simple he drew them with only a compass and ruler. Here one can see his use of overlapping flat circles to achieve a sense of volume and depth, and conversely consecutive circles drawn in a row to create a sense of flatness.

Further into the collection one can see both paintings and sketches, which showcase Hokusai’s extreme control with both fine and broad brush techniques. Hokusai Manga keeps the reader, or viewer, in a constant state of curiosity, changing subjects from page to page. This of course is due to Hokusai’s own exploratory eye that led him to sketch anything and everything that caught his attention, a spirit exemplified in the many humorous portrait-style paintings and detailed caricature drawings.

Hokusai Manga can be found on Amazon for $43.

A look at the future of consumer printing reveals a gorgeous user-centered design

In terms of form and function the printer has not made any great strides in the last decade. What in reality is a cumbersome necessity, most printer experiences leave much to be desired between clunky design, awkward parts and a near total lack of user interface. While most companies seem content to continue churning out semi-archaic tech, Artefact has decided to push the envelope with an innovative new printer design. See What You Print (SWYP) is a sleek concept printer that promises high design combined with performance and a fantastic user interface.

Announced yesterday, the SWYP device sheds the traditional printer approach and draws the user right in. The touch screen is not a completely novel component to modern printer but it usually manifests as a small and barely functional element. In SWYP the entire front facade of the printer is a touchscreen with multi-touch capabilities. Wirelessly connect the printer to your camera, computer or Flickr account and your images will appear on a queue from which you can drag and drop them into the work area. Once pulled into the editable zone you can live edit the prints, including cropping, sizing and rotating. The image on the screen reflects exactly what you will see when you print, hence the name See What You Print.

The fantastic interactivity aside, the SWYP concept is beautifully designed. Compact, sleek and elegant the printer’s form strays drastically from contemporary ink-jet space hogs. The foldable, semi-fabric paper tray fits seamlessly into the body of the printer, keeping it compact while also acting as the on/off switch. To check the ink push a button and the color screen fades revealing the printer’s guts without prying open the case. This product has really taken the consumer into consideration in terms of ease of use, fun, and performance.

With no set release date the SWYP is an excellent look at the potential of printers. This new take on a stagnant device offers an exciting view of the future and promise of consumer based printing.

Get more out of your gadgets with these tech add-ons

If there’s any theme to the newsworthy items found at CES this year, it’s the concept of the add-on gadget. From tweeting from a camera to printing mobile pictures and avoiding speeding tickets with phones, here are a few new things you can do when devices start talking to each other.

Polaroid Grey Label Printer

The lesser-hyped product from Polaroid’s new Gaga designed line, the GL10Grey Label printer uses a new Zink (zero ink) printing technology to print quality 3″x4″ shots sent to the device via Bluetooth from a Blackberry or Android app. It gives the option of printing border-less or with an old-school white frame, and offers a variety of special effects. With its chic leather carrying case, it makes a great accessory for taking out to a party. Due out this May, the printer will run $150.

Olympus PP1 Penpal

To trick out their new E-PL2 micro four-thirds camera, Olympus’ PP1 Penpal fits into the flash hotshoe. When in place, a “share” option appears on the playback screen to transfer that picture to Blackberry or Android devices via Bluetooth. The pic lands in your photo library so it can be easily posted to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr or anywhere else you share photos from your phone. It’s available from Olympus retailers now for $80.

Surc Univeral Remote iPhone Case

Not the first but potentially the most powerful, this iPhone case and accompanying software turns phones into universal remotes. You can easily add devices and rooms to be able to use it anywhere in your home, or launch a “Surc attack” in your favorite bar and change the TV station so that you never miss an episode of Real Housewives. It comes out this spring and will retail for $70 from Surc.

Cobra iRadar

With Cobra iRadar a simple radar detector becomes more powerful by pairing with your iPhone. The app tracks driving information, avoids red light cameras and notes speed traps. It’s available from
several retailers now for $130.

Parrot Astroid

The Parrot Astroid is a single-plug in-dash receiver with a simple interface and a high-res color screen featuring web apps, voice recognition, music playback and hands-free telephony—all by communicating with your mobile phone over Bluetooth.

Defining the pigments of the imagination for almost 50 years, Pantone sets industry standards in color. Its matching systems and guides are essential in graphic arts, industrial design, fashion, cosmetics—when finding, referencing or producing the precise hue, tint or shade is critical.

Keeping to its tradition of innovative solutions, the Carlstadt, NJ-based company today launches The Plus Series. A complementary video, “360˚ Color: A Peek Inside Pantone on the Release of The Plus Series,” (made by CH filmmakers
Gregory Mitnick and Ami Kealoha) offers a behind-the-scenes look into the system’s development and products with the folks at Pantone and notable designers, including Swissmiss founder Tina Roth Eisenberg, RISD President John Maeda, and Doug Jaeger, President of the Art Director’s Club. The short, along with the new look and feel of Pantone, comes from the creative minds of the multidisciplinary
Base, who worked with Pantone to come up with a fresh identity, framing the new plus series within “a context that references the classic Pantone Chip.”

After continually adding sections to its book, Pantone reorganized the chromatic families to fluidly relate to each other. It also introduces 224 brand-new colors and three on-trend categories: pastels, neons and metallics. For those who prefer to go paperless, Pantone digitized its fan decks with its Color Manager software.