Category: Design

What Happens When Graphic Designers are Paired with Nuns, Philosophers…

What do Charles Dickens, the Golden Mean, and nuns have to do with graphic design? They’re examples of how it influences pretty much everything around us—and they’re also the subjects of an ongoing eponymous series of books from London publishing house GraphicDesign& that brings a diverse group of designers together with an equally diverse group of experts (philosophers, social scientists, mathematicians, Dickensian scholars, theologians, etc.) to show how graphic design relates to the world at large.

We spoke with co-founders Lucienne Roberts, a designer, and Rebecca Wright, a design educator, about their plans to expand the public’s perception of graphic design, their recent survey that aims to figure out who graphic designers really are, and their latest publication—about nuns.

➜ Read the rest at AIGA’s Eye on Design

Quietly Beautiful Work by the Illustrator Who Drew The Four Seasons Logo

Various covers of exhibition catalogues Antonucci designed for then Museum of Contemporary Crafts between 1965 to 1972. Courtesy American Craft Council

The Four Seasons Restaurant in New York is celebrated by many as a temple of modern design. Housed in a restrained interior designed by architect Philip Johnson are the elegant furniture of his collaborator Mies van der Rohe, elemental tableware by architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable and her industrial designer husband Garth, artist Richard Lippold’s abstract ceiling sculpture, and the shimmering aluminum curtains of textile artist Marie Nichols.

But much less talked about is the landmark restaurant’s logo, a design of the late Emil Antonucci—a mid-century American illustrator who has been forgotten with time.

➜ Read the rest at AIGA’s Eye on Design

Architecture and Impermanance

Interior of Takatori Catholic Church | By Bujdosó AttilaIs a concrete building necessarily more permanent than one made out of paper tubes? Japanese architect Shigeru Ban questioned the assumption that a longevity of a building depended solely on its material when he spoke at the Japan Society in New York city today. He observed us how developers often spent so much money and resources to tear down perfectly fine buildings to build new ones. In comparison, his “temporary” Takatori Catholic Church still stands today, some two decades on. Originally built in Kobe, Japan, after the Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995, it was deconstructed a decade later when the church needed a bigger building. They then donated Ban’s building to Taiwan’s Nantou County, where it has become a community centre and tourist attraction known as the Paper Dome. It’s a reminder that a building’s permanence often lies outside its construction materials or even design. How a building is regarded in the eyes of those living in it is often what determines how long it stands.
Interior of Takatori Catholic Church | By Bujdosó Attila

Is a concrete building necessarily more permanent than one made out of paper tubes? Japanese architect Shigeru Ban questioned the assumption that a longevity of a building depended solely on its material when he spoke at the Japan Society in New York city today. He observed us how developers often spent so much money and resources to tear down perfectly fine buildings to build new ones. In comparison, his “temporary” Takatori Catholic Church still stands today, some two decades on. Originally built in Kobe, Japan, after the Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995, it was deconstructed a decade later when the church needed a bigger building. They then donated Ban’s building to Taiwan’s Nantou County, where it has become a community centre and tourist attraction known as the Paper Dome.

It’s a reminder that a building’s permanence often lies outside its construction materials or even design. How a building is regarded in the eyes of those living in it is often what determines how long it stands.