“The digital Letterform Archive has made nearly 1,500 objects accessible to browse online through over 9,000 high-resolution images,” Hyperallergic notes. Some good background here, too. Check it out.
“A book to showcase an intriguing collection.”
BBC on “Iconic” Book Covers
“Book design has become more important than ever – but what makes an iconic jacket, asks Clare Thorp.” BBC Culture takes a look.
Adobe updates logo, program icons
“Evolving our brand identity,” Adobe said in a May 28 blog post. “Evolved” is the right word, too, as things aren’t changed all that much. I will comment, though, that the PDF/Acrobat logo and icon have yet to change as suggested in the post; maybe they will soon. (Oh, and, LrC is kinda clunky for Lightroom Classic. Picky, picky.)
50 Books, 50 Covers (2019 Edition)
Once again, it’s time for the annual 50 Books, 50 Covers awards!
My favorites: Blackness at MoMA, Specimen Days, 14 books by Gustavo Piqueira • 2012-2018), Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle, and … not all of them, certainly. Interesting and challenging. Definitely worth checking out!
Text for Proofing Fonts, from H&Co.
Type designers love a good pangram. Pangrams, of course, are sentences that contain each letter of the alphabet at least once, of which the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog is surely the most famous. […] I find them singularly useless in type design, and I don’t use them in my work.
Find out what does work over at Hoefler&Co. with another fantastic post on type design.
NYU takes book design online
Washington Square News discusses NYU’s attempts to — like pretty much everything else — get book design online:
The studio course focuses on book art and teaches students about the production of books, from interior and exterior design to binding techniques. Without the physical studio space and the materials it provides, digital learning has paved an unprecedented pathway for the course to continue.
H&Co on book … uh, types (for the times)
Five typography-adjacent books for indoor times, from Johnathan Hoefler:
All five share a sincerity, an attention to detail, and a sense of humor that has kept me smiling for weeks.
The Online Archive Is Now Open to All
With nearly 1,500 objects and 9,000 hi-fi images, Letterform Archive offers unprecedented virtual access to our collection.
—Online Archive
On BMW’s New Logo (16 Updates, latest 3/20/21)
Original post, March 5th, 2020: After 23 years, BMW has updated its logo … but there’s a problem.
Let’s back up a little, as even the previous logo wasn’t perfect. Debuted in 1997, it followed the then-trendy “3D” look, complete with highlights. It was, however, clearly BMW — black background, blue-and-white roundel, chrome outline, lettering. This new one, however, loses the iconic black (for transparent) and chrome outline (for white):
It’s less representative and less clear in my opinion, but hey, I’m only a BMW owner, not any part of their marketing team.
Another problem: it debuted on the Concept i4. controversial all by itself.
Why not revert to the earlier, 1963 version? (Or update it with new type — but keep the black?) Transparency is fine in some cases, but I’m not sure that this isn’t a case of style over substance in the actual use cases (web site logo, app logo, etc. — more than just on the cars, I mean).
More from the always–excellent Brand New.
Update: 3/11/20: “BMW speaks out on ‘misinterpretation’ of new logo.” (Think about the “Instagram-ability!! Gak.)
Update: 3/20/20: BMW explains. (Via BMWBlog.)
Update, 7/15/20: Copenhagen, Denmark-based Dim Newman takes a stab at an alternate solution. (I like it.)
Update, 7/27/20: Dezeen has a roundup of the six other companies that have made their logos “flat,” proving the “3D” look mentioned above is truly out of fashion:
Update, 9/25/20: Vauxhall joins the trend:
Update, 11/27/20: The Ford update that never was:
Ford Almost Let a Graphic Design Legend Update Its Blue Oval Logo in 1966: Paul Rand, who designed iconic logos for IBM, Cummins, ABC and numerous other companies, designed a sleek logo for Ford that went unused.
Update, 12/2/20: Not enough? How ’bout Opel:
“Opel Details All-New, Slimmer And More Modern ‘Blitz’ Logo,” at CarScoops.
Update, 12/30/20: Kia’s was previewed on a show car earlier in the year, but they’ve gone and made it official:
There were some changes along the way, if you compare what’s on the show car and what you see above — and not all for the better, as it almost gets smeared. Still, looking forward to seeing where one of the most dynamic car companies today goes with this.
Update, 1/8/21: GM. One word: GAK.
So bad I actually feel sorry for them. More here and here.
Update, 1/13/21: Brand New is actually much nicer to GM’s logo update than I expected. Diplomacy? You decide. (Brand New is a subscription now, BTW — the best $20/year available, IMHO.)
Update, 3/2/21: Peugeot has joined the fray. Not great, especially at smaller sizes, but at least not the GM train wreck — and, in many ways, better than the last couple of outline lions (this one seems to be based on the 1960 version):
Read about the lion’s history here, Peugeot’s press release “reaffirming its personality and character” here, or one of the regular site’s notes, including a potential move upmarket here or here.
Update, 3/4/21: Audi, while not redoing their iconic “4 rings” logo, has redone the branding around that logo:
Brand New has more (note: BN is now subscription-only — easily the best $20 that I’ve spent in a while).
Update, 3/6/21: Speaking of Brand New, they have a good deal more information regarding Peugeot. Good stuff!
Update, 3/10/21: Dezeen has more on Peugeot, as well. And CarScoops has the first pictures of the new 308 — the new logo premieres on this model update — and discusses that, on the grille, some of the car’s sensors appear behind the logo. Interesting. (I still preferred the lion on the grille, myself. Not that we get Peugeots in the United States, anyway….) Check it out.
Update, 3/10/21: CarScoops has some more on Nizzan — uh, Freudian slip there: Nissan and their new logo.
Okay, who’s gonna be next…?
Update, 3/13/21: Uh… Renault!
Not as big a change as Peugeot, and more successful, too: single color, retains history well, still instantly recognizable, works at small sizes. Nice. Details from Motor1 or CarScoops.
Update, 3/20/21: Brand New discusses the new Renault logo:
There is nothing wrong at all with it and I do like the approach to its construction but, ultimately, it’s like it’s missing some emotion or passion or, pardon my French, a Je ne sais quoi to make it special.
I agree that the 1972 version is superior. Let’s see how this one evolves.
How Adobe InDesign Took Over
Way back in the day — that is, before the mid-nineties — publishing on the Mac consisted of Quark XPress. Okay, sure, there was Aldus Publisher and some bit players, but it was basically Quark or nothing. I used Quark in book design back then, and … basically hated it.
I was one of the early adopters of InDesign, dragging co-workers and companies along with me, as part of my time working at Tropicana. Not the juice cartons themselves — those were done in Illustrator — but the ancillary stuff, like marketing materials, sell sheets, and so on.
AppleInsider ran a piece a while ago (I’d missed it, initially), “How Adobe InDesign took over publishing with Steve Jobs’ help.” Good history for those of you who don’t know about those days or want a trip down memory lane, best summarized, in fact, by a commenter on the article: “This covers an interesting arc. Adobe went from an ambitious upstart trying to unseat an established, albeit arrogant, standard, to becoming the arrogant standard.”
“Books remain stubbornly, thrillingly relevant”: the enduring value of book design
From DesignWeek, a great story on AIGA’s 50 Books | 50 Covers.
In 2019, more Americans went to the library than to the movies.
From LitHub, an important note. Glad to see something free has more influence than a $40 billion industry.
“The 2010s were supposed to bring the ebook revolution. It never quite came.”
From Vox:
“Publishing spent the 2010s fighting tooth and nail against ebooks. There were unintended consequences.”
Fascinating look at the how’s and why’s of traditional books vs. ebooks. (Needless to say, I’m firmly on the side of the traditional printed version.)
NPR’s Book Concierge
“The Book Concierge is NPR’s annual, interactive, year-end reading guide. Mix and match tags such as Book Club Ideas, Biography & Memoir, or Ladies First to filter results and find the book that’s perfect for you or someone you love.”