Writer, Lecturer, and Medievalist Dana Cushing approached me to create an identity for her budding business venture, Antimony Media.

After working closely with Ms. Cushing to lay the foundation of a brand strategy, I set out doing research into the imagery and symbolism of her subject — medieval art and culture, especially of the Crusades and 12th Century. There was quite a lot to digest, this era not only brought a variety of art to Europe from the Middle East and Africa, but it saw experimentation in the areas of science/alchemy, architecture, religion, and military technology. Combine this with the mythology of the age, and there’s plenty to get lost with.

The challenge here was in how to create a modern brand identity that references the old, without mocking it. We didn’t want a pastiche of the middle ages. We didn’t want something that looks like a publisher of Tolkien fan fiction, or the organisers of Renaissance Faires. The result identity is taken from a cathedral’s arch, simultaneously serving as an A letterform. Simple. The typography for “Antimony Media” is custom-built, using the same curves as the arch itself. Neutra Text is the brand’s main typeface, seen in use on the stationery.

To accompany this simple logo, I created a brand pattern — a sort of modern tapestry — which brings in symbols and elements of medieval history, culture, religion, and military.

Brand Patterns

In the end, we created a basic stationery system in addition to the brand style guide and miscellaneous graphics. The stationery system was printed in two colours, using gold metallic ink and blue, on several different paper stocks. The letterhead are Neenah Classic Crest 24W Natural White, the cards are duplexed, with the same Neenah stock on the front, with a French Paper 100# parchment on the reverse. The envelopes are from Mohawk 32# Jute. Printing by Alpine Creative Group, photography by Bill Wadman.

Stationery System (plus notepads, not pictured)

details of Brand Pattern on letterhead reverse footer

Business cards, two different paper stocks duplexed

Yes, this story is insane. Steven Heller, author of shitloads hundreds of books — including one about The Swastika itself — has turned up the closest thing that exists to a modern brand standards guide for the Nazi party itself. (pioneers in branding, in every current definition)

Perhaps a lesser, though significant, responsibility [of the German Labour Front] was developing a NSDAP handbook that detailed the organizing principles and mechanics of building the Nazi movement. It is this 550 page, red cloth-bound book titled Organizationsbuch der NSDAP, with the symbol of “Greater Germany” embossed in silver on the front, which turns out to be the elusive standards manual. The DAF was also responsible for typesetting guides and other graphic arts handbooks, but this is the graphic masterpiece of the Master Race.

Read the full article and see more images on Design Observer.

So maybe I should give this a read and re-write my Boy Scouts article based on the HJ.

via Design Observer »

Luckily, the astute folks at the New York Times are highly organised, and thus they have produced for our enjoyment, a grid-based, icon-fueled look at the last ten years in news, business, culture, and other categories of time–space. Love it.

Think for a second that this was done mainly with icons. One tiny image can encapsulate such a complex and important idea or event. So the next time you’re tasked with the design of an icon or pictogram of some kind, take an extra moment, these things matter.

Picturing the Past Ten Years »

I do hate myself a little for compiling an end-of-year top ten list, but in the spirit of professional altruism, I’m sharing with you, dear readers, ten brilliant blogs I’ve discovered, and have since become addicted to, in 2009. In no particular order:

1. It’s Nice That Touches my soft spot for Britain and provides daily doses of cool, especially in the realm of painting and visual arts

2. Print & Pattern While pagination and formatting are not the best, P&P has an immense archive of goodies. Lots of vintage and vintage-inspired.

3. Design Work Life Fantastic curation of mostly print work. Gorgeous stuff, mostly daily. I don’t know where author Courtney finds it, but the work here is almost always unique to this blog.

4. Information is Beautiful Dedicated to information design and infographics. An underrated practice, indeed.

5. Missed Connections Illustrator Sophie Blackall brings to life the often-beautiful-often-bizarre storyettes of the Missed Connection section of Craig’s List NY.

6. The Artist and His Model Having only subscribed a few days ago, I’m not sure how to categorise it. Products, print, posters, photography. Cool stuff.

7. Flickrdesign A digest of the best designs found on Flickr.com. Mostly posters, and great ones at that. Not too many examples of live-in-the-marketplace design, but still excellent.

8. The Intrepid Owl Sightings and thoughts from London-to-New York illustrator/designer Lisa Edwards. A slant towards illustrative design, but a bit of everything. And words.

9. Clients from Hell The recently-debuted site is already jam-packed with actual, real-life quotes from finicky, argumentative, uninformed, and unprofessional clients. Stranger than fiction, and therefore brilliant.

10. Magic Molly A bit of a cop-out since Molly is a writer, not a designer, but her thoughts and quips and observations constantly smack me awake with concise brilliance and poignancy.

11. (bonus) Lesile Miles Collections of theme-based photography. Lots to look at and gawk at and drool at. I don’t know where it all comes from.

This list alone should be enough to top off your daily dose of jealously, but if you need more, check out the resources page. And please, post your favourite design blogs in the comments — let’s try and spread the word about some overlooked blogs hiding gems.

Today turned up a sparkly little collection of French movie posters from the 50s and 60s. Great stuff, check ‘em out.

Am I the only on who feels that some of these would make excellent book covers? Especially the ones sans photographs, that are heavily graphical. Could work, non?

O that I were yet a grad student, for surely this would be my thesis.

London, my beloved bittersweet mistress of a second-city, has an identity crisis, and has put out the call to the design firms of Britain (and to a lesser degree, the world), to redesign the brand identity for London. While a bit of visual goodness is always appreciated, the main objective in this endeavor is to unify the many purpose-build identities used in London for tourism, transport, the 2012 Olympics, and a host of other departments and activities.

London’s many identities, courtesy of Brand New

I should have written about this last month when I spotted a post on Logo Design Love, but somehow I didn’t get to it. Anyway, The official assignment is elaborated on over at Brand Republic. In short, the call for work is unpaid, and you must contact the folks running the scheme to get your name in the ring. For anyone reading this blog post, you’re probably too late, as the closing will be 3 Sept.

But I think that I will turn this in a Design For Fun post here on Perez-Fox.com. Having lived in Britain, and fallen in love with Lady London, this could be a great chance to geek out with cultural identity-based design, and a challenge in modern branding on how to tie all those seemingly unrelated elements together.

Outside of the official tender, there are a number of possible solutions being discussed on the site A Brand For London. Definitely some sharp insight into typography, iconography, design history, and the “brand DNA” of London. But didn’t Rian Hughes already put together a logo for London a few years ago? Yes, he did, and the powers that be told him “thanks, but no thanks.” (in the British equivalent of a Sarah Palin accent, no doubt.)

Hughes’s Rejected Logo for London

So everyone bust out the sketchbook and let’s find a way to unify London behind some sort of a logo or graphic identity. I hope to find some time in the next few days to post my entry.

And let us not forget that immortal quotation about The Big Smoke:

“Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”
— Samuel Johnson

Follow yesternight’s post, I dug up another Flickr page of gorgeous design work. This one is from Adam the Velcro Suit, who designs posters, CDs, badges, skateboards, and other brickerbrack. Love the mid-century style with reference to low-tech print making. Great sense of colour as well.

Adam the Velcro Suit on Flickr »

via Design Work Life »

Check out this Flickr pool of beautiful faded signage and advertisements. I love this crap, wish I could go around photographing more of it. There’s actually an example right at the end of my street.

Faded Signage on Flickr »

via Design Work Life »

This is a quick one — the other day, Gothamist featured a few photos from the many, many, forgotten tomes of the New York Public Library. These are gorgeous. We should all take time to appreciate the beauty in simplicity of yesteryear’s printing techniques.

If you’re interested in these, part of the Rare Books series at NYPL, check ‘em out online or in person.

If you’ve been reading for a while, you might recall a certain similarity to The Typography of Harry Potter, and especially The Daily Prophet as featured in the movies.

Tropicana, who introduced a radically re-designed packaging last month, has announced they will scrap the new designs in favour of the previous packaging. This move is unprecedented in my lifetime, wherein public outcry over the design of a product has influenced corporate decisions on the highest level.

The New York Times tells the story of how the new packaging failed to soar. The Design community, I predict, will rejoice. Faint sounds of “I Can See Clearly Now” will echo on the wind. Statues will be toppled. Ok, perhaps not. I was a fan of the previous packaging, designed by my buddy Debbie Millman and Sterling Brands.

In this particular case, it teaches us a valuable lesson: don’t mess with heritage brands! Americans, and consumers the world over, are passionate about the brands they know and love and trust. Those emotions are not to be taken lightly, and not to be toyed with. In case you were in doubt about the power of branding and packaging, let this be a new litmus test. Tropicana has occupied a place in the heart of Americans for decades, offering more than nutrition — offering comfort and routine and a bit of the simple life each morning.

The un-design and reverting is also a bit of pie in the face of Arnell Group, who re-designed the Tropicana packaging as well as a total brand identity re-design for Pepsi, and an update of Gatorade — each of which has earned more than the requisite amount of controversy. Imagine having your design accepted, and then rejected after a firestorm of public outcry. Wolff Olins, you’re next.