Design History 101

The Brief, Enigmatic Career of Sylvia Abernathy

So much of Sylvia Abernathy’s life and work is lost to history. An activist and graphic designer, Abernathy first appears…

Design History 101

The Brief, Enigmatic Career of Sylvia Abernathy

Looking back at the designer's iconic album covers and mural design

Words by
Ritupriya Basu

Published on
October 21st, 2021

Happy Hour

Bottles Full of Juice, Spice, and Everything Designed Nice

Fall has fallen upon us. As the tempo and temperature of social gatherings change, the snap of a pull tab…

Type Tuesday

Compact Black, a New Typeface Redrawn from Soviet-Era Visual Artifacts

Name: Compact Black Designer: Yevgeniy Anfalov Foundry: Kyiv Type Foundry (KTF) Release Date: July 2021 Back Story: KTF, a new…

Graphic design

Herbert Bayer’s World Geo-Graphic Atlas Anticipated the Age of Infographics

Herbert Bayer’s name is perhaps most closely associated with the Bauhaus—he was a student at the school and later a…

Graphic design

How Wes Anderson’s Creative Team Designed the The French Dispatch Magazine for His Latest Film

During a quick scene in The French Dispatch, Hermès Jones, a magazine illustrator played by Jason Schwartzman, gets an earful…

Design + Education

Handwriting is Dying. What Does That Mean For Design?

If you’re over 25, your experience with handwriting is probably very different from what is being taught in schools today.…

Type Tuesday

Nautila: The Font Inspired by Cardi B and Realized Through Pussy

Name: Nautila Designer: Daytona Mess Foundry: Type Department Release Date: September 2021 Back Story: French type designer Daytona Mess (Anne-Dauphine…

Design + Art

Can Public Art Change the Way We Think About Sustainability?

One fine morning, a king and a queen arrive for a tour of Dalhousie—a quaint Himalayan hill town located in…

Five Lesser-Known Works from Push Pin’s Archives

There’s little doubt you’ve heard of Push Pin Studio — the legendary collective of designers whose collective work revolutionized the…

Graphic design

How Designing and Writing Are More Alike Than You Think

A couple weeks ago, we hosted a workshop at the AIGA Design Conference called Design Writing 101: How Writing Is…

Type Tuesday

Old Factory Signage + Eurostile = Elliptical Sans-Serif Typeface, Halisa

Name: Halisa Designer: Jan Estrada-Osmycki Foundry: The Designers Foundry Release Date: September 2021 Back Story: The inspiration for Halisa was a…

Books

Riso, Riots, and Sci-Fi —Tomorrow Today Recommends Five Books That Explore Activism and Revolution

Tomorrow Today is more than a bookstore. The shop, located in downtown Los Angeles, sells books, magazines, and other printed…

Editors’ Picks

Illustration

The Beauty and Violence of Ernst Haeckel’s Illustrations

If you’re a designer and a lover of nature, then you might have on your shelf one of the many…

Graphic design

How Cranbrook’s Design Program Redefined How We Make and Talk About Graphic Design

There’s a quote, perhaps apocryphal, from Massimo Vignelli that you’ll sometimes hear from alumni of Cranbrook Academy of Art’s design…

Typography

Traditional Elegance Meets Psychedelic Futurism in This Type Trend

What are you seeing? The ’90s are back. The 1890s, that is. Turn of the century inspired typefaces (we’re calling…

Design + Money

How Sanctuary Computer Uses Transparency to Make a Better Workplace

Hugh Francis has just over two months of payroll in the bank, and he doesn’t care who knows it. That’s…

Profiles

Neville Brody on Navigating Graphic Design’s Shifting Identity

Neville Brody is a journalist’s dream. He has a well-honed knack for wryly provocative, headline-ready takes on the design industry…

Design History 101

The Hidden History of Magic Eye, the Optical Illusion That Briefly Took Over the World

For a flash in the 1990s, Magic Eye, the world’s most famous—and infamously frustrating—optical illusion, was everywhere. Posters bearing the…

Illustration

Welcome to the Fanatical and Lucrative World of Baseball Card Design

Toward the end of my call with New York artist Blake Jamieson, I could hear the unmistakable rattling of a…

Graphic design

5 Big Ideas From the 2021 AIGA Design Conference

After living through 18 months of an ongoing pandemic, our social and professional interactions have significantly changed since “The Before…

Happy Hour

Beverage Branding That’s Dotted in Pastels

Ah, the end of summer, but the beginning of so many other things! (Corduroy, spontaneous baking, early bedtimes.) Before we…

Type Tuesday

Smoosh is a Font With Sexy Origins and Bodoni-leanings

Name: Smoosh Designer: Tal Leming Foundry: Type Supply Release Date: September 2021 Back Story: Smoosh was born, appropriately, thanks to…

Branding

Design + Money

How a Band of Design Misfits Brought Anti-aesthetics to Bloomberg Businessweek

There was a time, around 2013–2016, when the most experimental magazine in the world wasn’t some Berlin fashion zine that…

Branding

Why Does Every Beer Look So Cool Now?

On a recent weekend afternoon, I found myself in my neighborhood grocery store contemplating a wall of beer. This section…

Branding

Not Junk Food, Yet Not Health Food—“Healthyish” Is the Latest Trend in Snack Branding

In 2017, Bon Appetit launched a spinoff website, Healthyish, centered around an ethos that, in its words, “sums up the…

Branding

Joe Biden’s Branding Was Both Traditional and Trippy, and It Looks Like the Future of Politics

When Democrat Jon Ossoff’s U.S. Senate race in Georgia was forced into a runoff, his campaign changed up its social…

Branding

As Social Media Reshapes Branding, Retail Stores Become More Like Sponsored Content

In 2001, students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, under the direction of architect Rem Koolhaas, published The Harvard…

Branding

Personal Branding Just Got a Lot More Branded

“Cae Sal” started with a video. It was 2018, and Molly Baz’s husband had gifted her a pair of Nike…

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