Candi

It's been some 40 years since her Muscle Shoals recordings. Candi Staton recently dropped her new album.

Geigy

Everyone who is even remotely interested in graphic design or Swiss typography should go out and buy this book. Corporate Diversity is a wonderful publication by Lars Müller Publishers, displaying a selection of design and advertising done for Geigy, a chemical and pharmaceutical company from Basel. Geigy had their own in-house design department, and they were putting out the most stunning advertisements, packages, books and leaflets for their company. Talents such as Max Schmid and Jörg Hamburger left their marks. Amazing to see design could be so bold and striking for products such as an anti-rheumatic medication. A few more pics after the click.

Corporate Diversity, Swiss Graphic Design and Advertising by Geigy, 1940-1970 (Lars Müller Publishers)

Leed

With TEFF we've recently done a book cover for uitgeverij Balans. Het leed dat winkelen heet (loosely translated: The agony of shopping) is in stores now. Irony. The picture of the man sitting, was taken in a shopping mall at the greyest day december had to offer.

Graphis Japan

Thanks to the tip of my friend Jaap at Beatsnothing, I just recieved a new addition to an ever-growing collection of dusty old Graphis Annuals: Graphis Japan. A special edition about japanese graphic design and packaging design. Published in 1968 by Walter Herdeg, The Graphis Press. As always, it was hard to make a small selection. Enjoy anyways.

A window display for Yamaha instruments in Tokyo (1968). To my great surprise, there is a FG-180 acoustic in the back. Looking so new.

Dreaming type

A while ago, colleague designer Carrie Zwarts was working on the identity of a company called Droomverkopers. She decided it needed custom type and first came up with the shape for a lowercase "d". I was asked to design the rest of the letters, matching the form concept of the "d". Graphic design & concept are done by Carrie Zwarts. Please check out more of her work here. Fresh and simply wonderful design from The Hague.

Kaas

When TEFF was asked to design a comic book, we were excited. We never did a comic book before and it turned out to be a interesting experience indeed. The story of the comic book is based on the novel "Kaas", a famous book by dutch author Willem Elsschot. The complete text of the original book is in this comic - quite an achievement. All the artwork is done by Dick Matena. I really like the cinematic angles in his drawings. 

The book comes in a regular paperback edition and also in a luxurious edition. This special edition sits in a silkscreen printed cardboard box and is wrapped in Edammer cheese wrapping paper. It is signed by Dick Matena and holds an orinal litho inside. The book is published by Uitgeverij Athenaeum and has recently been selected for "Best Verzorgde Boeken 2008" in the category literature. 

Type in the city - Tokyo

A selection of typo, found in the streets of Tokyo (2005).

A new stereophonic sound spectacular!

When it comes to the perfect match between music and graphic design, then Pizzicato Five must be a gold medal contender. For you who don't know them, Pizzicato Five was a music group from Japan (1985-2001), founded by Maki Nomiya (the girl) and Yasuharu Konishi (the guy). They were one of the first Tokyo Shibuya-Kei groups, making very joyful music with an odd twist to it. It's hard to describe. Funny, swinging, often energizing, always interesting. In Europe, "Twiggy Twiggy" probably was their best known hit.

Their visual style is obviously very sixties, mid-century modernist like. P5 paid a lot of attention to the styling of their videos and overall packaging and P5's male half Yasuharu Konishi had a lot to do with that. According to the book "tokyo mon amour: pizzicato five retrospective" Yasuharu Konishi had much affection for graphic design. He hired talented graphic designers in Japan and was always strongly involved in the whole design process. Even to the detail of what typefaces to use. A great collection of their artwork, adverts etc, can be found in their book tokyo mon amour: pizzicato five retrospective (Pie Books). Here are some examples (click for a bigger photo) and a slightly out-of-sync vid (notice the 'McCartney' Hofner bass and the 'Lennon' Rickenbacker guitar, nice touch).

Following in their footsteps, more Shibuya-Kei bands emerged. In my opinion, one of todays best is Capsule. Also a male-female duo. Same style package. In all their wackiness, I think the music is very clever and simply fantastic.

TDR RIP

According to Creative Review, the bringers of non-information, the people who gave arrows a cult status, the people who brought the joy to the Wipeout games, the most imitated, hyper futuristic design studio The Designers Republic from Sheffield, is out of business. Ouch! Where does that leave us, simple souls?

Pocket dictionaries

With TEFF we did the covers of a series dictionaries. The dictionaries are pocket sized school dictionaries. The illustrations of the flags are all individually different and are done by BOLT graphics.