... after languishing for decades in relative obscurity, it was great PR -- perhaps as much as great advertising -- that catapulted [Crispin Porter + Bogusky] to rock-star status and put Miami on the advertising map.
We all know how the DNC Host Committee botched the commission of its logo design. But who would have expected our aesthetically challenged organizers to force unnatural colors on organic food, too? From the New York Times:
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. -- Sir Winston Churchill
Khoi Vinh is design director for NYTimes.com.... while changing nothing about the color or the typography, it’s possible, in my opinion, to dramatically improve Gmail’s overall elegance. All it takes is a more discerning eye paid to the design of the spaces between elements.
The designer friendly cupcake factory The Shoppe (3103 E. Colfax) showed up in my mailbox yesterday with 5280's Top of the Town issue (and it's an editor's choice, a far more coveted spot than the plebeian people's choice). Congrats to Tran Wills and the super cool guy whom I assume is her business / life partner. Personally, I'm kinda not that into cupcakes. But in light of the fanfare I think some tasty, carb-y delights might be worth another trip to The Fax.
Michael Beiruit led the Pentagram team that developed the new logo.
The new MillerCoors symbol, based on a view of a glass of beer from above, is at once neutral enough to combine with the rich heritage of the existing brands, forward-looking, and unequivocally about beer. -- Pentagram
The MillerCoors merger is a done deal. Miller has officially joined forces with [Denver-based] Molson Coors to form MillerCoors. The company has a brand new logo. The company is looking to cut jobs both in Milwaukee, and Golden, Colorado. There is no word yet on where the new corporate headquarters will be located. -- MSNBC
MillerCoors chairman Pete Coors announced several months ago that in order to avoid the appearance of favoritism, the operation's headquarters would likely wind up somewhere other than Golden or Milwaukee, Miller's longtime home. -- Westword
This update to the logo is simply a reflection of the refresh taking place inside our stores and our renewed sense of purpose to help people save money so they can live better.
IMAGE: Victor Moscoso, Chambers Brothers, Matrix, San Francisco, 1967. Collection of David and Sheryl Tippit. © 1967 Neon Rose.
From today's press release:The Denver Art Museum (DAM) will celebrate the era that espoused free love, a vibrant rock music scene, and spectacular graphic design with The Psychedelic Experience: Rock Posters from the San Francisco Bay Area, 1965-1971. The exhibition will showcase more than 250 wildly experimental and visually stunning works from DAM’s newly acquired collection of posters promoting dance concerts and other “happenings” that have since become iconic symbols of the youth culture of the 1960s and 70s.
We hate our state's advertising.
As a member of Colorado's creative community, I'm part of a nearly unanimous faction of locals embarrassed by the campaign to promote our state as a tourist destination. But as much as we don't like the advertising, an article in Sunday's Denver Post suggests that the campaign's results are a remarkable achievement. But I'm not sure it is.
The article reported that Colorado logged 28 million overnight ski trips and an overall 4 percent increase in tourism from 2006 to 2007. More impressive, the dollars tourists spent while in the state increased 10 percent to $9.8 billion.
In 2007 the Colorado Tourism Office was freshly armed with $19 million, a drastic budget increase that was spent mostly with their new agency of record, Kansas City-based MMG Worldwide.
When the agency released some of the first ads for Colorado a few months ago, The Denver Egotist, an anonymous blog for industry insiders, called the work, "Awful. Embarrassing. Hack. Ridiculous. [and] Contrived." A comment on their editorial added the term, "craptastic," while one person asked, "How can we make these retarded brand managers realize how stupid this is?"
In the depressingly bureaucratic fluorescent light cast by these numbers, the answer to that question is that we probably can't. From the Post article:Kim McNulty, director of the Colorado Tourism Office, said of the 2007 data, "It validates the way we market the state."
But the graph in the Denver Post is interesting (even though it's nearly impossible to read online). There, the increase in tourism looks dismal, possibly even a less significant blip than the one between 2001 and 2002, years when Colorado spent much lower amounts promoting the state.
ABOVE: Three of the 20 Chantry works acquired by the Denver Art Museum.
The Denver Art Museum recently acquired posters and album covers by Art Chantry, a designer noted for his work for punk and alternative bands in the 1980s and '90s.
Darrin Alfred, the Denver Art museum's Assistant Curator of Graphic design, says: Among these twenty works, created between 1983 and 1995, one can clearly see Chantry’s sources: '60s psychedelic posters, wholesome '50s advertising and Monty Python-like Edwardian illustration – often presented with a sense of clashing social values. These are underscored by techniques like torn-edge collage, taped images, and endless variations on the possibilities of photographic graininess, often achieved by repeated photocopying.
The Denver Art Museum is quickly gaining one of the world's most significant holdings of 20th century American graphic design. In February the institution acquired 875 psychedelic rock posters from the 1960s and ‘70s. That's on top of the entire AIGA National Design Archives, a collection the museum received last year.
Mark Bittman, a.k.a. The Minimalist Chef, can be credited with teaching me how to cook. Apparently I'm not the only Coloradoan reading. Three-year-old Jaden became a bit of a YouTube celebrity by imitating Bittman. So the food writer brought the kid to New York to make Mexican Popsicles. Unfortunately, Jaden is a bit less of a ham when not in his own kitchen. But Bittman's video accompanying the article is fun anyway.
Skidmore, Owings, Merrill: Air Force Academy Chapel, Colorado Springs, originally uploaded by qulic.
Daily Camera: 'Prison bus' draws double takes. Workers commute to Gunbarrel ad agency in 'Disruptive Thinker Transport'. By Heath Urie, Sunday, June 15, 2008
The poster for for the 1968 design exhibition at Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum is being reprinted and can be yours for £100 (~$200). By Dutch designer Wim Crouwel, the poster
is historic for revealing the matrix that guided its design. This poster was created in 1968, long before the personal computer. At this time only banks were heavily involved in computer processing and the typeface of this poster has a similar aesthetic to a face of machine-readable numbers. The typography of the poster is both reminiscent of this early computer-readable type and also highly prophetic of the coming digital age.
The system of construction of the letter forms is based on the use of a grid... The harshness of the square grid is softened by the use of radii [proportionally based on the grid]...
– Kimberly Elam, Geometry of Design, Studies in Proportion and Composition
