Editors' Picks

The 2012 Regional Design Annual Is Here!

Print's 2012 Regional Design Annual is now out in the world. Inside you'll find the best in American graphic design, as selected by our esteemed judges: Sarah Gephart (MGMT. Design), Sagi Haviv (Chermayeff & Geismar), Nicole Jacek (formerly of Karlssonwilker), Jason Kernevich and Dustin Summers (the Heads of State), Renda Morton (The New York Times), and [...]

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Fake Products, Real Feelings: Rob Walker on His Exhibition of Branding Experiments

Between his long-running Consumed column for The New York Times Magazine and his 2008 book, Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are, it is highly probable that nobody thinks about brands, products, and their significance as much as Rob Walker. Starting today, apexart in Lower Manhattan will host "As Real [...]

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Zapfino Arabic: A Typeface in the Making

This is the first in a series of posts by Nadine Chahine about the process of designing an Arabic companion to Hermann Zapf's Zapfino typeface. Chahine is an award-winning Lebanese type designer and the Arabic specialist for Linotype and Monotype Imaging. Read more about her work at arabictype.com. Professor Hermann Zapf and I have three [...]

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The Rising Son of Alternative Japanese Design

Koga Hirano defined the alternative graphic design movement in postwar Japan, through literally thousands of posters and book jackets. Before counterculture design movements rebelled against the International Style in the West, in 1962 Hirano became the poster, program, and scenic designer for Japan's burgeoning underground theater company, the June Theater.  The "theater of outside theaters" [...]

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My Kinda Sad Portfolio Story

This week and next, we're asking the judges of the Print Portfolio Review to tell us about their portfolios—specifically their first portfolios, and how they helped or hindered their early careers. Yesterday, Mirko Ilić told us about the "big paper salad" he brought to New York City in 1986. Today, Debbie Millman writes about her [...]

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Jessica Hische Does Drop Caps for the Classics

Is it too early to start shopping for Christmas? Probably, yes. Nevertheless, we couldn’t resist sharing these images of the forthcoming Penguin Drop Cap series, which will offer some excellent holiday gift options for the bookish typography-and-illustration buffs in your lives. Each of the eventual 26 hardcover books in the series is a design collaboration [...]

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Microsoft’s New Logo and Digital Authenticity

I was standing in line at Duane Reade recently, looking at its latest batch of store-branded products, thinking about how much of a throwback the simple, solid-color designs are.  This got me thinking about the general trend in logo design (and design in general) away from the swooshy, beveled-and-embossed 3-D look that dominated corporate design over the [...]

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The Cutting Humor of Art Director Michael Gross

Designer kids these days. They'll never experience the toxic aroma of rubber-cement fumes. Or feel the intense drama of an X-Acto knife slicing into their thumb or plunging head-first into their knee. But Michael Gross remembers. In fact, Gross and his National Lampoon co-conspirators immortalized such experiences in a parody of the graphic design industry [...]

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"What's In Your Garbage?"

For the Trash Issue, we asked 18 designers, "What's in your garbage?" Sam Weber The photo is of my recycling bin, holding some reference photos and crumpled-up drawings. . Natasha Jen, Pentagram One 9-by-12–inch manila envelope; one padded manila envelope from a book-seller; two Starbucks grande-size cups; two crumpled yellow Post-its; one crumpled receipt; one [...]

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Just Try to Motivate Me!!!

"Keep Calm and Carry On" is the most famous motivational poster, with "Tomorrow is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life" coming in at a close second. But back in the 1910s through the Depression-era 1930s, motivation was in its golden years. How did industrialists and business leaders get the most productivity out [...]

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