Piedmont is a small city in California named after the European region in the shadow of the Alps (from the Italian piemonte, meaning ‘foothill’). Surrounded on all sides by Oakland, the neighbourhood has a population of roughly 10,000 people and an active charity scene. This includes the Piedmont Arts Fund, a nonprofit group that promotes and supports visual and performing...
Metamorphoses is a contemporary art gallery that curates unique pieces by makers who turn one thing into another. It takes a special interest in works that are inspired by the past while displaying keen attention to present issues. These pieces, selected by the gallery, are often drawn from a body of work by artists who reflect on aspects of cultural...
Cable Factory (Kaapelitehdas) is one of Helsinki’s most famous buildings, originally designed by the Finnish industrial architect Wäinö Gustaf Palmqvist in 1939. For many decades it was the largest building in Finland with a footprint of 56,000 m², and it remains one of the most iconic. In 1991 the site was redeveloped to become the country’s biggest cultural centre, housing...
In the southern part of Dutch city Heerlen is The Roman Quarter, the oldest Dutch Roman settlement and a crossroads between two major Roman thoroughfares. Just as the two roads intersected two ideas are brought together here by Boy Bastiaens. A Roman parquet tiled floor with a column at its centre also forms the ‘x’ of a crossroad within using...
Design and print go hand in hand, so it’s no surprise that there’s a fantastic history of modernist logos for printers. Halftone and rollers are not uncommon but realised with varying degree of success. The latter has been rendered front on and in perspective, and there’s been numerous ways to visual the movement of paper through these. There’s also a...
Compounding. An enduring form-making technique. There are plenty of these types of logos to be found throughout the mid-century, some comfortable in their synergy, others crude and unresolved. This technique continues today as a viable route to uniqueness, but the challenge remains the same, how to find an elegant intersection of two unrelated forms? Positive and negative has almost become...
This logo was part of Daniel Juncadella’s new personal brand identity as he became an official Mercedes driver for the DTM and test driver for The F1 Mercedes team. Part monogram, part racetrack, the visual language of racing and speed is beautifully infused into the “dj” letterforms through inline and arrow. Read the brand identity review here....
A dynamically charged interpretation of a universal musical motif becomes a distinctive shorthand for Musikförläggarna — The Swedish Music Publishers’ Association. An “M”, a note and flash converge into a beautifully resolved single form, drawing uniqueness and immediacy from the common....
A lovely intersection of letterform and symbol, existing somewhere between an “S”, ski slope and a figure with ski poles. The final touch, a black diamond (an indicator of the steepest ski run in the area and one that may have more hazards) is a lovely reference within the context of protective ski equipment....
Right-offset concentric circles set with a frame initially present as a “C” but also plays with depth, appearing as a tunnel to be drawn into or expanding forward like a camera lens. Both great gestures as they relate to visual production. However, for those inclined to seek deeper meaning, the colour separations created by the “chromoscope”, an optical instrument, and...
In the join between the sheds, the sheds that make up the museum, a cocktail glass emerges and a symbol forms, connecting museum with its theme of spirits and creating a playful form and structure in which to design around. See more here....
Freedom and curiosity, and Victor Hasselblad’s love of bird photography is brought to life as a dynamic logo representative of the Hasselblad Foundation, and connect all that they do to promote research in the field of photography and natural sciences. This intersection–of photography and natural science–is beautifully realised by Bankerwessel. The logo exists somewhere between the naturalist and abstract. There...