Soulellis Studio

"In the month of February were born Washington Lincoln and I.
These are ordinary ideas. If you please these are ordinary ideas."

Gertrude Stein, Thornton Wilder, Random House, 1936. First edition. 2,000 copies, most were destroyed (so it is written in pencil in the inside front cover).

Is there a more beautiful book spine in the world?

Employee newsletters for the NYC MTA, 1970-1972. Forty years later, I wish I'd designed these today. Crazy beautiful. And that map!

I found some of the earliest issues of Print Magazine (or as it was called then, "A Quarterly Journal of the Graphic Arts") at a great old bookshop this weekend. I purchased Number 2, from September 1940. It's very much a journal — small size, text heavy, seriously focused. But not without some fantastic treats, visual and otherwise.

The opening essay is by Frederick G. Rudge (son of Print's founder William E. Rudge?): "Propaganda and the Graphic Arts — Influencing Public Opinion for National Unity." Some beautiful examples of all sorts of "positive" messages accompany the essay, which explores the idea of using graphic design as a tool for conditioning human behavior. Rudge writes: "It is obviously vital to be able to distinguish 'good' from 'bad' (propaganda), through understanding and analysis. In other words, know how to evaluate; and, as the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, Inc. puts it, 'Don't be fooled.'"

Given that particular moment in history, his advice was appropriate, if somewhat obvious today. But what's remarkable is this list of "the seven devices of propaganda that are well worth watching for," which he quotes from the above-mentioned institute. They're still well worth watching for in 2010 — who hasn't experienced (or actually created) each of these in media, politics, advertising, etc.?

1. The Name Calling Device: "Name Calling" is a device to make us form a judgment without examining the evidence on which it should be based.

2. The Glittering Generalities Device: "Glittering Generalities" is a device by which the propagandist identifies his program with virtue by use of "virtue words."

3. The Transfer Device: "Transfer" is a device by which the propagandist carries over the authority, sanction, and prestige of something we respect and revere to something he would have us accept.

4. The Testimonial Device: The "Testimonial" is a device to make us accept anything from a patent medicine or a cigarette to a program of national policy.

5. The Plain Folks Device: "Plain Folks" is a device used by politicians, labor leaders, business men, and even by ministers and educators to win our confidence by appearing to be persons like ourselves — "just plain folks among the neighbors."

6. The Card Stacking Device: "Card Stacking" is a device in which the propagandist employs all the arts of deception to win our support for himself, his group, nation, race, policy, practice, belief or ideal.

7. The Band Wagon Device: The "Band Wagon" is a device to make us follow the crowd, to accept the propagandist's program en masse.

It's a fascinating essay, then or now.

Another section is titled "Why Printing Is An Important Part of the Picture" and includes a chart listing "Methods of Distributing Printed Messages." The 40 methods include broadcast delivery ("Scattering from airplanes, Leaving on seats of parked cars"), at exits of factories, and personal delivery by school children.

And apparently, there was to be an exhibition at the AIGA in November 1940, covering "in detail the usefulness of proper graphic techniques in adding to the attention-value and in strengthening the resultfulness of government messages."

1. TEDxShekhavati hand embroidery.

2. Bill Gates' slides. (image by Nancy Duarte)

3. The Noah Purifoy Foundation in Joshua Tree, CA. (More images)

Some quick Google research reveals that the bag probably hails from Torrington, CT where F. L. Wadhams & Sons produced coal at the turn of the last century, so it hasn't traveled too far in the last 100 years. Amazing that it hasn't been destroyed or even used.

I thought I could date the bag with the 4-digit phone number but this only tells me that it's probably pre-1920 (when 2- or 3-letter city exchanges started to come into use) but that's about it.

The bag itself is branded — "Bull Dog Sacks" by Miller, Tompkins & Co., Rutherford, NJ in the small circle at top.

I'm sure someone who really knows their type history could pin-point the date more accurately. Anyone?

Last weekend I stayed in an apartment in Berlin with a magnificent library. Thousands of books lining the walls in each room. I started looking closely and realized that there were some real treasures in here, like a Josef Müller-Brockmann designed book from 1960, der Film. His poster of the same name is one of the most famous of the 20th century, but I didn't know about the book.

And I started pulling out dozens of small paperbacks from the 1960s and 70s, all published by dtv (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag). The designer is Swiss-born Celestino Piatti, who designed 5,000 books for dtv from 1961 until the mid-90s. I wish I'd brought my Nikon with me but the iPhone shots aren't too bad.

An Akzidenz Grotesk dream-come-true.

The Rumford Common Sense Cook Book (1930s?).

There's something really wonderful about these Mobil roadmaps (c. 1975). The black typography (some kind of corporate typeface based on the wordmark?), the white space, the use of the pegasus, everything. I also stumbled upon some corporate identity history when I looked into the origin of Mobil's pegasus. Chermayeff & Geismar killed it in 1966, but did you know that it was originally adopted from Socony-Vacuum?

Yesterday's flea market find: "Number of hogs, sheep and cattle, of the United States, in 1890."

It's 1978, and Peter Bradford has just produced his first book. Chair–The current state of the art, with the who, the why, and the what of it. Pictured is Mary Plumb Blade, born 1913.

I'd somehow never seen this famous diagram by Charles Eames (1969) until yesterday (thanks to Ann Pendleton-Jullian). It's a beautiful way to talk about the design space.

"1) If this area represents the interest and concern of the design office.
2) and this the area of genuine interest to the client.
3) and this the concerns of society as a whole.
4) then it is in this area of overlapping interest and concern that the designer can work with conviction and enthusiasm.
NOTE: these areas are not static -- they grow and develop as each one influences the others.
NOTE: putting more than one client in the model builds the relationship -- in a positive and constructive way."

I love seeing good design work unpacked and reassembled into something new. The re-use can be as creative an act as the original thing, sometimes more so. Who knows in this case — the van I designed five years ago has been stripped bare of some, but not all of the graphics. It was parked just outside my office on 17 Street.

This is a flea market find from a year ago. It's a "souvenir" book of WWII photos from the Secretary of the Navy, published by U.S. Camera (it's not dated but I'm assuming 1945). The photographs — scenes of daily life, explosions, war routines — are compiled by Edward Steichen.

From the note on page 5: "To the Officers and Men of the Navy: You are leaving the Navy which you made victorious in the greatest war in history. These pictures will go with you as a reminder of a job well done — a job of which you can be proud as long as you live because it gave mankind another opportunity to live together in peace and decency..."

The typography, imagery, icons — all amazing But it's the striking cover that I find most gorgeous and inspiring.

No. 1221613. A color combination chart for layered clothing, by Yoshiyuki Hagino, 1868.

I just got turned on to the digitized image collections of The New York Public Library. Wow. Six hundred thousand images in all kinds of specialized collections. Menus, charts, maps, photographs, illustrations, advertisements, cigarette cards, diagrams, costumes. I could spend hours in here (I just did).

No. 468952. Menu cover for the National Wholesale Druggists Association Banquet, 1900.

No. 1221643. An illustration of horses. Yoshiyuki Hagino, 1908.

No. 96883. Prismes 17. E. A. Seguy, 1931.

No. 473220. Menu, Portland, ME, 1908.

One of Richard Saul Wurman's first books, Cities: Comparison of Form and Scale. His students made scale models of cities in white plasticine and photographed them from above, and reproduced the images in the book at exactly the same scale for comparison. All of RSW's ideas about visualization and comparative data have their start in this book. 19.20.21., his latest big idea, can also be traced back to this gem.

This 51-year-old info-graphic beauty comes to us courtesy of John Zissovici. The map says "Showing the area of each state in exact ratio to the other states based on the value of manufactured products according to the Industrial Census of 1957."

It's here in our office — the new Massimo Vignelli map. (Official title: "New York Subway Diagram.")
Here's the old one (1972), in MoMA's collection.
Vignelli explains it, in the film "Helvetica."
Michael Beirut gets nostalgic.
An interview, and some great (more graphic) shots, at Designboom.

I had a nice design surprise last week. I showed up at MAS for a meeting and saw that the Architectural League had opened a small show of Herzog & de Meuron's design for the new Parrish Art Museum in Southampton. All beautifully presented on a single, giant platform. The tabletop was set with all kinds of models, and a single drawing was laminated to the wall. Great installation, but the real surprise was a stack of one-color pamphlets, presumably designed by 2x4 (they are credited on the table). This thing was so modest: flimsy paper, a sort of folded photocopy. One side presents a layout of the objects on the table, rendered in thin black lines. The other side, lots of words and numbers — in reverse. I didn't understand why, but kept it anyway because it looked good. The next day I realized that if held up to the light, I can see the reversed words through the lightweight paper, back-lit onto the diagram — these are the titles and dates for each piece. Nice.

UPDATE: just got a note from the Architectural League that the entire exhibition, including the pamphlet, was designed by Herzog & de Meuron. 2x4 will be designing the graphics for the museum.

I just remembered our typography project with American Leftees from four years ago: we reinterpreted some brilliant old campaign buttons, and they put them on t-shirts. Today, U.S. campaign graphics are complicated and corporate and very much about selling "the brand." The Obama system works, but it's painfully safe and fussy. In use, the graphics are certainly friendly and fresh, especially in relation to other candidates. (Gotham helps.) I'm revealing my high expectations here, but I'd love to see real "change" embodied in political brand communications — not just the usual slick product campaign.

What a find. Picked up at the Strand. This is the New York City Planning Commission's "1969 Plan for New York City," published under Mayor Lindsay, all six volumes (one for each borough, plus one titled "Critical Issues"). These are oversized (17 in. sq.), and packed with incredible information graphics, photography and design. Famous Magnum photographers (Helen Levitt, Andre Kertesz, Robert Frank) were commissioned to produce images of the city. Beautiful satellite photographs and giant pull-out maps in fantastic colors. It's a fascinating portrait of NYC in decline, on the eve of its crisis. More images after the jump.