Soulellis Studio

Modern Zoo, part 2. I skipped B for Berthe the bat, because I love Coralie so much (le serpent corail). One by one, I'm re-drawing Lou Klein's alphabetical origami zoo.

Lou contacted me via this site when I made the original post, and I asked him to write back and tell me about his life, since I couldn't find anything about him online. Here's what Lou wrote:

Since creating "Animals to Fold" (that was the name of the English language edition) quite a few years have elapsed and I've had a varied career in design, education and publishing in the USA and England. I taught at The School of Visual Arts in NYC, lectured in many art colleges in Great Britain but especially The Royal College of Art (5 years as a senior lecturer and 5 years as head of graphic design). During that period I also spent a semester at Yale as visiting professor and acting head of graphics.

Lou Klein

"If you want to know something else about beauty, what precisely it is, look at a history of art. You will see that every age has had its ideal Venus (or Apollo), and that all these Venuses or Apollos put together and compared out of the context of their periods are nothing less than a family of monsters."

From Design as Art (1966).

Another great Swiss Miss Creative Morning, this time with Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. I have a soft spot for former architects (or rather, "trained as but never worked as" like myself) because the interdisciplinary connections can be rich. She talked about this today, and her own attraction to "the curious octopus" — she says this is how she wants to live intellectually in her own mind — multiple arms reaching and grabbing and connecting architecture, design, art, science and technology. That's how I want to live too!

I've seen Paola speak before and I marvel at her ability to engage an audience. I've never seen anyone do it quite as well as her, except perhaps this guy. She's got an ease, a passion, a sort of casual fluidity to the way she speaks that belies her real position (considered to be one of the most powerful in the art world). Maybe it's an Italian thing? I just got back from Rome, where this kind of bravado is really in the air.

Paola talked about design of course, and how the design community in NYC has shifted during the last 16 years. She started by comparing Milan's regional strength (design) to New York's (art) in 1994, when she arrived here. There's a kind of normalcy in the way design belongs to life in Europe, and how it breeds a kind of everyday design culture that she felt was lacking in America (I admit, I still feel this). She traces this inferiority complex back to the 18th century, when we began importing culture from France. But she recognized New York's strength in contemporary art ("in Italy art ended with Dada") and today she traced the coming-together of art, design and architecture through technology and economic crisis from 1994 until now.

Here are a few notes:

• Today ours is a generation of lost architects — only 70+ year old architects get to build — so many architects have turned to design (so true!)
• While Apple has raised the everyday design standard there's been a decrease in the object as we now turn to interdisciplinary, ethereal, conversational and experimental design.
• Romanticized or not, Paola proclaims that this is a great moment for design — it's a force that means good business, good politics and good image-building
• Design education has shifted from silos to interdisciplinary programs
• Technology pre-9/11 was a time of great promise but a lot of frustration (difficulty in making connections). Her Design and the Elastic Mind attempted to show how that has changed — how technology now seamlessly brings together design and science to create objects and scenarios, to plant the seeds. Of all of the exhibitions that she has created, this is her favorite.
• When curating a show she likes to leave it unfinished. Like architects who have a desire to never complete the project, she says that if you leave an exhibition unfinished you give a gift to the public — you let them finish it. You leave them with somewhere else to go.
• Her newest project at MoMA is called Talk to Me, exploring the overt communication between people and objects. Designers are the interface, bring innovation to life, write the script for this dialogue.
• This is an exhibition about process, so rather than present a checklist, she's blogging the show as it forms and transforms (a big "minestrone").
• Paola shows us a diagram: "media" (the real world) on the left, and "digital media" (the ethereal) on the right. The space in-between is where we'll live in the future, the liminal space of augmented reality where the real and the ethereal merge
• The "@" symbol: a non-acquisition for MoMA — her proudest in the last six months
• With a mission to educate, she feels that this kind of museum acquisition ("tagging" rather than purchasing) is very important, a must for the collection. "It's like the symbol is in the air, and we captured its shadow." From the middle ages the symbol has been in use and in 1971 it was re-used, recycled and repurposed — this is what we want design to be.
• The idea of "tagging:" objects that you really can't have because they belong to everyone, things that are in inner or outer space (or even entire buildings — should they be part of a museum's collection?)

"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?

This is not a design post, but in a way it is.

I recently had the privilege of attending a launch event for the new book The Power of Pull, by the Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation guys: John Seely Brown, John Hagel III and Lang Davison. This wasn't just another book signing — Seely Brown and Hagel were interviewed by John Heilemann on stage at the Times Center and we had access to an in-depth conversation about how the world is shifting from push to pull — from 20th century strategies of total predictability and stabilization to knowledge flow. Here are my notes from the interview (I haven't read the book yet).

What is pull? John and John identify three ways to get into the discussion: access, attraction and achievement. Access is about orchestrating the best of the best. They use the obvious (and already dated) example of the iPod — how Steve Jobs created something new by drawing out extraordinary people and resources towards a goal. Access is getting easier everyday, and today the idea of pulling powerful resources on demand is almost expected.

• Spikes So interesting: the paradoxical idea that if the world is flat and everything/one is accessible, why does talent tend to come together in "spikes?" If you're in a spike, you have more unexpected encounters. Where you place yourself — physically and virtually — is a choice. And if you find yourself in a spike, how do you stand out? Putting out beacons: going to conferences, hanging out in the in-between spaces and encouraging unexpected encounters. Today, attraction is about shaping serendipity.
• Making 20th century institutions are running faster and faster in place, and losing position. The power of pull means turning the performance curve on its head by creating spaces for "making." They use World of Warcraft as their primary example here. Fascinating — that the "guild" in WoW is the kind of space that encourages productive friction, that yields achievement, problem solving and creativity. That institutional innovation might be about finding (or creating) these spaces, and that this may be more important than technology development (a somewhat radical idea). 20th century technology was all about stabilization — sediments that accumulate over time. But there is no stabilization in today's innovation: social media and cloud computing are more like shifting overlays, quickly changing spaces for creative engagement at the edge.
• Edge/Flow The old model of "push" innovation was all about total predictability: find and invest in proprietary knowledge (knowledge stocks), hold closely at the core, and then extract. Umair Haque explains this so well. Today, your knowledge stocks are depreciating. To be in the flow means a big shift from the core to the edge — from knowledge stocks to knowledge flows. Flip the ideas of core and edge and you find a new source of economic value (of course, the art world learned the value of the edge long ago). Not just taking from the edge, but creating something new (making). Today, knowledge is sustained and valuable when it's created (and co-created) and shared — when one edge engages with another. John Seely Brown says: "Be in the flow!"
• Passion John and John identify passion as a key ingredient in pull. How do you measure passion in the workforce? The 20th century model was to leave your passions at home. Don't bring them into the predictable workplace. This breeds disengagement (just collecting a paycheck) and if you're faced with an unexpected problem, it's terrible. Those with passion seek out new ways to engage. You welcome unexpected opportunities and look for them to drive performance to new levels. Cultivate passion in the workforce. John and John call this: "Up with People."

If you made it this far and you want more, you should probably head on over to the Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation "Edge-themes" area, where you can download some great PDFs.

Side note Anyone can learn to be a good interviewer (if I can do it, anyone can). But watching someone conduct a talk on-stage as a media performance is really impressive. I've never seen anyone do it as well as Paola Antonelli but John Heilemann comes close. He's got charisma and brought a kind of intense interest and knowledge to the discussion (not only seeming to have read the book but able to converse on the fly with the Johns). I imagine this could be faked, but does it matter? The trick is to appear engaged, to stay on top of the subject, to lead the discussion. This makes for a great performance.

I've been a big fan of 37signals for a really long time (pre-Backpack!) so the talk by Ryan Singer at SVA last night was a must-see for me.

Ryan used the ideas of form, context, forces and fitness from Christopher Alexander's 1964 Notes on the Synthesis of Form to talk about a different way to approach the design problem. He began with a few questions: some designers consistently produce good work — what makes them different? Why does good design work? How do you design from scratch, and how do you evaluate and improve existing design?

Any design problem ("design a tea kettle") can be broken down into form (the kettle) and context (the stovetop, the kitchen). It's typical to start with a list of requirements and attributes that are form-determining — the water must be kept hot, but the handle can't get too hot, the water has to pour out when we tilt the kettle, etc. But what if we shift the problem from form-determining requirements to needs and context (what Ryan calls "the life situation")? Instead of "making a kettle" to "I want boiling water in the kitchen?" This turns the nature of the design problem on its head and radically different results are possible.

To illustrate a process for designing from scratch, Ryan moved from water in the kitchen to a more relevant example: the design of the 37signals web app Highrise.

Step 1: "Draw a boundary between the form and context." The form is the Highrise UI. The context is the browser and the needs and life situation of the user.

Step 2: "Identify the forces that make demands on the form." Understanding the life situation in a design problem means starting from the bottom up with questions, needs and challenges ("I want to keep track of who we talked to, what was said, what to do").

Step 3: "Resolve related forms into diagrams." The forces can clump together into families of forces, and the design is sketched. "Independent groups of forces becoming diagrams." Chunks of forces that work together, that motivate the form.

Ryan used very specific examples from the design of the core screens in Highrise.

Step 4: "Place the built form into context and look for misfits." Do it for real. Evaluate the design by identifying brokenness, pain-points and conflict. The design is good when there's an absence of conflict. Redesign to eliminate the conflicts.

Ryan's takeaways

• A different take on requirements is needed: use facts about the world, instead of attributes.
• Designing with forces means understanding why.
• Starting with forces allows us to design from the bottom up and combine forms into larger wholes.
• A design is good when it fits the world, not a list of requirements or a trend.

• On customer feedback: "Feedback is information, not direction."
• On making difficult design changes: "Get the stakeholders in the room to widen the space of possibility and increase flexibility."
• On the biggest iPad design challenge: "No hovers!"

This was really refreshing. This is very much how I design — starting with interviews and my own experiences to identify the situation in a casual, conversational way. What I uncover is almost "evidence" and I use it to construct the design problem, which is frequently different from what the client has defined. I try to minimize my own pre-determined form-giving as much as possible. (I try!) I've found that clients love this approach — it puts them at ease, and they feel that they've been heard. I love that Ryan identified a real methodology behind this madness — I'm going to read Alexander's A Pattern Language right away.

(Wow, what is this? Seems like some bizarre website devoted to Alexander. Can't tell if it's officially his or not.)

(Seems like this is the official Christopher Alexander website. And a lesson in web design circa 1996.)

I've always been fascinated by Twitter icons and why people choose them. Some designers use type-inspired single letter icons, for obvious reasons, like Caren @litherland's C, @pentagramdesign's P and @AisleOne's A. Each of these are perfect in their own way — but could I find the entire alphabet? What kind of crazy cut-up magazine kidnapper typeface would that make?

It didn't take long to find the really great ABCs of Twitter. All of them represent design, web and type-related feeds on Twitter. As in Scrabble, a few were more difficult (and valuable?) than others, like I, L, V and Z. (I'd prefer to have single letters, but hey, it's Landor.) Of course I changed my own icon and added myself to the list.

I'm not sure what kind of typeface this would make but as a collection ("Twitterface") it's really kind of nice. Can you guess the identity of each? Go here to see them all.

And now I'm wondering about the stories behind each of these — the typefaces, found letterforms and designed marks that make up this collection. If you own one of these and want to tell me about your Twitter letter send me a note and I'll share the results!

A AisleOne
B Behance
C Litherland
D DesignRelated
E Elephantik
F Franknas
G Grainedit
H HeyDaysStudio
I iA
J CreativeBalls
K KlimTypeFoundry
L Landor_dot_com
M MomaParis
N NewsDesigner
O Kokoromoi
P PentagramDesign
Q MartaBernstein
R Retinart
S Soulellis
T Typedia
U UppercaseMag
V VandelayDesign
W Weswuz
X PleaseLetMeDesign
Y YouWorkForThem
& FeltandFitted
Z Zinnebeeld

Railroad Gothic by American Type Founders.

I found this gem in a great old bookstore in Ithaca: le Zoo de Carton: un alphabet illustré à découper, d'après la méthode Origami (Louis P. Klein). It's from 1963, published by Editions du Pont Royal, Paris. Each letter of the alphabet names an animal and is accompanied by an exquisite "stencil" graphic for the origami. The reverse side of each diagram is blank, so the book was really meant to be cut up into an alphabetical menagerie.

Does anyone know anything about Louis P. Klein? As a series of 26 graphics (posters, cards, whatever) the collection is incredible — they remind me a lot of the posters of Enzo Mari. Even the dotted lines are beautiful. I've searched online and can't find a thing about this book, so I'm going to scan, trace and recreate each of the animals here, beginning with Alfred le singe.

Entire book set in Univers 55 & 65, btw.

Today's Creative Morning was a treat. Liz Danzico hosted and the virtual guest was Swiss Miss herself with newborn Swiss Mister. Allan Chochinov of Core77 was the guest speaker and he kept it short and sweet with a song and a talk.

The song was "There A Hole in My Bucket" and Allan dedicated it to the virtual guests. Who knew that this song traces back to 1700, from a German collection of songs Bergliederbüchlein as a dialogue between an un-named man and a woman named Liese? Thanks to Wikipedia we find out that later versions were called "Heinrich und Liese" and credited as a folk song from Hesse.

Allan used the song as a metaphor for the design problem. A "cascading sequence of contingencies and consequences." Who is the user? Is it @henry? We might call the bucket a container, or a vessel. We might say that the bucket is "a liquid containment and conveyance system."

So what exactly does Henry need? What is the context? What about ergonomics? Ethnographics? And what about that relationship between Henry and Liza? Maybe "the bucket is the last thing we should be worried about."

All important questions we ask when confronted with the design problem.

The client brief: "There's a hole in our bucket!" Allan showed typical designer responses:

In the end Allan called out for sustainable design: maybe all we need to do is re-imagine the good old-fashioned bucket. The old wooden one that's been engineered to last forever. Sure it's got a hole, but maybe the solution is right in front of us and needs rethinking (he showed great examples: the hippo water roller and the GRIP rake by Scott Henderson). Sometimes as designers our instinct is to add more design, more solution — stacked up solutions that are conceived as a patching together of more and more design. Perhaps we need less "might do," less "can do," and more "ought to do."

A thoughtful, important message for a snowed-in morning.

Here are all 28 slides used in Bill Gates' "Innovating to Zero" talk at TED on February 12, 2010.

Why are they so good?

• They tell the story, even without his narration.
• No chart junk.
• Exactly the right amount of information. No more, no less.
• Every graphic element has been considered, and has a purpose. Every graphic element works.
• Color, emotion, drama. Human faces.
• Most of the slides have 10 words or less. The most powerful slide has one number. The second most powerful slide has two words.
• Only 28 slides.

Ironically, from the man who made chart junk such a problem in the first place.

Richard Saul Wurman spoke to a crowded room at the New School last night about beginnings, learning, listening, remembering and being open to the unknown.

It was a brilliant conversation about his journey to zero, from a man who's been around the circle a few times. Richard commands the room with a wit that somehow manages to be both self-deprecating and larger than life, leaving me to wonder at times if he'd gone too far. (He sort of makes Sarah Silverman look sweet.) No, in the end I was in awe: someone genuinely curious and generous and willing to share. A crazy old man at 75 who is so enthusiastic about spreading what he's learned in life that he'll take over the room and turn the evening upside down with maximum storytelling.

Wurman is famous for his disdain of note-taking so I felt a bit self-conscious about scribbling during the talk. He says that writing something down is permission to forget, and that a better kind of learning occurs when you listen and make connections without the crutch. I don't always agree, but I love the sentiment. I also have a really bad memory.

So as an experiment I tried to jot down the concepts only, with the idea that I would make the connections later. This works for me. I need an artifact so I can put the narrative back together again, later on. Rather than try to tell Richard's story for you, I present my notes. Fragments of words and ideas that caught my attention during the talk. The connections are all there, between the words.

Click on the image for a larger, more legible version.

1. TEDxShekhavati hand embroidery.

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

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

Re-creations of the cover and a few pages from Unimark's 1970 masterpiece, the New York City Transit Authority Graphics Standards Manual.

Letter spacing / Page 9 (larger)

Letter spacing / Page 10 (larger)

Helvetica and the New York City Subway System / Paul Shaw

Cover (larger)

Type face / Page 4 — grid (larger)

Type face / Page 4 (larger)

The AIGA talk a few nights ago got me thinking about the 1970 NYC Transit Authority Graphics Standards Manual that's supposedly buried somewhere here in our office. In its absence I found myself coming back to page 46 of Paul Shaw's book, totally in love with Vignelli's presentation, wishing for the real thing. Basic lessons in modern typography — letterforms, spacing, sizing, grid. And the insane kerning chart on page 10 that pre-dates "shift-option-]" by thirty years.

Then I had the totally crazy idea to reverse engineer the grid and create one of the pages in Illustrator. I tried not to question it — half dare, half therapeutic exercise, I quickly set up "Type face / Page 4" and kept going.

It's not like I don't have anything better to do — we're really busy here at Soulellis Studio. Spending a day engulfed in the study of something you love — for no other reason but to see what you'll find — is a luxury I can never afford. But I was able to get away with it today and it slowed my heart rate and I got a chance to absorb something I thought I knew in a totally different way. Highly recommended.

Last night's AIGA event started off with a Bob Noorda tribute by Jan Conradi (author of Unimark International: The Business of Design and the Design of Business), but then Massimo Vignelli took the stage and the show really began.

As reported: "he's jaded, bitter and hilarious — all important ingredients for a modernist maestro." Apparently Vignelli suggested the conversation, upon publication of Paul Shaw's impressive book Helvetica and the New York City Subway System, which documents the evolution of the system's graphics from the mid-1960s on. I bought both books at the event — each meticulously designed, beautiful, full of juicy detail.

Vignelli began the conversation, moderated by Shaw and Conradi, with an overview of the Unimark design process. The highlights:

• Put the signs at the point of decision, not before or after


• Standardize the support (the black bar at the top of the white signs)


• Standardize the graphic modules (1 x 1 for arrows, 1 x 2 for information, 1 x 4 for directionals, 1 x 8 for station ID) — "You could make any message by putting these panels together."


• Three type sizes only


• "Design is not embellishment — it's about solving the problem."


• "Non-visual people panic when they see a map, so we have to take care of them too." (the never-realized "Directory")


• "When working with a huge organization like the transit authority, how brilliantly you make your design is not as important as how brilliantly you master the implementation. The huge client will destroy it — they're huge destroyers."

Next up on stage is Michael Hertz and colleagues. Hertz was awarded the subway work in 1979 when the MTA decided not to work with Vignelli any longer. Hertz is responsible for the NYC subway map we use today. Until last night, the two had never met. Hertz began by saying that Vignelli's famous 1972 map is immortal, and beautiful. So how did the current mess happen? During the next hour it was battled out — reasons ranging from ADA requirements, the expansion of the system, "giant client" problems and MTA gems like "Marketing was high on the list of things to do" and "There was a lot of thinking going on" (??)

But Vignelli really said it best — with MTA decision-makers on stage and in the audience:

• "The transit authority was never aware of what it meant as a system, which is why it could never be implemented properly. When there's a problem, why not go back to the original consultant? That's not the way intelligent people solve problems."


• "A diagram is a diagram — don't cheat me. The current map is a by-product of someone who doesn't know what they're doing."

• Design vs. operational bureaucracy


• Abstraction vs. literalness


• Clarity vs. clutter


• Systemic change vs. incremental tinkering


• European elitism vs. American pragmatism, etc.

As enthused as I was leaving Bierut's client talk a few weeks ago, I walked home from this talk kind of down. I was looking for inspiration but found discouragement — big clients who don't "get it" are bad, smart design legends are good. I guess in the end everyone's happy: we've got a subway system we (sometimes) love and Massimo is still worshipped and Michael Hertz still has a client who keeps him busy. Life goes on.

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?

Just came from a brilliant short talk by Pentagram partner Michael Bierut at the SwissMiss Creative Mornings. His slides were great and so very tweetable (on purpose?) — short summary statements in giant type that filled the screen.

The topic was clients.

I was going to tweet during the talk. But because the bits really add up to a good story and a very specific philosophy about the client/designer relationship, I think it's worth presenting them all together. So here they are. It's some of the best designer advice I've ever heard and I want to share it, but I'm also putting the quotes right here on Soulellis.com so I can come back and read them over and over again. Every day.

Michael Bierut talks about clients.

• Clients can be the best part of the design process.


• Clients are the difference between art and design.


• My clients are the same as yours.


• The right client can change anything.


• The best clients love design, or don't give a damn about it. (i.e., they have confidence)


• The worst clients are somewhere in between. (i.e., they have fear)


• Never talk about "educating the client."


• What makes a great client? Brains, passion, trust and courage.


• "You'll never go wrong when you work with someone smarter than you." (Tibor Kalman)


• Warning: Your great client may not be my great client.


• Great clients lead to more great clients (and more great work).


• Bad clients lead to more bad clients (and more bad work).


• Bad clients take up more of your time than they should.


• Meanwhile, we take great clients for granted.


• The trick is to reverse this.


• What do I owe a great client? Loyalty, honesty, dedication and tenacity.


• Once you find a great client, never let them go.


• If you can find five great clients, you're set for life.


• "You'd better find somebody to love." (Jefferson Airplane)


• Good luck.

Why not — let's call them Bierut-isms.

I can honestly say that I also share Mr. Bierut's love of the designer/client relationship (point #1) and that I've learned many of these lessons the hard (and enjoyable) way during the last 15 years. It's immensely satisfying to hear it reinforced in such a clear way by someone you have respect for and someone who's been at it for awhile.

Mr. Bierut ended his talk by saying that he was very lucky — he could name not just five but ten great clients in his career so far ("These people are why you've heard of me..."). Moving and inspiring to hear work so closely associated with the designer dedicated to the people who made it possible. He mentioned Fern Mallis (7th on Sixth), the architect Robert Stern, Terron Schaefer (Saks), Laura Shore (Mohawk Paper), Chee Pearlman (I.D. Mag), David Thurm (New York Times), Christy MaClear (Philip Johnson Glass House) and others. Proof that design is best when it's a collaborative effort.

From the book's Postscript 2005:

"In 1996-97, Birkhäuser Publishers undertook a risky experiment when publishing a new edition of Polychromie architecturale. From the beginning it was clear that the reproduction of colors in art book printing would not suffice. At the time, a partner was found in the Alsatian company of Adrien and Robert Marx; not only were they manufacturing monochrome wallpapers using glue printing in accurate colors but they were also able to assemble the "claviers de couleurs" by hand using the original technique. The three-volume publication found a large circle of interested readers worldwide, and -- most gratifying of all -- left several traces in contemporary architecture."
...
"Soon after the publication of Polychromie architecturale, the paint chemist Katrin Trautwein became enthusiastic about the possibility of Le Corbusier's color rows, and she began to work with the natural and synthetic mineral pigments that had originally been used. She succeeded in establishing, with the agreement of the Fondation Le Corbusier, production of colors that has meanwhile proven its worth not only for exhibitions and restorations -- especially for the work of Le Corbusier himself -- but also for contemporary architecture and furniture designs. It therefore made sense to use this approach for the second edition of Polychromie architecturale and thus reconstruct Le Corbusier's color definition, which was based directly on traditional mineral pigments that were the commercial standard in his day. The luminosity and stability of the shades under changing light conditions inherent in this method cannot be surpassed."

I found the 3-volume set at the Urban Center Books sale (40% off the entire store until they close on January 23). It's an extraordinary thing. These are painted papers, based on two collections of Salubra wallpapers produced with Le Corbusier in 1931 and 1959. I made a quick attempt to translate the "Salubra II" 1959 palette onto the screen, more for a first impression than anything else (above). Somehow I'll find a way to use these colors. I'll try to get the 1931 colors up too. This deserves attention and some way to make the remarkable color combos more relevant for designers today.

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.

Is anyone looking at Jean-Luc Godard's extraordinary use of typography? These are title cards and other typographic moments from 1961: "A Woman Is a Woman" (Une femme est une femme). Godard edits the graphics like dialogue or music, to connect and disrupt and slice and chop and cut. The stills I grabbed from the DVD are beautiful but experiencing the super-words cinematically is completely overwhelming.