Soulellis Studio

I never thought that a two-year series of posters using the same format, colors, typography and "graphic machine design generator" would be so interesting. But that's exactly what Dean Kleinman at Cornell University College of Architecture, Art and Planning challenged us to do and it's resulted in some of our best poster work. Here's the recently printed Fall 2010 events poster.

The second in a set of four books created for the Venetian Suite project in Italy, May-June 2010. I posted the first book ("77 palazzi on G.Canal") here. Read more about the project and trip with SVA here.

0-100 in S.Marco

Every doorway in Venice is numbered. Each number marks an actual door, or a window that was formerly a door, or part of a wall where a doorway once was. The hand-painted numbers are distinctive: always red, always in a white oval or rectangular shape, outlined in black.

The numbers were put in place in the mid-19th century to replace a much older system that had ordered Venice's doors for hundreds of years. All of the original civic numbers ("numeri civici") are maintained to this day, whether the door is functional (or even there), or not.

I discovered that the grand entrance to the Basilica in Piazza San Marco is "#0." It's unmarked, of course. Doorways #1, 1a and 2 are also unmarked (the Doge's Palace). The first marked number is "3" — a gelato shop in the piazza, across from the Palace. The numbers continue from there, wrapping around the piazza through the arcades, and continuing on into every street, canal and corner of Venice (many thousands of hand-painted numbers).

One way to explore the city is through these numbers. Venice can be unknowable, unpredictable, chaotic; the numbers project a sense of order and organization, a guiding rationale. But they're also enigmatic.

Early on a Saturday morning, from a consistent vantage point, I photographed each of the first 100 numeri civici in the piazza. Each photo documents a number (at the center/top) but also contains fragments of doorways, people, interiors and signage. Some numbers are missing; I noted those on blank pages. Look closely at the photographs and you'll also discover, in the reflections, what was behind me — beautiful moments of deep space and light containing palace, piazza, basilica, people and sky.

A selection of the photographs used in the book are on Flickr.

Download the entire PDF here (4.8MB).

The AAP Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University is celebrating its 75th anniversary. Here's our gridded "75" design on a save-the-date postcard, using Pantone spots 3965 (yellow-green) & 540 (blue). The photo is from 1957. More to come, including a 148-page book in the fall.

Our latest issue of the alumni newsletter for the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University, featuring neon blue-green Pantone 808. This is the eighth issue of the remarkable magazine that we re-imagined and redesigned four years ago.

We just finished designing Scott Pasfield's Gay America / Out and Proud Across the USA. During a two-year period Scott photographed gay men in every state and gathered their stories to create an incredible portrait of America. For the cover and headline typeface we chose Tapeworm, a curious font based on the wordmarks found in Ed Ruscha's paintings — the kind of letterforms an amateur sign maker might make with masking tape. Ruscha refers to this style as "boy scout utility modern" — to me it's proud, American, odd and rebellious, and completely unexpected.

It's been a great honor to work with Scott and editor Alan Rapp to bring Gay America to life. We had a smooth experience printing the sample book with Blurb and now it's being reviewed by publishers. Good luck to Scott and his remarkable project.

I just returned from an extraordinary two weeks studying design history and typography with Louise Fili, Steven Heller and Lita Talarico in the SVA Masters Workshop in Venice and Rome. I blogged the whole thing here.

Venice in four movements was the final result of my first week in Italy. The four little books are a set: a study of the different structures I discovered there. They suggest something expansive (77 palazzi, 39 doorbells...etc.) but in fact they're narrow: focused concepts that stay close to one very specific idea. An attempt to produce something spacious and beautiful from a simple, methodical framework.

I'll feature each book in separate posts.

77 palazzi on G.Canal.

Process: I photographed every facade on the Grand Canal, numbered and plotted the palazzi on a map, sampled each palazzo's color from its photo, and paired each color with its original family name. The book — a particular kind of color study — paints a meditative portrait of Venice by suggesting a deeper history of the city (the family names), light (how the colors were rendered during my partly cloudy, mid-morning one-hour journey) and urban geography (the cut of the "S" through the entire width of the city).

In this case, as in all four of these books, process becomes content. I try to tell a story through disciplined research, and expose something poetic from the structure.

The fat little book is a giant accordion fold that can be experienced page-by-page or as an unfolding palette, kind of like the Grand Canal itself.

Download the PDF (2.3 MB).

Course of Action Map for Studio 1.

Course of Action Map for Studio 2.

Course of Action Map for Studio 3.

Course of Action Map for Studio 4.

Course of Action Map for Studio (+1).

These are the diagrams we created for Ann Pendleton-Jullian's just-published book on design education, Four (+1) Studios: 7 Papers and an Epilogue. Each illustrates a different model for educating the architect in the context of the design studio.

Ann Pendleton-Jullian is the director of the Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University, and a very old friend and colleague. We've been working with her on websites, papers and other materials exploring design and education. Just published: Four (+1) Studios: 7 Papers and an Epilogue. Ann was an enthusiastic partner and involved in every detail of the design — the book is truly a rich collaboration. The diagrams come from Ann's ideas about the space and temporality of the architectural studio, and they were originally sketched by hand; they're some of the most complex (and beautiful) conceptual visualizations that we've ever produced.

You can purchase the book on Amazon.

Our recent direct mail work for the Whitney Museum of American Art.

A hot violet postcard press check for MAS.

Here's our profile piece for OMA's Paul Milstein Hall at Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art and Planning. The over-sized magazine-ish thing wrapped in an Astrobright Gamma Green 65 lb. dust-jacket with white foil-stamp presents the building in context, with its incredible Dutch-American team: Rem Koolhaas, Robert Silman and Petra Blaisse. The heavy kraftpaper enclosure is screened with opaque white ink.

Lovingly crafted by Monroe Litho in Rochester, NY.

Spring in Ithaca: Lise Anne Couture, Shayne O'Neil, Laurie Hawkinson, Toshiko Mori, Petra Blaisse, Rem Koolhaas.

This is our tenth poster for Cornell University AAP (College of Architecture, Art and Planning). We began with this one in Spring 2006 — pure typographic play. Two deans later we're still exploring a single theme that's been at the core of every one of the ten: mapping. Creating a system within the boundaries of a single printed sheet and letting the information play itself out according to the set of rules (color, grid, typography, order).

Maybe it's time for a little book or website? The next post will highlight all ten as a set.

Sometimes the quickest projects — the ones that take hours, not months — turn out the best. Of course the trick is figuring out how to make even the months-long projects look simple, but that's another discussion.

I absolutely love these two cards. If you got our book then you got one of our "TWENTY TEN" cards. Continuing our tradition of visiting the letterpress shop once a year, this was designed and hand-crafted by Erik. And for the first time, we actually set the design in metal type (printed on 110lb. Crane's Lettra).

Matt Carbone is a super-talented architectural photographer and it was great working with him on a simple business card. We were able to keep this one pure and the result is hot.

As promised, we gave away a few copies of this self-published book of our work on Twitter and I'll be mailing those out this week. Thanks to everyone who responded — wonderful to know there's some interest in what we do here on 17th Street.

I wish I could give away more but these fun books, designed by Erik and myself, are expensive! They're printed on-demand by Lulu.com and we pay for that luxury (320 pages, one at a time, when you want it, no more / no less). I looked into an actual print run of 1,000 copies and while the price per book would have been more reasonable the investment was not. If you absolutely must have one send me a note and we'll work something out.

But why not just download it? It's free!

Our seventh Cornell University College of Architecture, Art and Planning alumni newsletter, featuring Pantone 814 purple.

Dead trees alert: a Soulellis Studio book, organized chronologically, featuring everything on this site from 2007 until November 2009. 316 pages. Very limited edition. We'll make a few copies available soon, probably on Twitter.

Richard Saul Wurman and Marc Hodosh are bringing together some of the most brilliant minds in healthcare and well-being next week for a four-day old-school-style TED extravaganza in San Diego. Soulellis Studio did the TEDMED name badges, schedules, speaker booklets, sponsor signage, etc. And I'll be there, tweeting away (@soulellis).

Seen in situ in Rand Hall at Cornell AAP.

We've turned a corner. Working with Dean Kent Kleinman has pushed us to revisit our Cornell University Architecture, Art and Planning posters. The mapping of information is like a graphic machine, generating serial works; stepped scales of operation produce difference and variation.

For the Fall 2009 events poster our collaboration yielded a dynamic graphic but that's almost beside the point; the mechanical shuffling of chronological and alphabetical order is at the core of this work.

John D. Rockefeller began the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913 with a gift of $35 million, "to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world." 48 years later, the Foundation provided a seminal grant to an unknown Jane Jacobs for the research and writing of her classic work "The Death and Life of Great American Cities."

One year after Jane's death in 2006, the Foundation established the Jane Jacobs Medal, "to recognize visionary work in building a more diverse, dynamic and equitable city through creative uses of the urban environment."

We designed the invitation package for the 2009 Awards Ceremony and it was beautifully printed by Karr Graphics.