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.

I just had a crazy moment realizing that we started designing the new website for Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art and Planning in August 2005 — the same year YouTube was created. Soulellis Studio was four years old. Twitter wasn't even born yet.

We launched it in two stages (2005 and 2006). It goes without saying that the internet is a different place now. So is AAP. During the last five years we've worked with two deans and many dedicated staff to refine the identity of the college (an exciting evolution). Designing quick and dirty brand identities and launching in record time has become the norm these days (doing a few of those right now), but this is a great example of what can happen when designer and client are in it for the long haul. A committment to exploring brand identity over time.

This year AAP asked us to revisit our original design. Among our goals:

• "expand" the feeling of the narrow site without increasing actual width
• refresh the design to better reflect AAP's current visual identity
• refine the typography
• increase size and visibility of images
• increase legibility

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.

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.

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!

We designed a new logo for Urban Center Books earlier this year as part of our ongoing work for the Municipal Art Society of New York. You'll find it on bags, bookmarks and on the spine of the new book Unpacking My Library, just published by Yale (book design by Pentagram).

The much-loved architecture and design book store, considered to be one of the best of its kind in the US, is closing in January. MAS is moving to West 57 Street and until new retail space is found the book store will be online only. Anyone who has browsed this place in person knows how much it will be missed. Can't wait to see it reborn in 2010.

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.

We produced these Enviro-Tote bags for the Rockefeller Foundation's Jane Jacobs Medal event in September. I just got mine yesterday and it was filled with books, including the excellent Wrestling With Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City.