Campsite is a New York based design blog and studio run by visual designer Max Ritt.
Hand painted signs are one of those things that really intimidate me and thus I love them that much more. The above video shows Dan of Dusty Signs making a self promotional sign as captured through the lens of Hunter Johnson.
(via We Love Typography »)
Hand painted murals are making a serious comeback, and I am loving all of them. This one sponsored by the Highlands Commerce Guild in Louisville Kentucky is bad ass. A true collaboration took place on this one with the design coming from Bryan Patrick Todd, and the sign painting was done by Kirby Stafford.
(via PUBLIC SCHOOL »)
Andy Luce aka Visual Armory created this amazing hand painted sign for the client New Express Muffler & Brake. The the final product is beautiful, and is only made better by the fun Instagram process shots.
(via Pitch Design Union »)
The Swiss just do it better. One thing I have been looking at a lot and is becoming a thread of sorts here on campsite is the idea of reinventing or re-envisioning designed objects, which have become pedestrian or banal. This atypical wayfinding system designed by Tina Stäheli–Shinohara illustrates this perfectly. It falls somewhere between constructivist art and signage, and thus changes how we engage and use it. Equal parts art and information in my opinion would allow the user to be more connected to the information on the sign and be able to understand and apply that information more easily. I would love to hear other people’s thoughts on this so please feel free to leave a comment.
(via swissmiss »)
Photographer Ramiro Chaves has captured some beautiful images of old signage, letter forms and unique objects. One of the more compelling aspects of his compositions is the signs, letters or subject matter are not quite in the place or state they were originally intended.
(via The Best Part »)
As far as museums go few entice me for any reason other than the art on display. In the far Northwest corner of Massachusetts there is a museum that breaks through the bland white box stereotype of museum galleries. MASS Moca similar to Dia in Beacon New York and the Tate Modern in London is a converted post industrial facility. So even though these three museums share a similar past, they each have beautiful excentrities, which make the visit especially engaging. Not only are the exhibitions art, but the architecture is art. The aging of the structure is another example of art. And then the updates to the building including signage, modern infrastructure and restroom facilities.
Every time I am lucky enough to get up there. I discover another artist I have never heard of and find another reason to love their campus. This particular visit every exhibition was new to me. They included Sub Mirage Lignum by Nari Ward, One Floor Up More Highly by Katharina Grosse, and the Sol Lewitt Retrospective, which has been 25 years in the making. You can take a look at some more photos from the museum over on my flickr and stay tuned for a post about the Sol Lewitt Retrospective later this week.
Most of the design and creative community has been obsessed with sign painting and hand lettering for a while now. It can more or less be attributed to the back to craft mentality and movement that seems to be inundating all forms of art.
I have not been spared, but on a personal level I find sign painting very nostalgic and it reminds me of my own childhood. For a few years when I was pretty young, no older than seven or eight, my dad made immaculate carved wood and hand painted signs as a way of subsidizing his woodworking business. I would often travel with him on the job and get to watch while he sketched, taped and finally painted a sign.
This specific sign painter Jacky Georges is obviously a skilled veteran and hold over from the generation before vinyl die-cuts and quick crappy window solutions. Work like this is a craft, it takes time to make, but because of that it lasts both physically and aesthetically.
(via excavation by spoonfuls »)
Peter Vogel operates a super cool business, of which I am infinitely jealous, in Portland Oregon called Nutmegger Workshop. Basically what they do is create reproduction and historically accurate hand painted signs. Their work is extremely tactile and definitely brings you back to a time when painted signs clothed the landscape of towns and cities alike. The vernacular typography and hand painting techniques of sign painters seem to be in full resurgence right now, and I am really digging it.
(via Quipsologies »)
Vienna based graphic design and type design studio Typejockeys designed some fun and light environmental graphics for a new building in Philippine Welser Straße, Innsbruck. The project was designed in collaboration with Profil Wohnbau, Architekturbüro Fahrmaier and Pixel. The signage and graphics program also included a typeface design called Wesler. Which works to balance out the soft forms of the graphics with a more structured typeface for way-finding and display purposes. View more about the project along with more images here.
(via Design Work Life »)
Talented designer and hand letterer Dana Tanamachi has done some amazing chalk type lettering for an array of different commissions, which are truly fascinating. Especially for all of us who spend our days “crafting” away at a computer. Dana currently works for the extraordinary Louise Fili applying her serious lettering and typographic talents.
(via Design Work Life »)
What an awesome take on a way-finding system for a public building. The movement and playfulness of all the shapes and type help to convey direction, but also give an airy more light feel to the whole thing. The Sydney based team at COLLIDER definitely has some environmental signage chops. I really hope to see more stuff from them in this vein soon.
(via Graphic Exchange »)
Graphic designer Shawn Hazen has lived in Chicago for the past four years and has started an ongoing project called ChicagoType, which does pretty much exactly what it says. Hazen says in the project description “I’m a graphic designer, so this unique visual heritage continues to blow me away, specifically the commercial typography.” So far the variety and styles that are captured in his photos are vast, but the underlying geography inherently ties them together.
(via Swiss Legacy »)
I spent the last two hours looking through page after page of Ktinka’s photo blog. I love the variety of subject matter as well as the how she captures light, color, and mood. Seriously vast and inspiring body of work, I especially love the shots that very simply capture experiences from her everyday life.
The art exhibition style signage of Kidimo brings me back to the tag sales and antique shops of my childhood. Using found and salvaged letter forms and signs Kidimo creates one of a kind signs and typographic art installations.
“Nicolas Flachot has been exploring all the antique fairs and flea markets for years. The quest for shop signs has even turned to an addictive and compulsive hobby for this industrial art lover, to such an extent that he decided to launch his own decoration brand…”
Photos By: Aart Van Bezooyen
The Buchstaben Museum in Berlin is preserving historical and contemporary letterforms and signage. This is such an amazing idea and resource!
“The Museum of Letters is devoted to preserving and documenting letterforms. We are currently in the process of putting together our permanent collection and are actively searching out outstanding letterforms and typographic objects that merit preservation.”
Sign Painters is a personal project by photographer Jay B. Sauceda, which captures the very literally fading culture of sign painting in Texas.
(via Design Work Life »)
