New at Pentagram
Loyola Marymount University Surfs Into the Future
DJ Stout has just completed a redesign of the alumni/university magazine of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Additionally, Stout and his team in the Austin office have redesigned and completely overhauled the magazine’s website and created an iPad app for the publication.
“There was a big emphasis on embracing the exciting new publishing technologies out there and getting them all to work together to create a more effective and vital piece of communication for the university,” says Stout. “The goal was to do those things in the print publication that print still does well and to do those things in the electronic space that those formats do well. The main idea was to leverage the strengths of all three mediums to make one really strong multitiered entity. I have to give the LMU folks a lot of credit for really jumping into the modern publishing world with both feet.”
Continue reading "Loyola Marymount University Surfs Into the Future"
New Work: Nabokov Covers for Penguin Classics
Angus Hyland and his team have designed the covers for the entire backlist of titles by Vladimir Nabokov, one of the most acclaimed authors of the 20th Century. Penguin is publishing the 24 new books in three batches over a year.
The brief by Penguin’s Art Director, Jim Stoddart, was to move the covers away from the sombre approach used in previous editions and to focus more on the playful and satirical aspects of Nabokov’s writing in the hopes that this might encourage a new generation of readers.
Pentagram suggested three possible solutions, and Penguin chose one that initially appears traditional, incorporating symmetrical typography in a box with a decorative border. However, Hyland subtly subverts this classical approach. Each cover features a different game, sport or visual illusion used as a background pattern echoing the contents of the book. Beyond that the covers were commissioned out to illustrators who were then permitted to deface the strong typographic grid. The illustrators composed their work around the fixed elements of the title and the author name, and in some instances their work overlaps elements of the branding.
Illustrations were provided by Alan Baker, Christine Berrie, Luke Best, Masumi Briozzo, Astrid Chesney, Agnès Decourchelle, Marion Deuchars, David Foldvari, Michael Gillette and Slawa Harasymowicz.
Last fall Pentagram participated in the repackaging of Nabokov’s US backlist, published by Vintage.
More pictures of the Penguin covers after the jump.
Continue reading "New Work: Nabokov Covers for Penguin Classics"
DJ Stout Wins National Art Director Award
Austin partner DJ Stout will receive the 2010 Richard Gangel Art Director Award from the Society of Illustrators tomorrow evening at the Museum of American Illustration in New York City. Established in 2005, the Richard Gangel Award singles out one art director a year and honors them for their outstanding contributions in promoting and advancing the art of illustration. The award was named in honor of Richard Gangel, the award-winning art director for Sports Illustrated, who for 21 years—from 1960-1981—built an extraordinary collaboration with illustrators. Past recipients of the award have included Fred Woodward, Steve Heller, Rita Marshall, Patrick JB Flynn and Gail Anderson. “I’m honored to be mentioned in the same paragraph with these great art directors, design innovators and illustration lovers,” says Stout.
Continue reading "DJ Stout Wins National Art Director Award"
Five Ways the iPad Will Change Magazine Design
The new iPad from Apple, presented in typical Steve Jobs fashion as game-changing, will, in fact, revolutionize the way we read magazines. Combining the rich visual content of a print publication, the ever-changing immediacy of a website, and the portability of an e-book reader, the iPad is something new.
Pentagram’s Luke Hayman, designer of, among others, Time, New York, and Travel + Leisure, was asked how this new format would change the world of magazines and came up with five ways off the top of his head.
Continue reading "Five Ways the iPad Will Change Magazine Design"
New Work: Circular 16
Issue 16 of Circular, the magazine of the Typographic Circle, designed by Domenic Lippa is out now.
This issue features articles on Spin, Bibliothèque, Fernando Gutiérrez, the late Ken Dickinson, Design Project and a piece by Jeremy Leslie charting the development of editorial design from The New Yorker of 1925 through Nova to Re- and Carl*s Cars. Also featured are Pentagram’s own Harry Pearce and Domenic Lippa.
Lippa has designed the last nine issues of Circular and delights in creating each from scratch. In this issue the close up of the title on the cover through the contents pages and dividers indicates a desire to focus on the detail of the work. The use of Courier as the default font set without justification is designed to act in contrast to the typographic perfection of the featured work.
I.D. R.I.P.
Like the rest of the design community, we are saddened to hear of the closing of I.D. The magazine was required reading in our offices and served as the starting point of countless conversations and more than a few arguments about design. I.D. felt like part of our family: our partners occasionally contributed articles and essays, and we were always thrilled when our work made the cut in the I.D. Annual Design Review, the most critically daunting of the U.S. design competitions. (The Review will reportedly continue online.)
We also have a more personal connection to I.D.’s history: Luke Hayman was associate art director under Tony Arefin from 1993 to 1995 and later returned as design director from 1997 to 1999, during which the magazine received one of its five National Magazine Awards (General Excellence, 1999).
So long, I.D. You will be missed.
New Work: ‘Metalsmith’
Metalsmith, the publication of the Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG), has in recent years expanded its focus beyond art jewelry to become a showcase for art and craft design. Published five times a year, the magazine presents profiles and portfolios of artists and designers, news and articles about materials and processes, and reviews of exhibitions and books. To accommodate its growing vision, editor Suzanne Ramljak commissioned Luke Hayman to redesign the publication. Ramljak had previously worked with Pentagram on editorial redesigns of both Glass and Sculpture magazines. Hayman’s new design for Metalsmith emphasizes the art’s creative impulse and reshapes the magazine into an object as crafted as its subject.
Luke Hayman at Pratt
Quick Link: Luke Hayman at Pratt
New Work: ‘Rosebud’
Following James Biber’s “Weeds”-inspired dining room, currently on view in New York, we continue our foray into “green” design with what may be the first “Hydroponic Growers Lifestyle” magazine ever published. Julie Savasky and DJ Stout in the Austin office have designed Rosebud, a new magazine from Advanced Nutrients that debuts with its October issue. Based in Vancouver, Advanced Nutrients manufactures and distributes over fifty super-fertilizers and growth enhancement products with evocative names like Big Bud, B-52, Wet Betty, Voodoo Juice, Tarantula, and Bud Candy for hydroponic gardeners and enthusiasts the world over.
New Work: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Kit Hinrichs and Belle How in San Francisco have redesigned Discoveries, a semi-annual publication of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the largest non-profit academic hospital in the United States. Pentagram’s challenge was to invigorate and redefine the magazine’s graphic and editorial viewpoint to better articulate the major research initiatives of the institution and simultaneously make it more compelling, flexible and distinctive to its audience.
Syndication feed