3rd Wave of Inspiration
Since 2003
Zurich-base Marcus Kraft studio is celebrating its 10th anniversary of delivering top-notch graphic design projects with the bigger picture in mind, great attention to detail, and typographic quality. They strongly believe that design should be more than ‹just› beautiful and aesthetic. The following ten principles* build the foundation for Marcus Kraft work and available as a Manifesto
Chris Ashworth is an English graphic designer known for being the executive global creative director for Getty Images and the art director of the magazine Ray Gun in 1997. Ashworth graduated from the York College of Arts & Technology in 1990 with a degree in graphic design. In collaboration with some friends, he opened a design studio called Orange, which created black and white, easily photocopiable flyers for local nightclubs.
Ashworth is inspired by Swiss design aesthetics, and refers to his own style as "Swiss grit". This style is characterised by hyper detail, barcodes, horizontal lines, and the use of multiple transparent layers.
London based designer Nikita Iziev is focusing on the intersection between graphic, typography and motion design. Constantly aiming to find elegant solutions and further blur the lines between print and digital.
For the past few years, Mariia has traveled and worked extensively in Asia. She explored cultural differences, the reasons for the immigration of Western people who come to live in Asia, and the difficulties they face living in Asian countries.
Mariia's travels and explorations resulted in a three-month solo exhibition entitled "Western Taiwanese", which opened in Dounan City in November 2018. For this exhibition, the artist prepared a series of poster, and also for the first time worked in video art and installation formats.
In her posters, Mariia tried to visually reflect her impression of Yunlin County, where she lived at the time. She used a variety of visual research methods to capture cultural landscapes while creating the style of her posters. For example, she used Google Earth footage for the visuals, and Mariia also worked with local historians in the archives department. Mariia has created a vibrant palette of 6 colors along with a dynamic composition that together reflects the brilliance and quirkiness of Taiwanese nature.
Wang Chia Wei, curator of this exhibition, says Maria's exhibition was a completely new way to see Taiwanese culture. She also added that these posters are more like hokku, where the artist expresses deep meaning in simple words.
Mariia Ominina's project "Wester Taiwanese" is a fresh look at the world of poster art, where the artist expresses herself not through direct visual clues, but via vague images or meanings. Mariia managed to capture the connection between meanings and the visual component in the paradigm of postmodern aesthetics, where the classical "laws" and "norms" in design have ceased to be decisive. Her posters are lively and interesting, plunging into the confluence of new-old art, that borders between meaning and visuality; conceptualism and avant-garde.
Snask Studio comes back with a new branding case made for consulting bureau Umbrella. Female founded and powered by two rising stars, Umbrella is rocking the consultant industry.
“We started out by visualizing the vision of the brand by choosing a strong and beautiful color scheme using a pale pink and a candy red along with off-white. We also chose a bold and strong display typeface to communicate strong messages and tag lines. With statements like “When we shine we shine together” and “Come play with us” the step to take the identity out into reality wasn’t far, but we also decided to do some 3D-animations to further elevate the brand. Whether you’re a developer, UX/UI-designer, QA, Product Owner or just share their values, get in touch with them and see how you can find ways of working together.”
Agency: Snask
Client: Umbrella
Photography: Per Björklund
Obsessed with black and white, the contrast is the source of his creativity, fascinated by the pop art movement and our contemporary pop culture, Nairone use elements from everyday life, his work is inspired by personal experiences from his childhood and the links with the milieu in which he lives mixed with his contrasted vision.
“Squarespace is one of very few technology companies that can truly call NYC home. The city has inspired our attitude, our aesthetic, and our mission to democratize good design for every ambitious entrepreneur, artist, or visionary with a dream. As we began to rethink our brand identity, we knew we needed to find a way to make New York a bigger part of the story.”
“New York is a study in movement; like jazz, it constantly heads in unpredictable directions. Since much of our output is interactive and screen based, we knew the brand needed to make sense in motion. So we developed a kinetic identity system that dimensionalizes our name and reinforces the two syllables in Squarespace.“
The Senses: Design Beyond Vision invites visitors to encounter design with all their senses through several interactive installations. Currently on show at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, curated by Ellen Lupton & Andrea Lipps, exhibition design by Studio Joseph.
The book is a manifesto celebrating the sensory richness of design. A must-read and powerful reminder to anyone who thinks design is primarily a visual pursuit. Co-published by Princeton Architectural Press and Cooper Hewitt, by Andrea Lipps & Ellen Lupton.
Visual identity and exhibition graphics made for installation at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York City
For those of you living in the space, a good half of designers have been busy participating in 36 Days of Type recently run world-wide from Barcelona. We focus on Marv Castillo as he comes up with and idea to focus on "movies" and soft physical Play-Doh when a majority of participants stick to 3D renders.
Motion Motion is the first event dedicated to the motion design and meanwhile, opened to all audiences. One day in Nantes (FR) with conferences, installations, workshops and concerts for everyone.
nöbl created the festival 2018 whole identity and craft the trailer by playing with a distorted typography treatment:
As the motion design, the concept of this identity talks about graphic design and movement. We choose to play with the most impactful visual system "typography" and then put it literally in movement.
Zach Lieberman and Molmol Kuo’s AR app Weird Type lets you paint with type in space.
Zach is an American artist and computer programmer whose daily sketches with code have earned him an impressive following on social media. Together with his partner Molmol they have released Weird Type – an iOS AR app that lets you draw with typography in 3D space.
Available here, the application enables users to input type and choose from a variety of scenes that manipulate that type in different ways.
"Trevor Wheatley and Cosmo Dean work together to create large installations based around phrases and logos that are part of the common lexicon. Casually used terms like “all good” and the shrug emoji take on larger-than-life dimensions in the duo’s three dimensional versions, which are suspended from cables, integrated into chain link fences, toted in truck beds, and painted alongside graffiti. Wheatley and Dean have partnered with music festivals, fashion brands, and the creative house Justkids to install their work. Up next, the artists will be embarking on a trip to Mexico to create new paintings in rural areas." via Colossal
Design studio now better known for their kinetic typography experiments recently did a motion identity for Nike Statement House in NYC
Denis Bychkovskiy / @denbych
Leading calligraphy artist Pokras Lampas spent 30 hours to customise Shortcut Racing car in collaboration with DK Racing Team Russia. By applying his personal "Calligrafuturism" style Arseny (Pokras Lampas) brings dynamics of streets to typography patterns applied across the buggy car body.
Denis Bychkovskiy / @denbych
Photography: Denis Bychkovskiy / @denbych
"Xavier Monney is the 23-year-old designer from Lausanne, Switzerland whose work caught our eye due to his refreshing but incredibly impressive manipulations of type. Xavier combines animation and typography to create three-dimensional experiments, often incorporating some form of optical illusion."
Russian Calligrafiturism artist Pokras Lampas spent 500 l of yellow paint, 1250 sq.m of calligraphy for the fabulous "F.. is for Fendi" campaign performed on the top of monumental HQ of Fendi in Rome at Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana (Colosseo Quadrato)
An official Calligraffiti ambassador (and freak), Pokras Lampas is blurring the frontiers with his brushes and paint buckets. He is one of the most talented modern artists, and is totally rewriting stuff through Calligrafuturism, his personal way of expressing his version of our uber-global and sometimes-crazy world. This globetrotter is also spreading the word about modern calligraphy and collaborating with crazy cool brands and artists.
He realized the biggest Calligraffiti in Italy on FENDI rooftop at Palazzo Della Civiltà Italiana, reinterpreting the F IS FOR…manifesto throughout freedom of expression, art, culture and optimism all around!
Not only he’s a super fly freak – who happens to love Kanye West – but he is also an incredible masterpiece machine. Pokras Lampas captures, creates, interprets and simply makes magic magic.
Totally goosebumps-worthy, his time in Rome with the F is For… crew was so rad, filled with an intense, gigantic-lettered poem, shapes and lines that basically set the standard once again for what we label as authentic talent.
Rising star of Russian street, fashion and calligraphy art scene Pokras Lampas shared one of his numerous commercial projects he did for Russian flagman Nike store
Photography: Den Bychkobvsky
Dima Luk'yanov aka Abrakadabra creates motivating quotes by using lettering techniques and photography collages. Quite obvious idea got fresh air with his attention to details and quality of typography lines
New York based designer Nick Misani shares his latest affair with floor mosaics he got in while still working at Louise Fili Studio she founded few decades ago. Formerly senior designer for Herb Lubalin, Louise Fili was art director of Pantheon Books from 1978 to 1989, where she designed close to 2,000 book jackets. The idea to run a small self-initiated project Fauxsaics came to Nick while he was digitally restoring Louise' books. He started to create faux digital mosaic inspired by the piece he saw in London
