joshholtsclaw.com – An incredible blog post from Josh Holtsclaw, an Art Director at Pixar. I love coming across these. This post in particular documents a lot of the process, design thinking and iteration that goes into the art direction for the film Incredibles 2
Graphic Design
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The Graphic Art of Incredibles 2 — Josh Holtsclaw
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1 min read
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Adobe abandons $20B acquisition of Figma
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1 min read
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Jess Weatherbed reporting at The Verge writes:
Following mounting pressure from regulators in the UK and EU, Adobe and Figma announced on Monday that both companies are mutually terminating their merger agreement, which would have seen Adobe acquire the Figma product design platform for $20 billion.
As a result of the termination, Adobe will be required to pay Figma a reverse termination fee of $1 billion in cash.
It’s a Christmas miracle! The competition in the field of creative/graphic design software is horrendous, so this is definitely good news if you’re a creative. The last time I wrote about this merger, I had a feeling the deal was going to be torn apart. Theoretically, this news means lower prices and more innovation down the road as Adobe and Figma compete for customers. This is also yet another sign that the United States has largely abdicated its regulatory authority to the European Commission.
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Susan Kare’s sketchbooks
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1 min read
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From Jenny Brewer of It’s Nice That:
Susan designed the icons for the Macintosh’s graphical user interface. At the time, the notion of a GUI was revolutionary: just a few years prior to the Mac’s release, people could only interface with a computer through arcane commands written in code. By providing an image-based way to execute computer commands, the Macintosh made computers more intuitive and less intimidating.
As part of the original Mac team, Kare created some of the first digital fonts, the UI for MacPaint and some of the most persistent icons in computing such as the trash can/bin, the save disk and the smiling Mac. Kare added to the UI an element of friendliness and emotion. The icons that she designed were playful and simple enough to be recognisable to users around the world.I am particularly taken by this image from Kare’s sketchbooks. A beautiful icon. Strikingly simple, yet infinitely complex. An icon that gave birth to thousands if not millions more since.
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The publicarchive.studio homepage reads:
A space dedicated to preserving public agencies use of graphic design throughout the 20th century.
I’m a total sucker for this kind of design ephemera. One, it’s deeply nostalgic for me. Secondly, this sort of digital preservation effort is pretty tough to come by these days. So, it deserves attention and gratitude. It’s brilliant seeing these catalogued and organized by country and department. I’m looking forward to seeing this collection grow!
Give the website a spin, it’s really really rad that Julian Bialowas (@julianbialowas) took the time to catalog these. You can follow the Public Archive Studio (@publicarchivestudio) here on Instagram. Here’s a sampling from the website:
Brochures and travel guides from Parks Canada. 
A selection from Yosemite and Yellowstone National Parks. 
A selection of brochures from Mesa Verde National Park. As an aside, if this sort of stuff floats your boat, something tells me you’ll enjoy the Reagan Ray’s blog. Apart from being a one-heck-of-a design hombre over at Paravel, he’s catalogued some interesting stuff like, Airline Logos, 80’s Action Figure Logos, and my personal favorite — Railway Logos.
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The Center for American Politics and Design
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2 min read
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A selection of various political logos collected (so far). The Center for American Politics and Design (CAPD) is a research group investigating the graphic vernacular of American politics.
The first of its kind, this collection consists of every campaign logo† from the 2018 election for United States Congress. The archive is a tool to explore trends and typologies that reveal themselves only when viewed in aggregate.
Founded in 2018, CAPD aims to increase political literacy among designers and to foster a dialogue about the role of design in the American democratic process.
Our complete dataset is available upon request; we welcome anyone to use this collection to conduct their own analyses.
This is a cool project. The topography of the political design landscape is so vitally important, and (in my opinion) has not been investigated thoroughly enough. It’s a monstrously large undertaking no doubt. It makes me uncomfortable to think about what horrors we may unearth about ourselves from this project. Personally, when I begin to think about dissecting our collective American graphical political heritage, I begin to think about Paula Scher’s Maps.
Play around with the filter function on the homepage and compare/contrast regions of the US. For example, compare Rhode Island to Texas. Now look at Nebraska. You can go even further by filtering by Office, or Incumbency.
Fascinating stuff. I’m going to love revisiting this in a few years.
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Prospectus, from Lost Type Co-op
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1 min read
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pro·spec·tus: noun
- A document that advertises a product, service, venture, institution, or event for the purpose of attracting potential clients, investors, participants, etc.
- A new and bold contemporary serif typeface, with optical sizes, designed by Dave Bailey, exclusively from The Lost Type Co‑op.
A lovely, light-hearted typeface. Full of spirit and originality. Glistening with nostalgia, but full of energy. Lost Type Co-op describes it as:
A recognizably crisp, bold, and contemporary choice for all of your editorial, fashionable, intellectual, and satirical typesetting needs. Designed by Dave Bailey, and available now, only from The Lost Type Co‑op.
So much fun. Get it here, pay what you want for personal use.
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Soviet-Era Industrial Design
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1 min read
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Link: The Overlooked Wonders of Soviet-Era Industrial Design
Phaidon has an incredible collection of design books, and they run a wonderful blog too. Atlas Obscura got their hands on a copy of Phaidon’s newest design reference, Designed in the USSR: 1950-1989. This is a pretty sweet book. I’d love to see all the space-race inspired gadgetry and appliances. My favorite is this macaroni box:
From Atlas Obscura Anika Burgess writes:
“There were ‘sample product rooms,’ where Western examples of industrial products were displayed, often serving as prototypes for their Soviet equivalents,” writes Alexandra Sankova in the book’s introduction. Sankova is the director of the Moscow Design Museum, which first displayed these items in an exhibition in 2012. For her, the Soviet era from the 1950s onwards was an important period of design history, “when function and utility were the driving forces behind ideas but remarkable examples of innovation and creativity still flourished.”
Oddly enough, Anika previously reviewed more Soviet ephemera at the Obscura: The Artful Propaganda of Soviet Children’s Literature — fascinating relics.
You can pick up the Designed in the USSR, from Phaidon directly for $39.95.