This marks our fifth consecutive year collaborating with Niskamoon Corporation on their Annual Report design. The perfect-bound book features an embossed cover and custom, abstract nature-inspired illustrations that reflect the beautiful Cree landscape and culture.
The design for this report won a Communicator Award.
Fernando Chamarelli has us all in awe of his work. Born and raised in Brazil, Chamarelli’s paintings articulate a rich visual of his Brazilian heritage. He became a graphic designer and illustrator with early interests in caricatures and realistic portraits. Later, his passion developed into street art and tattoo design; a combination that took turn into his signature style. His work has been in high demand by well-known brands like Absolute Vodka, Microsoft, and Nike. Check out some of his mesmerizing artwork below:
The Taxi Fabric Project – creating fabrics that speak – is a platform and opportunity for young, india-based artists to gain exposure and showcase their work to the outside world through public taxi cabs. The project has brought together creatives from across the country to canvas the interiors (and by interiors, we mean every surface inside the taxi) with their graphic or illustrative compositions. In India, taxi cabs are the most common and practical forms of transportation. Their popular use have consequently made them an important aspect of India’s daily life and social culture. However, little attention is given to the cars’ aesthetics. The taxi fabric team explains: “Design — as a job or studied at school — is unfortunately not widely recognized in India. Older generations don’t understand it.” The purpose of the project is to enforce that design does indeed serve to perform a function. But mainly, design is communication, and can serve to create social impact through storytelling. The project gives designers the opportunity to show off their visual communication skills, all the while bringing more joy and colour to everyone’s travelling in India.
Drum roll please….Pantone’s colour of the year is….2 colours?
Pantone’s selection for the 2016 Colour of The Year came as a surprise, not only in the quantity of their choice (they picked two – whoa!) but also in their actual swatch selections.
Rose Quartz (13-1520), a soft cool pink, and Serenity (15-3919), a tone of muted powder blue and lavender blended together, were chosen in to blur gender in the design sphere while simultaneously evoking peacefulness and calmness. The two pastel shades are reminiscent, but not identical, to the stereotypical colours you would associate to a male/female nursery.
2015 turned out to be an important year for the international transgender community, and Pantone’s choice of neutral versions of these two gendered, emblematic colours reminded our team of such worldwide events. The combination of these peaceful tones are symbolic of what society would like to see when it comes to distinguishing men and women in all spheres: biological, professional, and personal.
Simultaneously, our team also contemplated if Pantone would be completely successful in how their audiences will respond to their colour choices, and the notions of gender surrounding them. Do Pantone’s colour choices conflict with their concept? Are they merely (unintentionally) reinforcing these stereotypes? Let us know your thoughts!
I forgot about this one! A post I wrote in January and forgot to publish. Better late than never . . .
To understand why this post is cool it helps if you have a basic idea of what Pantone is. If you’re in the know just skip the next paragraph and get to the good stuff quicker.
Pantone Inc. is a U.S. corporation that is best known for its PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM® (Yes, that’s PMS for short…some marketing director was asleep in that meeting). PMS is a proprietary color space used in a variety of industries, primarily printing, though sometimes in the manufacture of colored paint, fabric and plastics. The idea behind PMS is to allow designers to ‘color match’ specific colors when a design enters production stage—regardless of the equipment used to produce the color. This system has been widely adopted by graphic designers, reproduction and printing houses for a number of years now.
Pantone seems to be creeping into fashion, household products, office supplies…just about everything. Below are some fun Pantone projects for your viewing pleasure.
[Pantone handbags from Mango in the UK]
[Pantone carpet from The Mohawk Group]
[Pantone glasses from Arm One]
[Pantone flight stool from British design team Barber Osgerby. Pantone decided to sell a limited edition of these stools on their website and Lawrence Herbert, founder and innovator of the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM®, has signed 20 of them! Click here to get your own flight stool!]