The Massimo Vignelli Canon

The great Massimo Vignelli published a canon on his work principles and practices that should not be missed (if you have by some chance missed it already).

Massimo Vignelli is famous for his work on the New York Subway system signage and map in the 70's, IBM and American Airlines.

This document is 96 pages in length and covers a wide range of items you should be considering while working of a design project.

The canon is broken down into two parts. The following subjects are covered in Part One, The Intangibles: Semantics ,Syntactics, Pragmatics, Discipline, Appropriateness, Ambiguity, Design is One, Visual Power, Intellectual Elegance, Timelessness, Responsibility, and Equity.

In the next section Part Two, The Tangibles you get information covering; Paper Sizes, Grids, Margins, Columns and Modules, A Company Letterhead, Grids for Books, Typefaces, The Basic Ones, Flush left, centered, justified, Type Size Relationships, Rulers, Contrasting Type Sizes, Scale, Texture, Color, Layouts, Sequence, Binding, Indentity and Diversity, White Space, A collection of experiences and the Conclusion.

The canon is a great document that give you a much greater understanding of how one of our greatest designers work. "If you want to achieve greatness as a designer you must study the great designers" is a philosophy that I instill.

To download the nearly 4 MB .pdf canon that covers Vignelli's ideas over the years click here.

Objectified: A Film by Gary Hustwit

Gary Hustwit brought us "Helvetica" last year which was wonderful. Now he is working on a new film called "Objectified".

Objectified is a feature-length independent documentary about industrial design. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the people who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability. It’s about our relationship to mass-produced objects and, by extension, the people who design them.

The film is due to be released the first part of 2009. To learn more and order a t-shirt go to the films site at www.objectifiedfilm.com

Fonts Today

There is a great video and two articles in The Atlantic, January 2008 issue on fonts and typography. The first article, Playing to Type by Virginia Postrel, discusses the use of fonts today and type design. It offers a great background on typography in the digital age.

The second article, What’s in a Font? is an interview with Gary Hustwit, the director of Helvetica, about his making of the documentary on the font. The interview gives some background into how and why this film was produced.

The video, Fine Print presents comments on typography by Michael Bierut of Pentagram. The video is well produced, talks about the use of fonts and gives insights into the choice of fonts for Michael’s recent book, Seventy-Nine Short Essays.