Famous Designers on Design: 5 Beautiful Book Covers

What the hate of Helvetica has to do with Nine Inch Nails and a three-legged lemon juicer.

It’s often said that the true measure of how famous you are is how many books you’ve published in your area of expertise. Surely enough, when it comes to design, the most iconic designers have bookshelves worth of design wisdom they’ve bestowed upon us mere mortals.

Today, we look at how well they’ve put their money where their mouth is with our selection of the five best covers of books by the world’s most famous designers.

PAULA SCHER

For a designer whose career was shaped by the violent hate of the Helvetica typeface, Paula Scher has done quite well for herself, becoming one of the most iconic magazine and theater graphic designers of our time.

Make It Bigger, a much-detested client refrain for all graphic designers, is a delightful exercise in switching sides: A look at design from the vantage point of the business community it serves. The indisputable stride-stopping power of the cover, as we cringe at its intentionally awkward grotesqueness, makes the book’s point before we’ve even opened it.

(On a bit of an aside, we’re be remiss to talk about Scher without mentioning her phenomenal Maps project — do check it out.)

DAVID CARSON

David Carson is perhaps best known for his groundbreaking magazine design and his passionate affair with typography. In trek: david. carson. recent. werk, Carson does what he does best — he sweeps us up with unexpected typography and hurls us into nearly 500 pages of turbulent impact with graphics that tug at our most polarized gut reactions.

The book also includes Carson’s work for Nine Inch Nails, whose design sensibility we’ve praised before, so we’re tres happy.

PHILIPPE STARCK

Philippe Starck is, in our subjective opinion, the designer who has made the most dramatic, convincing leap between greatness and genius. (In what’s easily our favorite TED talk to date, he shares profound insight about the distinction between the two.)

His self-titled book, Starck, captures every ounce of genius and quirk and revolutionary vision of the eccentric French, revealing over three decades of his groundbreaking work. The cover itself is brilliantly appropriate — personal and odd — as every piece of Starck’s design work is so loudly stamped with the designer’s quirky personality.

From Starck’s infamous three-legged lemon press to the fast food shop in Nimes, Starck also includes architectural projects, furniture, and interior design. Mostly, it fully lives up to the promise of the cover design — to take us on a journey into the liberty of vision, to help us believe again that as designers, we’re bigger than the sum of our work because every piece of creativity we offer to the world is deeply and unmistakably infused with our own unique personas.

KARIM RASHID

Karim Rashid‘s prolific work in interiors, fashion, furniture, lighting, art and music has landed him multiple MoMA gigs and just about every cultural praise there is. But he is perhaps best known for his advocacy of “democratic design” — the idea that even the best of design should be accessible to the masses.

Driven by that conviction, his book Design Yourself is a brave exploration of design’s role as a social actor rather than a mere aesthetic feature.

From socialization to work to sex, Rashid dispenses radical advice on how to handle the self, all framed by the breadth of his user-centric work. Essentially, Design Yourself is a book about optimization — optimizing all areas of life, from the aesthetic to the spiritual, in a way that leaves our physical, emotional and cognitive environment in a better state than we found it in.

STEFAN SAGMEISTER

Stefan Sagmeister is often considered the most important living designer. His design has helped define some of music’s most iconic personal brands — Lou Reed, David Byrne, Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones.

Things I have learned in my life so far grew from a list in Sagmeister’s diary from his year-long commercial hiatus. The book is a reflection on life, being human, and the meaning of happiness, all communicated through the medium of design at its most powerful.

In Things I have learned in my life so far, the very medium is just as playful and enticing as the message — Sagmeister’s relationship with design doesn’t unfold on the first page, it begins at the book’s cover itself.

Things I have learned in my life so far invites us to come along for a rollercoaster ride of tongue-in-cheek facetiousness and profound human truth, all reflected on through deeply impactful imagery and brilliant typography.

On a final aside, more confirmation for Sagmeister’s brilliance: He is one of the few cultural icons who have spoken at TED not once, but twice – both talks are more than worth the watch.

Update: That’s thrice now — we had the pleasure of seeing his third TED talk at TEDGlobal in July 2009.

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Vintage Russian Ads

What Dostoevsky has to do with sausage art and bicycles.

Today, we’re looking at that weird limbo of Russian heritage between the cultural zenith of the Dostoevsky era and the nadir of Russia’s current status as the Gas Grinch – namely, vintage Russian ads, the intersection of art and commerce.

From tobacco to tailoring, the collection speaks to a striking resemblance between the cultural valuables of Russian society and those of the Western world circa early 20th century, debunking the whole “us vs. them” notion of lack of cultural common ground.

And while much of the typography and illustration appear to… ahem… “borrow” from their Western brethren, we notice some surprisingly sophisticated techniques rarely seen in Western vintage ads — such as this perspective treatment of type:

Courtesy of English Russia. (Remember sausage art?)

But before we get too caught up in the cultural common tangents here, let’s not forget the other side of the whole Soviet-American relationship, clearly and stride-stoppingly revealed in the Soviet propaganda of the day.

We encourage you to play around with English Russia, the second most addictive source of relentless amusement we’ve discovered last year.

via Coudal

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Illustration Showcase: 5 Artists to Watch

Shapes, colors, textures, and a whole lotta lovable monsters.

We love illustration. We love innovation. And we love these 5 incredibly innovative illustrators.

TAD CARPENTER

Kansas City designer Tad Carpenter‘s character illustrations are what one would call “unique” — the bold colors, crisp lines and subtle 2D texture, combined with the expressive minimalism of the characters’ faces, make for a signature style you couldn’t mistake for another.

Tad’s work spans across posters, identity, installations, packaging, painting, and more. Between his day job at Design Ranch and his personal work, Tad also co-runs Vahalla Studios, a top-notch screen-printing shop.

Tad recently collaborated with a few other artists on a philanthropic project — after visiting 9 orphanages in Vietnam to help paint some murals, they got inspired by the kids’ drawings and paired each kid with one of the artists, who later did his own version of the kid’s drawing. (Remember Child Art for Grown-Ups?)

They then set up an auction for the work, benefiting, of course, the orphanages.

Check out Tad’s blog for more about his work, his inspiration, and his rather exciting artist life.

via grain edit

CHRISTOPHER LEE

Designer and motion graphics artist Christopher Lee, a.k.a. “The Best Is Back,” has some pretty impressive commercial gigs to his credit: Lucas Arts, TBWA, Disney Consumer Products, Vodafone and Honda, to name but a few.

In 2004, Christopher started a conceptual pet project dubbed The Urbanites — a friendly bunch of characters that are almost like the rest of us:

Populated together in that tight knit community you’ve grown to love and hate. Filled with best friends, mortal enemies, summer popsicles, freshly cut lawn, gossip, laughs and the obligatory robot factory.

Except they’re monsters.

Eventually, Christopher developed The Urbanites into lovable characters, each with a unique personality and back story.

In 2006, Christopher moved to Southern California to look for new inspiration. And we think he’s more than found it.

Christopher now lives in Sacramento and works as an Art Director at motion graphics get-up Buck.

MATTHEW WOODSON

Chicago-based artist Matthew Woodson is the kind of illustrator who doesn’t fall for the latest grunge or “2.0″ or magna fad. His minimalistic traditionalism of simple, meticulous pen and brush work somehow creates rather powerfl, almost haunting images.

Something about his ghostly illustration seems to strike a chord with the cultural and commercial A-listers — from nonprofits like UNICEF, to for-as-much-as-possible-profits like American Express, to an impressive lineup of media powerhouses: BusinessWeek, ESPN Magazine, Glamour, Randomhouse, and Wired (which, as you probably know by now, we’re completely obsessed with.)

Check out Matthew’s blog for a glimpse into his creative process.

ALBERTO CERRITEÑO

Designer Alberto Cerriteño is an enviable master of texture, shape and color, whatever medium they dwell in.

His artwork creates nothing short of a whimsical alternate reality, sucking you in one lovable monster at a time.

Born in Mexico City, Alberto is now a Senior Art Director at a Portland-based design shop. His work spans nearly every frontier of design imaginable, from print to motion graphics to apparel and more.

Follow Alberto’s global adventures on his blog for some insight into the fuel of that incredibly imaginative mind.

WILMER MURILLO

Honduras-based freelance illustrator Wilmer Murillo‘s artwork is brimming with that rare blend of the bizarre, the delightful and the introspective, all tied with a bow of fantastic aesthetic execution.

His latest collection, The Messenger of Love Is Old and Tired, juxtaposes the endearing, almost cartoonish nature of the characters with the profound sadness of the conceptual message.

Wilmer is only 21, which absolutely floors us. Keep your eyes peeled for this guy as he takes the design world by storm in the next couple of years.

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