National Railway Museum

The National Railway Museum in York have just introduced a new identity created by Thompson Brand Partners in Leeds. They have taken their lead of the angled parallel forms from iconography and architecture of railway history and created a simple modernist identity. There has been the usual disecting in public of the merits (hic) of the new brand on various design forums stating it was an easy and obvious solution. I personally like the identity and shall be interested to see how they progress the brand going forward and hope they steer away from the current logo overlaid on busy images.

Funktionsorte + Studie Eins

As you may already know from previous posts I am a hugh fan of Berlin based photographer Matthias Heiderich. He creates beautiful minimalist compositions with simple geometric shapes and colour. Every time I visit his behance site I am rewarded with beautiful modernist buildings that are vivid, surreal and very striking. Great work.

König Architektur

Danish design agency MuggieRamadani have created an elegant brand identity for Swiss architectural firm Konig. The two simple geometric blocks set parallel to each other is the epitome of minimalist Swiss design; simple, stripped back, where the negative space is considered as much of the design as the rectangular blocks that encompass it. Love the way a simple idea has then been applied in a number of ways creating a visually stunning identity.

A Grotesk Love Affair

Ryan Atkinson and Stephan de Lange created a poster featuring multiple examples of Grotesk fonts and then allowed people to vote for their favourite. The information was then translated into statistical data and used as the basis for the posters, set on a typographical grid and in the International Swiss style. Great fun idea and well executed.

US Dollar re-design

Wow, if only bank notes were this good we maybe inclined to hold onto them a bit longer! What more could you ask for; Helvetica, geometric shapes and modernism, beautiful work by design studio Dowling Duncan. For a full view of the conceptual US dollar re-design pop over to monomoda.

Adapt or Die

Many people have a view on stamp collecting much of which would be fairly derisive. However taking a look at Iain Follett's Adapt or Die flikr account would certainly change a lot of peoples viewpoint. The colection he has which was featured in Creative Reviews monograph series is virtually a who's who in graphic design with stamps (see above) designed by such legends as Wim Crouwel and Otto Treumann. It is incredible to see such great design achieved on such a small surface area. My personal favourite are the fantastic halftone images for the Munich Olympics.

Volkswagon

I have always been a big fan of the Beetle having owned both a 1974 saloon and a 1971 Kharmann Cabrio so it was interesting to discover The Samba a website dedicated to all things VW including a plethora of VW marketing material. Volkswagon literature has always followed the same traits of the vehicles – clean and simple. The site is split into years so it really does give you not only a history of VW but a history of advertising to. It is clear to see how the Swiss International style played its part from the late fifties and is well worth a look.