A favored hangout among the early 1980s East Village art scene, the Fun Gallery became home to some of the New York City’s most notable artists, including Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kenny Scharf. This poster, designed by Haring in anticipation of his gallery debut in February 1983, exemplifies the artist’s unique ability to turn...
Throughout the majority of his career, comedian George Burns (1896-1996), was rarely seen without his favorite cigar in hand – the El Producto Queens. He reportedly smoked 10-15 cigars each day and lived to be 100. At 98 he was even quoted saying, “If I’d taken my doctor’s advice and quit smoking when he advised...
After a decade in mainstream advertising, Singaporean designer Theseus Chan founded the independent consulting firm WORK in 1997. Three years later, he created a sibling publication, Werk magazine. Frustrated by the aesthetic tedium and reserve he perceived at larger ad agencies, Chan used these new ventures to foster innovative design. With WORK, he has devised...
The year is 1955, and Cold War tensions have begun to escalate. General Dynamics is a newly formed parent company overseeing eleven manufacturers, producing cutting edge technology for the defense of the United States. The company is capitalizing on the American policy of nuclear deterrence, but John Jay Hopkins, General Dynamics’ president, wants a graphic...
By the 1930s, the vast majority of American urban dwellers had access to electricity in their homes and businesses. But those in impoverished rural areas were often not serviced by private electric companies, who believed that it was not cost-effective for them to invest in extending power lines into areas of the country that would...
The Artvertiser is a software platform that replaces billboard advertisements with art in real-time. It works by teaching computers to recognize individual advertisements so they can be easily replaced with alternative content, like images and video. A user must hold special Artvertiser goggles up to an advertisement to see artwork appear as a superimposed layer...
Peer Eriksson and David Carlson founded Designboost in 2007 to share knowledge about design. David is well known in the international design world as a communicator and strategist, publishing the David Report that follows and predicts trends at the intersection of design, culture and business. He is a renaissance person, with interests in a band,...
This is the second interview in Chapter 2 in my new book, Designing Media Craig Newmark, December 2008 Who hasn’t heard of Craigslist, the Web site that has dramatically altered the classified advertising universe with its largely free want ads and for-sale postings? At the end of 2008, the site operated in 55 countries and...
Have you ever considered how many fonts there are in the font menu on your computer? Microsoft makes available almost 200 different typefaces. On the Apple machine I have at home there are a similar number. I never would have believed it if I had not counted them myself. Of course these statistics include the...
