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Inspirations & Resources
Michael Bierut
Despite Michael Bierut’s iconic status and his over 30 years of success, he is still the humble, gracious, mid-westerner who began studying design at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning. Bierut’s pedigree starts early, with his first internship with AIGA medalist Chris Pullman. After school, Bierut landed his first job, and an enviable one at that, at the prestigious Vignelli Associates design firm, where he would eventually become VP of Design. He worked on clients such as Benetton and United Airlines.
After 10 years at Vigenlli, Bieurt moved on to another world-wide industry giant, Pentagram. Bierut doesn’t just create eye-catching work (Including clients like Saks Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Yale School of Architecture, Princeton University, Guitar Hero, The New York Jets), but he is also an advocate for design: writing books on design, as a co-founder of Design Observer and as a teacher/lecturer all over the world. Bierut’s down to earth take on design and its place in our lives is what continues to make him accessible and his work fresh and on-point.
Milton Glaser
There’s no doubt that you’ve seen Milton Glaser’s work. He founded New York Magazine with Clay Felker and created the I <3 NY logo that every tourist annoyingly proudly wears. Born in 1929, Glaser attended the Cooper Union and was a Fulbright scholar, traveling to the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, Italy to study. In 1954 he co-founded Push-Pin Studios with Reynold Ruffins, Seymore Chawst and Edward Sorel, In 1963 Glaser and Felker founded New York Magazine and in 1983 he and Walter Bernard formed WBMG; a publication design firm with clientele like LA Times, Boston Globe, Time, AdWeek and Brill’s Content.
Ruslan Khasanov
Warm-Up from Ruslan Khasanov on Vimeo.
Russian graphic designer Ruslan Khasanov specialises in graphic design, typography and illustration, more often than not, mixing the three in incredible experimental projects. His latest work, Warm Up (above), is one of many beautiful videos in which different coloured liquids play center stage. He Also created his own font Vatka.
Born in Brooklyn in 1914, Rand attended art school in New York City at both Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design. Despite this formal training Rand found these institutes not stimulating and ultimately taught himself design, studying the works of A.M. Cassandre and Lazlo Moholy-Nagy through European magazines. Although, Rand began his career designing covers for Direction magazine, his most notable contributions to the field of Graphic Design have been his corporate work for companies like IBM, ABC, UPS and Westinghouse.
Paul Rand
Born in Brooklyn in 1914, Rand attended art school in New York City at both Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design. Despite this formal training Rand found these institutes not stimulating and ultimately taught himself design, studying the works of A.M. Cassandre and Lazlo Moholy-Nagy through European magazines. Although, Rand began his career designing covers for Direction magazine, his most notable contributions to the field of Graphic Design have been his corporate work for companies like IBM, ABC, UPS and Westinghouse.
Zim and Zou
Lucie Thomas teamed up with Thibault Zimmermann to form Zim & Zou, a French studio based in Nancy that explores different fields including paper sculpture, installation, graphic design, illustration. Both aged 25, they studied graphic design during 3 years in an artschool. Rather than composing images on a computer, they prefer creating real objects with paper and taking photos out of them.