Good Design // Bad Design is the design blog created by the Southampton based design practice Johnny Toaster. Good Design // Bad Design is dedicated to exploring the good, the bad & the downright ugly.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve likely heard the news that Disney recently bought Lucasfilm and are planning to release a new Star Wars Movie in 2015. Big news for Star Wars fans who have been speculating about potential writers, directors and the possible reappearance of beloved characters ever since the story broke. After the huge success of The Avengers, it’s fair to say that many people are eagerly anticipating what Disney will produce. After all, they can’t possibly do any worse than George Lucas with Episodes I – III, right?
With Star Wars on the mind, we decided to post these incredible Star Wars Typographic Illustrations. Created by Matteo Civaschi of Italian advertising agency H-57 , three iconic characters; Darth Vader, Yoda and a lone Stormtrooper were constructed using only type. The series has been aptly named “May the force of Typography be with you”. With the support of Lucasfilm, the posters were sold via eBay, with all proceeds going to the Make a Wish Foundation in Italy.
Innovative furniture designer Orla Reynolds has launched her debut collection As if from nowhere. A space-saving solution that is both extremely functional and surprisingly good looking, the collection features a bookcase that plays host to a full set of dining room furniture. Four chairs and two tables (which fit together to create one dining table) slot into the bookcase seamlessly and are pulled out and used with minimal effort.
The bookcase is made up of several individual blocks, which means it can be set up in a number of creative ways. This extra functionality allows the bookcase to work in even the smallest space.
Johnny Toaster Presents: Motion Pictures is the latest in our series of exhibitions. Featuring iconic film posters re-imagined and re-designed by some of the South Coast’s most promising talent, the exhibition was launched in collaboration with Southampton Film Week (Oct 27th – Nov 4th). Each artist has selected one of their favourite movies, reinventing the original poster to promote the film in a new – and perhaps more interesting – way.
Some of the artists involved in this exhibition are Ken Ilzuka, Matt Canning, Aaron Dawkins, Adam Moore and Johnny Toaster’s own Paul and Thomas Solomon.
The exhibition is running until 27th January at The Cellar (formerly Soul Cellar), Southampton.
These extraordinary CGI pictures are, in fact, infographics which show varying things about the united states using light. From transport and communication to power and population these images show all the little things which buzz away in the background, which we take for granted.
From top to bottom these images show:
This shows routes taken by pizzas delivered by bicycles on one Friday night in Manhattan.
These lines show the transportation of dead bodies.
This shows population density the US.
Shows wireless networks.
These become even more impressive when seen as videos:
We think it is all time for you to go out and practice your type designing skills, and to do this we present Type Cooker, which will randomly generate parameters for you to go out and get designing!
In addition to our recent discovery of the infographic to help you pick typefaces, we have also discovered this quick reference chart to help you with your colour theory.
Do you remember the old science fiction programmes of old which promised us the far flung planets of the solar system as holiday destinations. Stephen Di Donato certainly does:
“After recently finding old science fiction magazines dating back from the 1980’s, it reignited my childhood memories of my curiosity of our solar system and of limitless imagination. I began researching heavily on NASA missions and came to the realization that the late 1950’s to mid-1970’s were exciting times for new discoveries, for real photographic images of planets and for limitless possibilities. This gave me the incentive to start a personal project named Beyond Earth.”
Sometimes even the best graphic designer struggle to decide which typeface to use. With this in mind we have discovered this infographic to help you make some decisions.
Prop4g4nd4 is a Greek born designer / illustrator who studied in Manchester, but based in Thessaloniki. He has a wonderfully well defined style which deserved to be witnessed!
So we have gone a little Euro crazy here at Johnny Toaster, and one of the many topics of conversation have been the kits sported by each of the teams in this years tournament.
So first of all lets start with the England kit, which we love. The typeface featured on this years kit, designed by Paul Barnes, is wonderful. The design of the typeface was intended to look quintessentially English, and took its inspiration from pub and shops signs from the 19th Century – this era was chosen because this is when football was first played on an international level. We are also very much loving the simplicity of the English kits, both home and away.
And its for almost that exact same reason why this years Polish kit is one of our favourites in the whole tournament. The simplicity of a white shirt with a red stripe is made even better because of its similarity to the Polish flag, which helps to create a strong national identity.
While we are enjoying the old school thick collar on the Italian kit. our favourite thing is the typeface used for the name and numbers. This typeface was created for the Puma campaign “Make Football Anywhere” by London based design agency GBH and was used throughout Puma’s line of apparel and international advertising campaigns. The typeface, named ‘Gaffer’ was created out of duct tape to reflect the ‘jumpers for goalposts’ school of football.
Speaking of duct tape, finally we are going to take a quick look at the Dutch Kit. Normally I am a huge fan of this kit, the bright orange is a really vibrant colour that makes the Dutch fans easily identifiable from miles away. This means their presence in the football stadium is amplified tremendously. The typeface they have chosen is really nice too, large blocky characters create a well defined look for the team – the execution of this however wasn’t so great. The decision to apply this typeface to the shirts using a shiny black print makes it look as though they ran out of money so had to stick everyone’s number onto their shirts using black duct tape…
