MITPressLog

Monday Eye Candy: More from The Color Revolution

Happy Monday! Here's the second half of the eye candy from The Color Revolution by Regina Lee Blaszczyk that we promised last week. As always, click on each image to enlarge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Kellogg’s Corn Flakes advertisement in Youth’s Companion (November 5, 1908) used the subtle tones that Munsell favored.

 

 

 

 

Advertisement for dyed ostrich feathers, used to add style to ladies’ hats. From New York Styles, Spring and Summer 1914 (Charles Williams Stores, 1914).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This 1916 catalog supplement contained swatches in the pale wartime hues as an aid to color selection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Advertisement for Monsanto Plastics, Fortune, 1939.

 

Bill Moggridge, 1943-2012

We are saddened to learn of the death of award-winning designer Bill Moggridge. Bill was Director of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, a founder of IDEO, and author of Designing Interactions (2006) and Designing Media (2010).

This video, which is part of the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum's "Remembering Bill" memorial, is a wonderful tribute to Bill's life. He will be sorely missed.

The Paralympics and Design

The athlete Oscar Pistorius, by running in the Olympic 400 meter semi-final on prosthetic legs, has blurred the boundaries between the Olympics and Paralympics.

In Design Meets Disability, Graham Pullin advocates blurring the boundaries between assistive technology and design in general, allowing the worlds of disability and design to influence and even inspire each other. If eyeglasses have been transformed from medical necessity to fashion accessory, why can’t designers do the same for hearing aids and prosthetic limbs?

One of the people Pullin interviewed for the book was Aimee Mullins, another athlete who has competed on the Össur carbon fiber blades that Pistorius wears. Aimee is also an actor, an activist and a model, who has modeled for Alexander McQueen. She takes a broader, cultural perspective:

"[Mullins] thinks that fashion designers and jewelry designers should be involved in design for disability as a matter of course. “Discreet?” she sniggers. “I want off-the-chart glamorous!” For her, modern luxury is less about a desire for perfection as a desire for options. Her wardrobe is made up not only of different clothes that can make her feel a different way but also different legs: there are her carbon fiber running legs, various silicone cosmetic prostheses, and a pair of intricately hand-carved wooden legs."

 

Aimee Mullins's carved wooden legs

 

 

 

 

“I’m thinking about what I’m going to wear them with: jeans and motorcycle boots, or my Azzedine Alaïa dress if I want to feel amazing.” Her legs too can make her feel amazing in different ways: a pair of silicone legs that are several inches longer than her own legs would be, make her (even) taller and more elegant on the catwalk, while her eerie glass legs have an element of magical realism... From the perspective of the health insurance companies, Mullins says that “every single pair of my legs are considered unnecessary.” But an element of fantasy among the practicalities of everyday life is important to her. Even, as she wryly puts it, to express a certain shallowness."

 Mullins’ compelling TED talk makes us question our perception of disability.

Informed and inspired by the ideas of disabled people and designers, Design Meets Disability ends with a series of speculations, pairing designers with disability-related briefs. One such is a conversation with the designer Martin Bone about prosthetic legs. Pullin writes:

"We become intrigued by the idea of relinquishing visual imitation without abandoning a reference to the feel of the human body. This implies abstraction: materials that may not feel exactly like skin but that have some of its qualities, or might be pleasant to touch in their own right. Bone is inspired by the aesthetic relationship between the structure and cover of a prosthesis, inspired to play with the contrast between hard and soft, skeleton and tissue.

 

Martin Bone's sketches for new combinations of materials in prosthetic legs

Monday Eye Candy: Spacesuit

Happy Monday! Here's even more space-related content--today's images are from Nicholas de Monchaux's Spacesuit. Click on each image to enlarge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Astronaut Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin on the surface of the moon,  July 21, 1969. Aldrin is looking down at the systemized list of mission procedures sewn onto the surface of his left sleeve.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Neil Armstrong shortly after reentering the Lunar Excursion Module Eagle, July 21, 1969.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, standing by the Lunar Rover with the earth above; note that, as for all Apollo moon landing missions, the earth was in its first or last quarter as seen from the moon. Schmitt, a geologist, was the only nonmilitary astronaut to land on the surface of the moon.

Playtex on the Moon

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon--wearing Playtex. Check out the history of the iconic spacesuit in Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo by Nicholas de Monchaux.

 

 

 

 

Monday Eye Candy: Nonobject

Happy Monday! Here are a few images from NONOBJECT by Branko Lukić and Barry M. Kātz.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday Eye Candy: Design Meets Disability

In our last Monday Eye Candy post of 2011, we featured photographs from Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht's Sidewalks: Conflict and Negotiation over Public Space. For the first Monday Eye Candy of 2012, we present images from Design Meets Disability by Graham Pullin. Design Meets Disability contains 114 color illustrations to show us how design and disability can inspire each other. Why, Pullin asks, shouldn’t hearing aids be as fashionable as eyewear? Here are a few illustrations from the book (click on each image to enlarge):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a memorable Cutler and Gross advertisement from the early 1990s
Photo: Platon, courtesy of Cutler and Gross

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aimee Mullins’s carved wooden legs
Photo: Aimee Mullins

 

 

 

 

 

 

chairs designed by a diversity of international designers for the nextmaruni collection
Photo: Yoneo Kawabe © nextmaruni

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tissot Silen-T tactile watch
Photo: courtesy of Tissot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mebox storage with perforated dots that can be punched out to create letters or icons, designed and manufactured by GTF
Photo: courtesy of GTF

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

message wall for O2 by Durrell Bishop and Tom Hulbert at IDEO
Photo: Thomas Stewart, courtesy of IDEO

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday Eye Candy: Helvetica and the New York City Subway System

Last week, we featured beautiful spreads from Kit White's 101 Things to Learn in Art School. Today's eye candy is Paul Shaw's Helvetica and the New York City Subway System. Helvetica and the New York City Subway System contains numerous previously unpublished documents as well as more than 200 photographs, most of them original or never seen before. Here are a few photographs from the book (click on each image to enlarge):

 

Porcelain enamel station sign. Rector Street (R/W), 1970s. This is the only remaining sign in Standard Medium among a group of stations on the BMT Broadway and Fourth Avenue lines that were renovated with large colored tiles in the 1970s. Regarding the disappearing mosaics, a TA spokesman said at the time, “We didn’t consider these things had any great artistic merit anyhow.” (2008)

Credit: Paul Shaw

 

Porcelain enamel station sign. 242nd Street—Van Cortlandt Park (1). (2007)

Credit: Paul Shaw

 

 

Illuminated sign. 42nd Street—Port Authority (A/C/E), 1980s? Handcut Helvetica Medium. (2009)

Credit: Paul Shaw

 

Porcelain enamel station sign. Beach 36 Street / Edgemere (A). 2010

Credit: Paul Shaw

 

 

Handwritten directional sign. Avenue N (F), 2010. (2010)

Credit: Paul Shaw

 

 

 

 

Monday Eye Candy

While it’s supposed to be unwise to judge a book by its cover, at The MIT Press, we believe that to acknowledge the visual and material appeal of books is not to diminish their content. In spirit of this belief, we're instituting "Monday Eye Candy" to celebrate the many MIT Press titles that we feel are beautiful, inside and out.

Today's eye candy is Kit White's 101 Things to Learn in Art School. The cover is a stamped case and each of the lessons in the book is accompanied by a black and white drawing that illustrates the point made by referring to an historical or contemporary work of art. The drawings, produced by the author, act both as referrals to well-known works that students should study, as well as demonstrations of the difficulty of successfully capturing the subtleties of art works when copying them in order to decipher their secrets. Feast your eyes on these spreads from the book (click on each image to enlarge):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Font Fight: Helvetica’s Battle to Gain Control of NYC Subway Signs

 

In celebration of the 107^th anniversary of New York City’s first official subway system, let’s take a look at seven facts about how its iconic signs came about from Paul Shaw’s Helvetica and the New York City Subway System:

1) The first “signs” in the New York City subway system were created by Heins & La Farge, the architects of the Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT), when the IRT, the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit (BMT), and the Independent (IND) lines merged in 1904. They are the same mosaic tablets seen today in both serif and sans serif roman capitals. Although created in the same architect’s studio, none of the signs have a uniform lettering style.

 2) George Salomon, frustrated by the labyrinth of distinctions among the IRT, BMT, and IND lines, suggested creating five color-coded lines identified by a letter and eleven branch lines a derivative letter/number combination. Only the color-coded route map was adopted by the Transit Authority, and Salomon’s subway map was published in 1958. 

3) Many subway sign systems around the world experienced many issues with consistency of style, except for London. Calligrapher Edward Johnston created the Johnston Railway Sans font for Frank Pick, the publicity manager for London Transport in 1916. In the 1960s, the font Airport, first used in The Oceanic Building (now Terminal 3) at Heathrow Airport.

4) The font Helvetica, created in Switzerland, didn’t catch on so quickly in the United States until Mergenthaler Linotype in Brooklyn aligned its original German Linotype mats with American ones.

5) MIT was one of the earliest three places to incorporate Helvetica into award-winning designs and advertising.

6) Helvetica became the official typeface for the New York City subway system signage in December 1989. Forms of Helvetica Medium were used for the Metro-North, Long Island Railroad, and New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA).

7) Desktop publishing software helped prompt the complete switch from the font Standard to Helvetica. It was the only font available in the equipment and systems listed the 1989 MTA Sign Manual.