Photo-Lettering Catalog by House Industries

We are all really excited to have recently received our Photo-Lettering catalogs from House Industries.
Museum Mark Making

This week I wanted to acknowledge some truly exquisite mark making—the kind of branding that makes you eat your heart out. Iconic, timeless, balanced and beautifully refined. A few of the worlds’ most well known and respected Museums also boast some seriously awesome identities.
A New School for Design in Baltimore

Starting this fall, Baltimore Design School will open its doors to the youth of Baltimore. This new public school for middle to high school students will focus on Fashion Design, Architecture, and Graphic Design. The school aims to provide a strong balanced curriculum of general core classes as well as the design foundations.
Font Hour Winning Typeface

We recently had an exciting meeting of an OE favorite – Font Hour! There were quite a few fonts this time around, and choosing just one was difficult. After a round of voting, the big winner is:
Jim Sherraden: Preservation Through Production
Letterpress rock star Jim Sherraden of Nashville’s Hatch Show Print will speak at 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 22, at the Brown Center at MICA, 1301 W. Mt. Royal Ave. The event is free and open to all, and the lecture also marks the official announcement that MICA will be acquiring a substantial part of the [...]
Business + Design
AIGA Baltimore and Orange Element Design present Business + Design. A casual discussion on creativity, client relationships and enjoying the balance between business and design. Spend an evening with AIGA Baltimore and Orange Element and learn how to start your company, how to deal with clients, where great ideas come from, and more. This is a [...]
Make Something Cool Everyday

If there is anyone reading who went to art school, chances are you were given some type of assignment that challenged your ability to solve one problem in as many unique ways as you could come up with. I remember a book binding teacher who gave us an overnight assignment to create a book showing [...]
Clothbound Penguin Classics

Penguin Classics has created a series of clothbound novels, designed by Illustrator Coralie Bickford-Smith. Each book in the series is a true work of art, and is bound in an elegant colored bookcloth and stamped with a one-color foil stamp of a pattern inspired by the work within. Penguin is already on it’s second series [...]
Font Hour Freebie Friday

Thanks everyone for the great Font Hour submissions! We had a lot of fun looking through them all. Results will be in on Monday! Until then, enjoy a Font Hour themed Freebie! 1024×768 (standard) 1680×1050 (widescreen)
Fine Art, Handmade Gifts & Unusual Objects

MICA’s Art Market is here! The MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) Art Market is a venue for the sale of original artwork and handcrafted pieces created by more then 250 students, faculty, staff and alumni. The event, which lasts for four days, is a perfect opportunity for holiday shoppers and helps to provide funding [...]
Nonsek Machine

Like cool t-shirts? Nonsek Machine is a fun and interactive way to create your own custom one-of-a-kind t-shirts based on art from popular artists and designers, such as Jesse Ledoux, Aesthetic Apparatus, Art Chantry, and more. Load an artist’s channel, select your shirt color, and then create your own re-mixes of their illustrations! This is [...]
1 of 1500

“1 0f 1500″ is a 10-Year retrospective book highlighting the collaboration between JDK (Jager Di Paola Kemp) Design, Higher Ground, and the Iskra Print Collective. It showcases over 120 silk-screened music posters and features comments by the designers and the bands themselves. The cover is silkscreened and hand-numbered out of 1500 copies (hence the title [...]
Michael Bierut: 5 Secrets to Problem Solving
How does the designer solve a problem? Michael Bierut of Pentagam says that he doesn’t consider himself creative but he is someone who people come to for solutions to problems. He works out these problems in his notebooks, which are filled not with paintings, or cartoons but problem notes, requirements and free-flowing ideas. After 86 notebooks [...]
Stages 09: Design for Cause

STAGES is a global art exhibition to raise funds and awareness for the fight against cancer. It is a partnership between Lance Armstrong and Nike, and all of the work in the show is available for purchase with proceeds directly benefiting the Lance Armstrong Foundation. STAGES features work by Shepard Fairey, Damien Hirst, Ed Ruscha, [...]
Freebie Friday: Fallpaper ’09
The leaves are starting to fall, and now is the time of the year for apple picking, cider, pumpkins, and cool Orange Element desktop wallpaper! Click a link below for a downloadable image of the Fallpaper ’09 desktop wallpaper: 1024×768 (best for standard) 1680×1050 (best for widescreen) And for last year’s Fallpaper, see this post. [...]
The Mobbies: Maryland’s Outstanding Blogs
Head on over to the Baltimore Sun’s website and check out The Mobbies–our blog has been nominated by The Baltimore Sun for one of Maryland’s Outstanding Blogs (Business & Technology)! Help us climb the ranks and maybe even give us your vote for Best Overall blog. The more “hits” the better! And of course, thanks [...]
New Work: Seeds of Genius

Hot off the press! We just received the new company overview brochure for Seeds of Genius. The woman-owned IT solutions company, based in Columbia, MD, approached us with the goal to create an informative brochure that captured their human side. In a sea of acronyms, their name alone stands out among IT companies. But how do [...]
Preserving More Than a Mark

Happy Friday once again. This morning our good friend and talented designer, Beth Brady, passed on a link to the World Trade Center Logo Preservation Project. It is unlikely for any of us to forget that one day eight years ago, just ask the next person you see and chances are they can recount the [...]
Strathmore Paper Redesign

Strathmore Paper has just undergone a brand refresh by Pentagram and illustrator Marian Bantjes. Their task was to reinterpret Strathmore’s “thistle” symbol and apply it across all of their materials. Marian Bantjes, known for her highly-detailed calligraphic illustration style, applied her design to a pattern that appears all over Strathmore’s new paper reams. Elegant and striking [...]
Kid-tested, Designer-approved.

Keep your eye on the shelves at your local Target and other food stores–General Mills is introducing retro-themed cereal boxes! Among the re-designed cereals are favorites such as: Kix, Golden Grahams, Cheerios, Trix, Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms, Wheaties, and more. I am a big fan of vintage food packaging, and I am really glad to see General [...]
Pentagram: Marks

Marks is Pentagram’s latest book, and is meant to be a companion to their Black Book, which was only released to Pentagram’s friends and clients. Marks features 400 logos Pentagram has designed over the years, dating back to 1962. If this is anything like the Black Book (which we were fortunate enough to win in a contest), [...]
Design Connects

I was in Dumbo, Brooklyn a few months back and saw an amazing limited edition print by Susanne Cerha of Silo Design. I recently circled back to the website and wanted to share what I found. Silo and JRVisuals have created a public interactive art project. It’s a lot of fun for type geeks and [...]










