GUS NICKLOS

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The Design is in the Details Our back stairway leads up to the balcony that overlooks the rest of studio and N Williams Avenue. As I get my morning coffee or sit in the kitchen I often check-in to see how the light and shadows are interacting with the walls and wood. There is a three inch wide white detail that runs up the left side of the stairs proper – separately built and attached. It’s funny how something so simple and often overlooked can capture my attention time after time. It is a great metaphor for working here. When they built the space, rather than asking why, the partners asked why not? The stairs are just one of many examples that reinforce this point. Weather it be in a finished design, rigorous conversation during the process or part of the studio’s physical structure, the intention manifests itself in the details. See more photos and learn more about The Felt Hat.

The Design is in the Details

Our back stairway leads up to the balcony that overlooks the rest of studio and N Williams Avenue. As I get my morning coffee or sit in the kitchen I often check-in to see how the light and shadows are interacting with the walls and wood. There is a three inch wide white detail that runs up the left side of the stairs proper – separately built and attached. It’s funny how something so simple and often overlooked can capture my attention time after time. It is a great metaphor for working here. When they built the space, rather than asking why, the partners asked why not? The stairs are just one of many examples that reinforce this point. Weather it be in a finished design, rigorous conversation during the process or part of the studio’s physical structure, the intention manifests itself in the details.

See more photos and learn more about The Felt Hat.

RANT underconsideration.com calls this a “great redesign” and people are leaving comments on how amazing of a “strategy” it is. I get it, it’s brilliance is it’s simplicity, but let’s not get carried away by hype. We have been inundated with this brand’s image since birth. This is a good solution, predictable and not by any means new. The fact that mainstream society can recognize a small portion of a brand’s visual identity seems interesting during an initial moment of pause, but that feeling is quickly replaced by a sadness that humankind has been so saturated - so marketed - that this type of solution becomes commercially viable. This is more of a societal observation than a critique on design. This solution is not evil - it is clever. The agency responsible, Turner Duckworth, is doing what a good agency does… solving a problem given the audience. But can we please stop calling things like this genius? There are so many great design thinkers out there doing inventive and beautiful things. For example, Pentagram, did the something very similar for Saks bag redesign not too long ago. We are talking about a big logo cropped on a can of Diet Coke. God, all this writing has made me so thirsty. I am going to go have an ice cold can of Diet Coke now… really I am

RANT

underconsideration.com calls this a “great redesign” and people are leaving comments on how amazing of a “strategy” it is. I get it, it’s brilliance is it’s simplicity, but let’s not get carried away by hype.

We have been inundated with this brand’s image since birth. This is a good solution, predictable and not by any means new. The fact that mainstream society can recognize a small portion of a brand’s visual identity seems interesting during an initial moment of pause, but that feeling is quickly replaced by a sadness that humankind has been so saturated - so marketed - that this type of solution becomes commercially viable. This is more of a societal observation than a critique on design. This solution is not evil - it is clever. The agency responsible, Turner Duckworth, is doing what a good agency does… solving a problem given the audience.

But can we please stop calling things like this genius? There are so many great design thinkers out there doing inventive and beautiful things. For example, Pentagram, did the something very similar for Saks bag redesign not too long ago.

We are talking about a big logo cropped on a can of Diet Coke. God, all this writing has made me so thirsty. I am going to go have an ice cold can of Diet Coke now… really I am

#Plazm

I found this coaster a few weeks ago. I’ve managed to hold on to it despite being used, abused and chewed on by my little dog. When I was a 17 year old design student attending SCAD in Savannah, GA I loved type and layout. It was the 90′s and height of the Raygun grunge design movement. I lived design. I was waffling about returning for my junior year in the south away from the northwest, my friends and band. At some point my professor, Amy Kern (really, that was her name) told me that I should leave school and intern at a hot agency or magazine. Right around the same time, I don’t remember exactly how, but I got ahold of PLAZM #16 (below) and found out they were based in Portland, Oregon, my home town. I thought, maybe I could intern there.

About a year later I found myself at a work station drawing clipping paths around 26 theater chair images for my first real project at PLAZM as an intern… READ MORE

A short story that begins with a plazm coaster. http://t.co/cQuWf36