Thinking for
a Living™

Daylight Savings Time

In anticipation of something new we’re working on at BBDK, we’ve reduced the price of the Thinking for a Living™ booklet to $4.95. Available exclusively at YouWorkForThem, this limited edition release is still available – and now at 45% off.

Fraktur mon Amour

Fraktur mon Amour reproduces 300 variations of Blackletter, ranging from historical fonts to contemporary reinventions, in a sensuous, beautifully crafted, hot-pink prayer-book style catalog that is destined to become a fetish object for designers and type enthusiasts. Fraktur mon Amour is the winner of several awards including the Type Directors Club of New York’s 2007 Award for Typographic Excellence. Created by Judith Schalansky, a graphic designer based in Berlin, Germany.

Bastardised

Finally it’s here! Bastardised, is the culmination of the global identity project created by Bunch. Bunch decided that it was time to rework our corporate identity and base it around the overarching theme of Made in Bunch.

The book showcases the wealth of creativity, beauty and humor found within 289 of the Bunchisms specially selected from 750 contributions. The hardback, 208 page book was printed in Croatia by Kratis, with paper by Igepa and was self-published by Bunch.

Wonder Years

Published by ROMA Publications and ArtEZ Press on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Werkplaats Typografie, Wonder Years: Werkplaats Typografie 1998-2008 is a record of work made by over fifty participants to the Werkplaats Typografie program. Beyond an anthology, the archive represented here is an interpretation of a design school history, compiling its items according to a rather subjective, incomplete and inimitable set of entries. The 10 years story of the Werkplaats Typografie is narrated by a group of current participants, intersected by annotations, voice over and parallel readings from Stuart Bailey, Uta Eisenreich, Paul Elliman, Raimundas Malasauskas, Karel Martens, Armand Mevis and Willem Oorebeek.

Wonder Years can be purchased directly from the Werkplaats Typografie or pre-ordered from Stand Up Comedy in the US.

Guidelines for Online Success

Have you ever wondered why your websites didn’t quite match up to the success of your competitors or peers? Have you ever looked at other sites and thought: Why didn’t I think of that? Have you ever spent too much time trying to find basic information that was buried deep in a needlessly complex website? You are certainly not alone and Guidelines for Online Success aims to change that by bringing together some of the world s most highly acclaimed designers and developers, spanning every continent, all of whom share their knowledge and experience.

With chapters arranged by subject (interface and design, marketing and communication, technology and programming, technical advice, content/content management, and commerce), a clear do/don t structure, and plenty of real world examples of successful and award-winning websites, this book has all the advice and examples you will need to give your personal or business website an edge on its competitors and also win industry acclaim as well as respect from your peers. Your visitors will thank you.

The Story of YWFT

To mark the launch of a new and improved YouWorkForThem, here’s an account of how the site began. The beginning never really starts on the first day, so let me backtrack a little and give my account on how the site was created. I had just left my job to go freelance. At the time, I had been selling typefaces with Test Pilot Collective, an old type foundry that I created with some of my friends. When I quit my job, I also changed a lot of things in my life and decided that I was going to start reselling my typefaces on my own.

At the time (early 2000) I was talking with Michael Young online a lot. He was living in DC and working for the internet company, Vir2l. Mike had just developed a typeface himself and we had also just started working together on personal projects. We quickly began working on client projects together and started WeWorkForThem (our design studio based on our personal work) while we watched huge start-ups crashing all around us. There were next to no jobs available in the field of design and starting up a company like this was suicide. Another crazy factor is that we never have worked from the same location. For the most part, Mike worked out of Baltimore after moving from DC and I was in Minneapolis/St. Paul.

Almost immediately, we started saving money to create a website where we could sell fonts on the side. By the end of 2000 we had contracted a friend who began coding the site. We concepted the site and had it ready to go by the middle of 2001. Everything was made from scratch. No pre-existing software was used.

At first, the site was going to be a conceptual shop with different divisions, much like Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. We had developed two shirts that coincided with the concept but towards the end, evolved our concept to be a regular shop. When we went live, we had one poster, two cd’s, three shirts, and around 30 typefaces.

I had been importing books from over seas at the time for friends – mainly books like Grid Systems in Graphic Design and Typographie. I still remember the buzz of getting 10 copies of Grid Systems for my friends. At the time, it was impossible to find a used copy for much under $200 dollars, as it was out of print for a number of years. I imported some books for the store to resell but they came a couple of months after we had been open. I remember posting the books online and watching them sell out in a couple of hours. Funny enough, when I ordered them I remember talking to Mike Young about how I hoped they would all sell within 2 months. After that, I knew we should start to sell books.

We also were the first to sell “modern-ish design” as stock art. We had tons of extra icons that we had built for client work laying around and we drew more to create larger sets of icons. It’s funny to think that we are selling work that we had billed out for tons of money being sold for such a small amount on the site. It was a total rush to see work that you had just developed go live on the site and be so well received from your peers.

Originally, we had viewed the site as being a platform for our friends to sell their design work, so we hit up all the artists and designers we knew and asked if they had any work to sell via the store. Everyone said they had something to sell, but they never finished it. A couple of our friends came through, but we had really expected YWFT to be a much larger platform. Over time we have moved towards this goal, but it has taken a lot longer than I had expected.

The site kept slowly growing and growing, so much so that I had to get interns to help me out with the shipping. Keep in mind that we were doing this out of a small three bedroom townhouse. One of the rooms was my office, another room was bookshelves and my bedroom was sleeping and shipping. What can I say? I came out of a generation that had the mentality of doing everything yourself. Eventually I could not do it anymore from that location and had to ship the book portion of our business to Michael Young, which he managed for the next two years before he moved out of the country. We now have a small warehouse where we work and ship from that is located in Minneapolis, MN. I have one employee and the other Mike has some employees as well.

When starting the site, we set our goals to surpass anything that had been done before in the field of design. We treated every designer with a lot of respect and generosity. This is very important for us, as we are designers ourselves and we see what’s happening around us. We understand the design community is small and we want to help it grow in terms of both quality and education.

YouWorkForThem is still a small site and I run into designers all the time that have no idea who we are. I believe the store really has made a positive impact on the field of graphic design and hope that it will continue to do so for years to come with the support of our fellow designers.

WeWorkForThem is the creative duo of Mike Cina and Michael Young, the founders of YouWorkForThem, a store and award-winning group of artists that produce some of the most groundbreaking design work available today.

Radio Silence

Radio Silence documents the ignored space between the Ramones and Nirvana through the words and images of the pre-Internet era where this community built on do-it-yourself ethics thrived. Authors Nathan Nedorostek and Anthony Pappalardo have cataloged private collections of unseen images, personal letters, original artwork, and various ephemera from the hardcore scene circa 1978-1993. Unseen photos lay next to hand-made t-shirts and original artwork brought to life by the words of their creators and fans. Radio Silence includes over 500 images of unseen photographs, illustrations, rare records, t-shirts, and fanzines presented in a manner that abandons the aesthetic clichés normally employed to depict the genre and lets the subject matter speak for itself.

There is an opening tonight at the Riviera Gallery in Brooklyn, New York of a show featuring original black-and-white prints from the forthcoming book, published by MTV Press. The show runs from October 4th-31st, 2008.

Sizes May Vary

Sizes May Vary references the varying standardized formats and systems used within graphic design. Part sketchbook, part reference book and part notebook – it is a space for composing and visualizing layouts, sketching and developing ideas, taking reference and making note. Designed by Mark Boyce and published by Laurence King Publishing Ltd.

Do You Matter?

More and more companies are coming to understand the competitive advantage offered by outstanding design. With this, you can create products, services, and experiences that truly matter to your customers’ lives and thereby drive powerful, sustainable improvements in business performance. But delivering great designs is not easy. Many companies accomplish it once, or twice; few do it consistently. The secret: building a truly design-driven business, in which design is central to everything you do. Do You Matter? shows how to do precisely that. Legendary industrial designer Robert Brunner (who laid the groundwork for Apple’s brilliant design language) and Stewart Emery (Success Built to Last) begin by making an incontrovertible case for the power of design in making emotional connections, deepening relationships, and strengthening brands.

Read a review by Robert Blinn at Core 77.

Dangerous Curves

“In Dangerous Curves I have attempted to show both emerging and expert designers how, in an age of computer-dominated design, the designer can turn to their very own hands for both inspiration and solution. The only way to create a logotype that is truly unique is for the designer to transcend the limitations of the available fonts and typefaces on the market. Dangerous Curves provides a roadmap for that very worthy endeavor.”

Los Logos 4

Gestalten’s best-selling Logos series has documented and indicated design styles and trends in contemporary logo design worldwide. At 568 pages, Los Logos 4 provides an overview of current developments and advances in logo design. This authoritative compendium is the largest volume to date showcasing a collection of over 5,000 examples of stylistic approaches by designers from around the globe.

As a side note, two of the previews of Los Logos 4 on the Gestalten site show logos that our company submitted. With 568 pages to choose from, we were lucky that our work appears so many times there.

Dear Lulu

Dear Lulu is a test book researched and produced by graphic design students at Hochschule Darmstadt, Germany, during an intensive two-day workshop with London-based designer James Goggin of Practise. The book’s intention is to act as a calibration document for testing colour, pattern, format, texture and typography. Exercises in colour profile (Adobe RGB/sRGB/CMYK/Greyscale), halftoning, point size, line, geometry, skin tone, colour texture, cropping and print finishing provide useful data for other designers and self-publishers to judge the possibilities and quality of online print-on-demand – specifically Lulu, with this edition.

UNICEF Type Book

Create/Reject introduces Fifty Designers’ Current Favourite Typefaces. 100% of the cover price goes to UNICEF’s Myanmar (Burma) Cyclone Children’s Appeal in the wake of Cyclone Nargis that hit Myanmar on 2nd May 2008.

Contributors: 2×4, Adam Hayes, Alan Dye (NB: Studio), Alexandre Bettler, Angus Hyland (Pentagram), Antoine+Manuel, Ben Freeman, Ben Parker (MadeThought), Bibliothèque, Cartlidge Levene, Claire Warner (Browns), Domenic Lippa (Pentagram), Daniel Eatock, Daniel Lock (NB: Studio), eBoy, Eike König (HORT), Experimental Jetset, Farrow, Fernando Gutiérrez, Fuel, Hector Pottie (Third Eye Design), Henrik Kubel (A2/SW/HK), Hi-ReS!, Hyperkit, James Goggin (Practise), James Greenfield (BB/Saunders), Jeremy Leslie (John Brown), Jerome Rigaud (Electronest), Jessica Helfand (Winterhouse), Jon Dowling (SEA Design), Jon Forss (Non-Format), Julian Morey (abc-xyz), Lionel Hatch (The Chase), Matt Simpson (Stereo), Michael C. Place (Build), Michael Johnson (Johnson Banks), Mogollon, Nick Bell, Paula Scher (Pentagram), Paulus M. Dreibholz, Pixelgarten, Ralf Metzger (North), Simon Earith (YES), Spin, Stefan Sagmeister, The Designers Republic, Why Not Associates, Wim Crouwel, Zak Kyes, Zamir Antonio (Eat Sleep Work/Play)