Thinking for
a Living™

Optical Disc

I love these Optical Disc posters by Alex Broadhurst. Printed white on A1 240gsm holographic mirri in an edition of 50 posters, the design celebrates 50 years of the optical disc whilst paying homage to Gottlieb Soland’s 1957 grammo-grafik poster (pictured below). Printed by K2 Screen. Alas, UK only shipping!

The Art of the Grid

Whether we admit it or not, grids are an essential part of our life. Without grids, our lives would be messier, uglier, and more confusing places to live in. The Art of the Grid products will keep your life in order! Write your shopping lists, practice your layouts, and keep your books and magazines on the shelves of grids that changed the history of design. Choose from Die neue Typographie, A Designer’s Art, Le Modulor, Raster Systeme Fur Die Visuele Gestaltung, Twen, The Gutenberg Bible and The Guardian. Concepted by Astrid Stavro.

Typotheque Sketchbook

Digging this limited edition, pocket-sized, no-nonsense calendar and sketchbook by Peter Biľak and Johanna Biľak that is available at Typotheque. The main features of the sketchbook are a weekly overview, year overview, and 12 different pre-printed grids. International holidays, design events and other days of interest are indicated on the index page, as well as on day overviews. The book is specially bound using the ‘Otastar’ method, which ensures that it lies flat when opened. Double crease in the flaps allows easy bookmarking of any page.

(Malin+Goetz)

As spotted on Blackbird, the always cutting-edge (Malin+Goetz) is opening a new store in the Upper West Side in an old Puerto Rican barber shop on 85th. I’m a bit obsessed with these guys thanks in part to their excellent branding work which was created by Anisa Suthayalai for 2×4. Make sure to check it out if you’re in town.

Grid Systems

YouWorkForThem is proud to bring you the release of our Fall 2008 Men’s and Women’s tees and sweatshirts, including this beauty which plays off the classic book of the same name. Grid Systems is a limited edition T-Shirt designed and produced by YouWorkForThem. Nab it while you can.

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.

Puzzling Simplicity

Ciao bella! I’m in love with these puzzles by Enzo Mari. Discovered while browsing, the graphic simplicity and clever arrangements of these pieces instantly pleased my eyes and made me smile. I wanted to share these ‘organized zoos’ immediately but thought I should have some facts to go with the visual inspiration. Tragically curious, here’s what I have learned about these puzzles that had so fully captured my attention.

Enzo Mari started his career with studies on visual perception and then focused his attention on games for children, graphics, design and architecture. He studied literature and art at the Accademia di Brera in Milan from 1952 until 1956. Entirely self-taught as an industrial designer, Enzo designed his first object for Danese called Sedici Animali.

Sedici Animali was launched in 1957 as a wooden puzzle carefully choreographed by Mari depicting an interlocking rectangle of simply carved animal shapes – including a hippo, snake, giraffe and camel. Pictured here are images of the 1974 reissues of Sedici Animali and Sedici Pesci which were created from cast resin. These amazing designs have stood the test of time and are still, in fact, available for purchase at Murray Moss (although at a collector’s price). In many ways, the pricing isn’t surprising as the puzzles have been documented as the favorite childhood design objects of designers like Yves Béhar who’s award-winning studio is responsible for the design of the well-known One Laptop per Child.

Coincidentally, the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in New York is currently hosting a traveling exhibition of Enzo Mari’s work that is up until Friday, September 5th.

Get Inspired

Frank Chimero’s inspirational design posters are now available for purchase at Frank’s store. Aimed specifically at designers, the topics range from various truisms to snarky tongue-in-cheek comments.

The Italic Poster

The silkscreened edition of The Italic Poster, designed by Eivind Søreng Molvær, is now available for purchase. Printed in an edition of 100 on Plike Black 140 GSM paper from GF Smith, the posters are silkscreened with white ink and are signed and numbered on the back by the designer himself. Postage, packaging and handling are all included in the price of 35 GBP. Please allow 10 days for delivery.