Always curious about how color reflects culture, Pantone’s Color of the Year 2025 is PANTONE 17-1230 Mocha Mousse, which offers plenty to unpack. A rich, earthy brown, it’s positioned as a color that balances sophistication and comfort. But does it capture the mood of the moment?

This year, much of the design world has been focused on themes of sustainability, simplicity, and connection. Mocha Mousse seeks to tap into those ideas, evoking warmth and stability. It’s a grounded shade that nods to nature and the pleasures of everyday life—a safe choice, perhaps, but also a versatile one.

Pantone’s reveal, featuring a light show on the London Eye, certainly adds some drama to the announcement. The collaborations, too, are impressive: Motorola’s vegan leather phones and Joybird’s plush fabrics demonstrate how Mocha Mousse can be used across industries. Other product collaborations include Pura’s smart fragrance diffuser with custom scents, Wix Studio’s web design assets, Libratone’s UP headphones, Spoonflower’s print-on-demand home décor, IPSY’s limited-edition beauty products, Society6’s artist-driven designs, Ultrafabrics’ premium interior textiles, and Post-it® Brand’s special collection celebrating expressive color.

Still, the color feels understated, even subdued, compared to the bold selections of previous years. Perhaps this choice reflects a response to the chaotic and unpredictable events of 2024, offering a sense of calm and grounding in a time of upheaval. “The everlasting search for harmony filters through into every aspect of our lives, including our relationships, the work we do, our social connections, and the natural environment that surrounds us,” said Laurie Pressman, vice president of Pantone Color Institute. “Harmony brings feelings of contentment, inspiring a positive state of inner peace, calm, and balance as well as being tuned in with the world around us. Harmony embraces a culture of connection and unity as well as the synthesis of our mental, spiritual and physical well-being.”

…for Pantone Color of the Year 2025, we look to a color that reaches into our desire for comfort and wellness, and the indulgence of simple pleasures that we can gift and share with others.

Laurie Pressman, VP Pantone Color Institute

For designers, Mocha Mousse has potential. It’s a great neutral for grounding palettes, and its tactile qualities make it appealing in interior design and packaging. But it’s not the kind of shade that demands attention or inspires an immediate wow factor. Instead, it’s a quiet presence — more about being a harmonious complement than a leading show-stopper.

As we move into 2025, it will be interesting to see how this color plays out in real-world applications. Will it resonate with audiences craving simplicity and comfort, or will it fade into the background? Time will tell. For now, Mocha Mousse offers designers a tool for creating warmth and subtle elegance, even if it doesn’t quite steal the spotlight.

Imagery courtesy of The Pantone Color Institute.

The post Pantone 2025 Color of the Year is an Understated and Harmonious Hue appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Check out the full series as it unfolds.

Go backstage on the Two Craigs website to see how the pair translate the prompt through photography and illustration.

Shatter

My wife and I were traveling in Japan when this word got assigned. I was seeing a lot of sake vessels and their silhouettes were always striking in simplicity—inspiration supplied. In order to know something is shattered, you have to know what it was whole.

Craig Frazier

Follow along with PRINT, at 2craigs.com, or on Instagram.

The post Two Craigs: 26/52 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

And if you’re still reeling from it, the holidays are a perfect time to get punch-drunk distracted on a bounty of brilliant book covers.

For as much insanity as the year held (and it was … a lot!), it was offset by a constant stream of cathartic tomes and jackets. To that end, in 2023 our annual December list featured 50 titles—and it has now doubled to 100. 

Some of my personal favorites: Thomas Colligans’ beautiful cover for Beautyland, which has been stuck in my head for the better part of a year. Janet Hansen’s work on Ask Me Again, is equal parts electrifying and haunting. Pablo Delcan’s genius VanderMeer covers the best encapsulations of the Southern Reach series since his Spanish editions. Arsh Raziuddin’s jacket for Knife. Alex Merto and Seymour Chwast’s Tom Wolfe reissues. Pete Adlington’s utterly perfect Not Waving But Drowning. Grace Han’s take on God of the Woods, which disproves the theory that great covers are only the stuff of niche imprints and genres and not mainstream bestsellers. And so many others, which you’ll see below.

Here’s to all the striking work in 2024, and all that we have to look forward to in 2025. There has truly never been a better time to get lost in a book—or a book cover.

The post 100 of the Best Book Covers of 2024 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Left image: 404 Branding, Right image: Co-founders (left to right) Renan Monjon, Rafael Caldeira, Saulo Monjon

Their debut project, The Cruise Heist, is a masterclass in creative risk-taking. Tackling a Netflix campaign when the company was less than three weeks old, with just five people on the team, is the kind of audacity that defines 404. Co-founder Rafael Caldeira put it perfectly: “Our name ‘404’ celebrates the idea that mistakes and risk-taking are essential parts of the creative process.”

And it’s not just a nervy concept—they’ve proven it works. In its first year, 404’s design-first approach and lean, two-department structure have delivered results that rival even the most established agencies. From partnerships with global heavyweights like Google and Natura to snagging awards at Cannes Lions, Effies, and El Ojo de Iberoamérica, 404 is shaking up the industry. They fully embrace their tongue-in-cheek, “error-prone” ethos by leaning into the spirit of a 404 error — playfully owning the fact that they don’t even have a website (yet!?) to showcase their award-winning work. You can, however, find them on LinkedIn and Instagram.

What stands out about 404 isn’t just the awards or the high-profile clients. It’s their philosophy: innovation thrives in uncertainty. In a world increasingly dominated by AI, the team champions the power of human creativity and thoughtful design. By blending cutting-edge tech with a distinctly Brazilian flair for bold ideas, they’re redefining how creative problems are solved—not just in Brazil, but anywhere.

As they enter year two, 404 Design & Innovation is on a mission to grow even bigger. Their rapid rise is a testament to the idea that with the right mix of creativity, collaboration, and courage, even the newest player can make waves in a competitive industry. Keep an eye on this agency. PRINT is excited to see what’s in store for 404’s next chapter!

The post 404 Design & Innovation Celebrates a Year of Bold Moves and Big Wins appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

From a fresh face (or lack thereof) on some Murakami, to Dante’s Inferno as you’ve never seen it, to a psychedelic Clockwork Orange experiment, the rest of our favorite finds from the month(s) follow!

Publisher’s description:
With his bestseller Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates established himself as a unique voice in his generation of American authors, a brilliant writer and thinker in the tradition of James Baldwin.

In his keenly anticipated new book, The Message, he explores the urgent question of how our stories—our reporting, imaginative narratives and mythmaking—both expose and distort our realities. Traveling to three resonant sites of conflict, he illuminates how the stories we tell—as well as the ones we don’t—work to shape us.

The first of the book’s three main parts finds Coates on his inaugural trip to Africa—a journey to Dakar, where he finds himself in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and the ghost-haunted country of his imagination. He then takes readers along with him to Columbia, SC, where he reports on the banning of his own work and the deep roots of a false and fiercely protected American mythology—visibly on display in this capital of the confederacy, with statues of segregationists still looming over its public squares. Finally, in Palestine, Coates sees with devastating clarity the tragedy that grows in the clash between the stories we tell and reality on the ground.

Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.

What was the brief for this book? 
The brief was a very simple one: simplicity, strength, and a three-strand story. Then, a lot of discussion with the editor around really capturing the essence of the book. In terms of visuals, it was completely open.

Tell us about the blank space in the middle—how you arrived at it, and what it represents.
The blank space in the middle was almost not an intentional solution. I felt the overall package needed a timelessness to feel intriguing, and powerful but also elegant. The temptation with a book like this is to make a bold countercultural statement, to rely on protest graphics, etc., to give it an outsider attitude, which would be a completely valid approach and is certainly something I explored early on. But I also felt strongly that I wanted to play up to the alignment [of] Ta-Nehisi Coates in the lineage of socio-political [authors] such as Toni Morrison, Noam Chomsky, and James Baldwin. With that in mind, I wanted to convey clarity and authority. I felt the title and author name in themselves did a lot of that work for me.

How did you choose the type treatment?
The typeface I used was Grobek; this arose partly [because] it’s not a type aesthetic I have used previously (sometimes, there’s no better reason than that) but also this goes back to my decision to shy away from protest graphics in this design route. I decided to do the opposite, something elegant and light with a slightly unconventional serif. Somehow I found that through not being shouty, this stood out more, possibly due the sheer mass of negative space on the cover, which is echoed with a lighter typeface with huge counters.

How about the color bands?
The color bands frame the type elements, anchoring them to the top and bottom of the jacket. They are simply a reference to the three strands of the journey undertaken by the author, referencing Senegal, Palestine, and the U.S. But they also serve a purpose in harking back to Midcentury book cover design, further signaling the literary lineage I wanted to emphasize for Ta-Nehisi.

Is it difficult to make a cover this restrained yet effective?
I guess it can be sometimes difficult to get a cover this restraint approved. I think as long as it’s been well-designed, restraint is an admirable trait in designers (if appropriate!). But I had great supporters straight away for this cover in my art director, Richard Bravery, and the publisher for the title, Simon Prosser. It was one of those occasions where there was pretty much consensus straight away that was the strongest route—let’s just go with it!

Is there any added pressure when designing a book for such an important voice as Coates?
There is always some pressure for whoever you are designing for; you are trying to visually communicate the essence of another artist’s work in a different medium. But working for Penguin and Hamish Hamilton means that you get to work on covers for some of the most seminal figures in literature, so the excitement of that far outweighs the pressure. (Unless I’m on like round 80 and everything I’m doing still looks shit.)

Cover design by Matt Dorfman

The post 22 of the Best Book Covers of the Month: November 2024 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Check out the full series as it unfolds.

Backstage on the Two Craigs website is on hiatus for a few weeks, but if you’ve missed any of the last few prompts, it’s worth a look back.

Wind

Follow along with PRINT, at 2craigs.com, or on Instagram.

The post Two Craigs: 25/52 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

With bold flavors, nostalgic branding, and a playful mascot named Sando Sam, Ayoh! isn’t just a condiment—it’s a love letter to America’s sandwich culture. Designed to bring the spirit of the classic deli counter into your kitchen, Ayoh! seeks to redefine what it means to make a great sandwich at home. Collaborating with CENTER Design to build a brand as flavorful as its sauces, Ayoh! promises to revolutionize home-cooked sandwiches by combining chef-level flavor with playful Americana-inspired branding. I was lucky enough to speak with Alex Center about Ayoh!’s creation and talk brand strategy and direction; find gems from our conversation below.

Baz’s journey from recipe developer to condiment creator was fueled by a love for sandwiches and a frustration with boring, dry options at home. “Ayoh! is all about taking the sandwich shop and everything that means—from American culinary heritage to its vibrant energy—and bringing it to today’s countertop,” explains Alex Center, founder of CENTER Design​.

Ayoh! is about taking the sandwich shop and everything that means—from Americana heritage to its vibrant energy—and bringing it to today’s countertop.

Alex Center

The brand’s creative direction leans heavily on nostalgia, with a nod to mid-century sandwich shop culture. The Ayoh! logo draws from vintage deli signage, combining art deco script styles with a modern gloopy twist. The custom-designed typeface even includes a subtle drip in the “o,” hinting at its saucy DNA. “We wanted the brand to feel like it’s always been here—a tribute to the enduring charm of the great American sandwich,” Center shares. Vibrant hues inspired by Formica diner surfaces and zany illustrations complete the aesthetic​.

What inspired the nostalgic-meets-modern design for Ayoh!’s branding?
Alex Center: We wanted the brand to feel historic without feeling vintage, and modern without being trendy. It’s about bringing the American sandwich shop’s heritage to the countertop—infusing nostalgia from the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s sandwich shop culture while ensuring it feels fresh and relevant today. Molly’s vibrant energy and love for sandwiches were central to this design, and her unique color palette, inspired by elementary school hues, added an approachable and educational touch.

At the heart of Ayoh!’s branding is its mascot, Sando Sam—a cheeky sandwich character with a penchant for accessories that change with each flavor. “Sando Sam embodies the fun and levity brands used to have,” says Center. “It’s a storyteller and a nod to classic mascots like Mr. Peanut and the Morton Salt Girl, adding personality to every bottle.”​

What was the rationale behind incorporating Sando Sam as a mascot?
AC: Molly’s ethos of making cooking approachable and enjoyable called for a character that could inject personality into the packaging. A little sandwich character with boots and a cap felt like the perfect way to echo the Americana vibe while adding a playful twist. It’s not just about sandwiches; it’s about celebrating the joy and creativity of making them.

Launching with four bold flavors—Original Mayo, Dill Pickle Mayo, Tangy Dijonayo, and Hot Giardinayo—Ayoh! aims to end boring sandwiches once and for all. Packaged in squeezable bottles reminiscent of deli counters, the sauces invite culinary creativity, encouraging users to “Pass it! Squeeze it! Spread it! Dip it!”​

How does Ayoh! stand out in the crowded CPG market?
AC: Ayoh! doesn’t aim to be another trendy startup—it’s designed to feel timeless, as though it’s been part of the culture for generations. The design avoids overt nostalgia or modern clichés, instead blending both into something era-less. Molly’s storytelling and passion for sandwiches shine through, turning Ayoh! into more than a condiment—it’s a tool to elevate home cooking with personality, fun, and purpose. It’s a true reflection of her brand DNA.

With a mission to make home cooking more accessible and exciting, Ayoh! perfectly encapsulates Baz’s ethos: “Cooking has to be fun and easy, or no one will do it.” Whether you’re elevating a Thanksgiving leftovers sandwich or experimenting with bold flavor pairings, Ayoh! is here to bring the joy of the sandwich shop to your kitchen.

A sandwich isn’t just food; it’s democratic, timeless, and for everyone. Ayoh! celebrates that spirit by ending boring sandwiches with fun, flavor, and a bit of personality.

Alex Center

To get your hands on this delicious sando sauce, visit Ayoh! and follow them on Instagram at @eatayoh.

The post CENTER Design Brings Sando Shop Nostalgia to Molly Baz’s Saucy New Brand appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Check out the full series as it unfolds.

Backstage on the Two Craigs website is on hiatus for a few weeks, but if you’ve missed any of the last few prompts, it’s worth a look back.

Wood

Follow along with PRINT, at 2craigs.com, or on Instagram.

The post Two Craigs: 24/52 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The New Look of Money

Remember when financial brands looked like, well, financial brands? They evoked trust and solemnity in shades of blue, with clean layouts and sophisticated type conveying decades (centuries-even) of dependability. Chime and Klarna are rewriting the rulebook, building sleek, mobile-first apps that feel more like social media platforms than bank branches. Chime uses inviting, saturated colors and uncluttered visuals, making money management feel intuitive and, dare I say, friendly. Klarna has also nailed the balance of simplicity and style but with a hint of playfulness. It’s as if these brands are saying, “Money doesn’t have to be a chore,” which resonates deeply with a generation empowered by quick, user-centric digital experiences.

Chime brand refresh by jkr.

Radical Transparency

Klarna stands out here with its “Pay Later” options, which are communicated upfront and without fuss. It’s all about empowering the user with knowledge and then trusting them to make informed decisions. On the crypto side, transparency is even more crucial given the complexity and volatility of the market. The best crypto brands don’t just list risks; they break down what those risks mean in a practical way, bridging the gap between excitement and informed caution. It’s refreshing to see brands lean into candor, and young consumers are responding with trust.

Klarna brand by their in-house team.

Personalized and Empowering Tools

For many young people, managing finances still feels intimidating. Enter brands like Check My File, which offers simple, comprehensive views of credit standing across multiple agencies. The service is not just about delivering numbers; Check My File offers insights, making credit monitoring feel like a useful, even empowering habit. Personalization isn’t just about flashy algorithms; it’s about creating tools that users actually find helpful and that build loyalty in an authentic way. For younger audiences, this type of personalization makes finances feel less abstract and more like something they can control.

Check My File brand by Ragged Edge.

Creating Community and Social Connection

It’s no secret that social media plays a major role in how young people make financial decisions, and these brands are tapping into that big time. Klarna and 1inch are turning financial management into a shared experience. Klarna, for instance, collaborates with influencers and uses a social commerce approach, embedding itself into the lifestyle and aesthetic young people are drawn to. Meanwhile, 1inch builds communities for shared learning, making finance feel inclusive rather than exclusive. These new brands are not just selling services; they’re creating spaces where people feel a sense of belonging (and dare we say, fun!), even when dealing with something as traditionally daunting as personal finance.

1inch campaign by Talent in collaboration with the Bruce Lee family

These fresh brand aesthetics and marketing strategies signal that financial companies are finally catching on to what young audiences have long wanted: accessibility, straight talk, personalization, and community. By embracing the values of younger audiences, financial brands can become more like guides than institutions. And as they continue to evolve, it’ll be exciting to watch just how far this new wave of finance brands can take us.

The post From Intimidating to Empowering: Financial Brands for the Next Generation appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Check out the full series as it unfolds.

Backstage on the Two Craigs website is on hiatus for a few weeks, but if you’ve missed any of the last few prompts, it’s worth a look back.

Time …

after Time

Follow along with PRINT, at 2craigs.com, or on Instagram.

The post Two Craigs: 23/52 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

“How do you know if you have a good idea?” This profound query came at the tail-end of a robust day.

My answer was true, but a bit pat.

I said a good idea should make you feel something. I bolstered my answer with the classic line often attributed to legendary creative director Phil Dusenberry that goes, “If you don’t feel it in the board room, the audience won’t feel it in the living room.”

The emphasis on ideas that make you feel something: a laugh, a cry, motivated to take some action.

It was a fine answer, but something about it was bugging me.

Today’s communication efforts are sprawling and complicated.

I didn’t feel I gave a good enough answer and wouldn’t you know it — it kept me up that night.

I got out of bed early the next day and wrote down some notes and came back with a better answer.

I re-confirmed that a good idea should indeed make you feel something.

I then went further and talked about how a good idea should reveal something.

Then I went deeper and talked about how a good idea should drive all the executions of the communications ecosystem.

The Sea Leggers appreciated this deeper answer.

I kept going with one more thing.

I told them that, ultimately, the best method for determining a good idea is the timeless framework from legendary designer Milton Glaser. His notion is that there are only three reactions you can have to a piece of work:

Yes, No, Wow.

Meaning…

Yes, I understand the idea. It’s on strategy. Fine.

No, I don’t get it. I don’t like it.

Or…

Wow.

Yep, Wow is in, you can’t control how you’re feeling. And your overwhelming reaction is to just go, “Wow.”

Sure enough, the next night, we were all together at an art studio creating masks for a Lucha Libre wrestling event we were about to attend.

We had tasked ourselves with taking existing wrestling masks and making them uniquely our own.

We were armed with glue guns, scissors, and various pieces of glittered craft foam.

I saw several fun improvements our Sea Leggers were making to the classic masks.

And then out of nowhere, one appeared that was completely amazing.

One of the rising stars from our Paris office emerged with an Art Deco masterpiece.

She crafted the foam pieces into magnificent gold and green feathers. The mask looked like a piece of art that belonged atop the head of some kind of mythical goddess. Or a piece of sculpture you’d find in an Art Deco masterpiece like the Chrysler Building or Rockefeller Center.

It was such an incredibly high-brow approach for something as populist as Lucha Libre.

But in the end, it worked magnificently.

I tell you all of this because each person who saw her mask had the exact same reaction: “Wow!”

So how do you tell if you have a good idea? Start with this. Is your first reaction Wow?

Rob Schwartz is the Chair of the TBWA New York Group and an executive coach who channels his creativity, experience and wisdom into helping others get where they want to be. This was originally posted on his Substack, RobSchwartzHelps, where he covers work, life, and creativity.

Header image: Getty Images for Unsplash+

The post How Do You Know If You Have a Good Idea? appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Remember this name – Letrástica!

Held biennially (2024 was its fifth edition), Letrástica Festival is led by Gen Ramirez, an experienced typeface designer, sign painter, calligrapher, and educator from Guadalajara. Ramirez studied at TypeMedia at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and completed the Type@Cooper Extended program in San Francisco and the Condensed program in New York.

At Letrástica, I was surprised by the small but growing ‘letters’ community, how passionate, dedicated, and professional they are, and, most importantly, how connected and supportive this collective is. I’ve been fortunate enough to attend design and branding events all over the globe, where you might see creative superstars, but they often exist in their own separate worlds. At Letrástica, you can mingle around the creatives and experience how they all gladly cheer for each other when presenting their work.

Event photos courtesy of Mau Nogueron

The festival featured many engaging workshops where students and professionals gathered to learn from their peers. Also, typography work by students and professionals from around the world was displayed on the conference walls.

Event photos courtesy of Mau Nogueron

The highly skilled and professional Latin creative force from Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico was complemented by foreign designers like Kalapi Gajjar (India), Cyrus Highsmith (USA), and the one and only Ellen Lupton (USA), among others.

Collaboration was the main topic around Letrástica, at least from my perspective, as most speakers credited a big part of their success to active participation with other creatives. I found their candor honest, emotionally resonant, and refreshing. This transparency showing the struggles and successes that creatives go through was motivating, making it even more real and relatable.

It was hard for me to narrow down the creatives to highlight in this article, as all are incredibly talented and inspirational.

Marte is an Argentinean designer now residing in NYC who initially studied to be a geologist. She made us laugh about that choice, but we all quickly realized how lucky she was to have made that decision. Her work often is influenced by the shapes and colors found on earth, from the inside or outside of a stone or straight under the microscope. She said this powerful phrase: “What forms you never leaves you.”

© Marte

Daniel Barba, a local designer, leads MonotypoStudio, a company specializing in packaging design, branding, illustration, and editorial design. What caught my attention wasn’t the superb work that Barba and his studio are producing, it was mostly his quirky mind and his ability to extract, deconstruct, and apply concepts from literature, poetry, and philosophy, among other research-rich areas. If you want to have a debate with Barba, come prepared!

© Daniel Barba

Alicia Márquez is a graphic designer and typography professor from Argentina. Her clear and stunning approach to transforming materials was mind-blowing. Márquez’s stone carving craft is soothing and impressive and most definitely could be seen as art. She explained that to her the process is what matters most, probably more than the end result.

© Alicia Márquez

Last but not least, legendary designer Ellen Lupton, or as many know her, Type Mom, for her educational yet fun Instagram posts about typography. I was lucky to spend more time with her and was surprised at how eager she is to keep exploring after all her success. She’s quite passionate about baking and explained how similar it is to design. From the selection of the materials, ways of mixing them, timing, quantities, and finishes, you can get an amazing result or burn the whole thing. Lupton imparted a sensorial design workshop and a lecture about how to fall in love with typography, and she killed it!

It has been a while since this old dog has been this lifted and inspired by the spirit and work of the upcoming young creatives and the successful and experienced designers.

A spark has been lit inside me.

Letrástica is not just a festival, engaging a growing community of hundreds of type and design enthusiasts spanning 39 countries. Its focus is on sharing the typographic work of the Latin American and Mexican regional community with the world. The organization hosts free workshops, drawing sessions, contests, mentoring, and more, all centered around learning, sharing knowledge, and exchanging ideas.

Learn more about Letrástica.

Ricardo Saca is the US and Mexico managing partner for Cato Brand Partners, a global design and branding consultancy. He has a Master’s in Branding from the School of Visual Arts in New York City and has 20+ years of experience working with a wide range of companies, from startups to airlines. He is a plant-based animal lover and a cyclist.

The post Letrástica: Latin American Type to the World appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Our gratitude is individual. Like the lines and whorls on our fingers, our relationship with gratitude is unique.

Gratitude doesn’t have to be about big things. It doesn’t mean everything is perfect. Our gratitude can be most sustaining and most profound when things are falling apart. We can be grateful for things that are vast, things that are ineffable, but we can also be grateful for small things, for a favorite coffee cup, a soft pillow, the flash of a bird in the tree.

Finding gratitude in the quotidian can help center you, can help you find perspective, and can make a difference in how you experience the world around you.

Talking about gratitude is more commonplace now than it was a handful of years ago, or maybe it feels that way simply because I struggled with gratitude. I struggled to find my footing in gratitude as a mindset and a practice at a time when it seemed like things were falling apart.

I was a late-comer to the gratitude table, or, in my case, hilltop. I found my way there not as things got better but as things started to dissolve. When I first talked out loud about gratitude, I got emotional. I remember feeling like I was shedding my surface as I admitted that what I thought I needed was to focus on gratitude. It didn’t make sense to me, but my discomfort, and even my resistance, seemed important. I struggled with my sense that gratitude was a superficial practice, something that blurred or elided reality. I remember feeling silly. I might as well have been admitting I was going looking for unicorns in the park.

That was a beginning. I was struggling with fear and anxiety and worry over ongoing health issues in my house. I was feeling like there was no bottom to bottom, like I didn’t know where “bottom” was, but I recognized that something was increasingly hollow in me. Almost instinctively, I reached for something shiny, something I thought might be powerful. I reached for gratitude.

The next year, in November, I did 30 days of gratitude writing and recording. I found myself standing at the top of the hill, the literal hill on which I live, at sunset most days, and looking out, a point that lets me see the ocean and the bay, a point that puts the sky in motion overhead. I can turn in a circle and see the whole world. That’s how it feels, the moon over the bay, the sun dropping into the ocean, rose light warming the faces of the houses on the street. November has the best light.

That year, I gave myself over to the top of the hill, to my appreciation for all that was right then, for having that beauty within the distance of a short walk of our senior rescue. I noticed the colors of paint on houses after rain. I wrote about memory, about all that I don’t remember. I wrote about being present, being aware of things we take for granted, and appreciating things that are within reach.

I try to keep gratitude in mind all year long, but November is always a reset point, a month steeped in a gratitude mindset. I no longer cry when I talk about gratitude.3 Like most things, with practice, we get over our resistance, find our own patterns, move past the things that hurt, and find comfort in the routine.

I’ve done a number of November gratitude projects now, both written and drawn. I’ve tracked November light, the barest of diagrams showing the bands of the sky when I first walk into the kitchen and see the light over the bay in the distance. I’ve added gratitudes to daily planners and my Notion dashboard. There is really no wrong way to approach it. One year I did a series of portraits of people in one of my online communities. Two years in a row, I did large drawings to which I added a simple drawing each day of a concrete thing for which I was grateful. (Those projects are favorites.)

It may feel silly to focus on daily gratitude and on gratitude for small things, the favorite coffee cup, the favorite pencil, the familiar quilt, the cozy sweater from a loved one who has passed, but the practice is powerful. It is deceptively simple, but it can make a dramatic difference in how you feel. All that is wrong doesn’t go away. That remains the tension with gratitude. It isn’t an eraser. But something happens in the process of paying more attention, focusing, and looking around with intention and naming and recognizing our gratitude.

Spirals grow infinitely small the farther you follow them inward, but they also grow infinitely large the farther you follow them out.

John Greene, Turtles All The Way Down

Snail Mail – November Postcard Prompt

This month’s postcard prompt is gratitude-infused, but on the concrete level, the prompt is a spiral.

A spiral is a winding path, one that either moves in on itself or radiates from the center out. In walking, tracing, or drawing a spiral, literally or figuratively, there is mindfulness, the coiling or unfurling of thought, the chance to see what sits or stands or dances at other points of the spiral as you pass again and again.

Mathematically speaking, there are a number of different types of spirals, including: the Archimedean spiral, the hyperbolic spiral, Fermat’s spiral, the logarithmic spiral, the lituus spiral, the Cornu spiral, the spiral of Theodorus, the Fibonacci spiral (also called the golden spiral), conical spirals, whorls, and the involute of a circle.

These quick line drawings (not mathematically precise) show some of the spirals listed above.

This elongated spiral doesn’t show up in the list, but we know this model from the world around us:

To multiply the fun, consider the triskelion (or triskele):

We can think about spirals in terms of galaxies (look up “barred spiral”), snails, pinecones, succulents, pineapples, and the horn of a goat. The list goes on.

As a metaphor, we can use the spiral as a path for mindfulness. We can walk the spiral in or out. We can wind our way around and back like a labyrinth.

For this month’s postcard, integrate a spiral and, if you are bold, let gratitude be your guide.

You may want to simply play with the spiral as an image. You might think about cinnamon rolls or the Fibonacci sequence or snails. Or you may want to use the spiral as the form of the writing, starting from the center and writing your message in a spiral. Maybe you choose a special quote or poem. Maybe you express your gratitude to the recipient. Maybe you simply write a letter as a spiral, something the reader will have to slowly spin to read.

There is mindfulness in the reading, too.

Primary or secondary, either way, gratitude is part of the November prompt. If the spiral isn’t of interest, you might use your postcard to document daily gratitudes (one a day). You might draw a series of icons of things for which you are grateful.

Gratitude Quotes

Here are a few gratitude quotes to get you started thinking and appreciating in November:

“Wear gratitude like a cloak, and it will feed every corner of your life.” — Rumi

“Gratitude bestows reverence…changing forever how we experience life and the world.” — John Milton

“Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.” — A.A. Milne

“Happiness, not in another place but this place…not for another hour, but this hour.” — Walt Whitman

“Gratitude for the present moment and the fullness of life now is the true prosperity.” — Eckhart Tolle

We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.

Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

If you made and sent an October card, we would love to see what you did with the costume-themed prompt. If you share in social media, please tag me and use #PostcardPrompts.

Amy Cowen is a San Francisco-based writer. A version of this was originally posted on her Substack, Illustrated Life, where she writes about illustrated journals, diary comics/graphic novels, memory, gratitude, loss, and the balancing force of creative habit.

Images courtesy of the author.

The post Connecting Dots: Tracking Gratitude in Snail Mail appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Check out the full series as it unfolds.

Go backstage on the Two Craigs website to see their thought process as they translate each prompt through photography and illustration.

Hot

Follow along with PRINT, at 2craigs.com, or on Instagram.

The post Two Craigs: 22/52 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

*

Every morning for the last five or so years of my teaching practice, I have asked students a question that they answer as part of their attendance roll call. Ideally, the questions are generated by the students, but often, I pepper in questions of mine. It is a routine that has never ceased to be interesting to me, to see through the portals of these questions into the nooks and crannies of students’ lives. I have heard so many stories that stay with me…. a few most memorably include a pair of magical fish, a grilled roadside snake, and a phone that wouldn’t stop ringing in an attic.

This ritual is borne from my belief that questions, especially slant or searching or deep questions, connect us to each other in radiant and unexpected ways. 

The questions, as much as the answers, reveal us to one another.

*

Last year, at the beginning of May, on Instagram, my friend Shira (who writes a deeply beautiful Substack called Freer Form that you can read here) invited followers to join her in a month of questioning. The task was simply to notice the questions we ask and collect them in some way. I kept track of my wondering in a digital note called MAY I?

Some of my questions were mundane—Where did I put my phone? What time is my next scheduled ‘let’s hop on a call?’ How much cheese is too much?—but many of my other questions were surprising in the way that the world is when we stop to really look at it.

I discovered so many small mysteries littered in the track of my everyday life: What exactly is an email? (what is a byte??) Why does my toaster fling the bread a foot into the air after it’s finished? Is that failure or exuberance? Does it have to be one or the other? Why do I add the numbers of license plates together? How do I not know what 9 + 7 is without counting on my fingers? Why is a vase of fresh flowers something I delight in every time I see it? Is delight so SIMPLE?!

And there were so many bigger, deeper questions that began to stack up: What places does love make for you? What is your strangest encounter? What part of your body does sadness find first? What do you save? How does it feel to be you? Who is the last person you messaged? What is the most used emoji in your phone? What do you think about on an airplane during terrible turbulence? What is the earliest thing you can recall? What always makes you smile? What is your ugliest belief?

*

Of course, in the classroom, there’s never any sure way to predict how anything will go, and so I never know which morning attendance questions will generate a lot of conversation.

I, for one, did not think that asking What is the best bird? would create as much debate as it did. There were staunch supporters of penguins, of finches, of blue jays, of toucans. Others stood for birds I didn’t know, birds I had to look up and see for the first time: their dappled gray chests, their hard red eyes.

*

By the end of MAY I? I had so many questions written down that I would spend the rest of the year pairing the questions with photographs and sending them out to my corner of Instagram. As people answered, I realized the bounty of their responses—beautiful, heart-opening, often sad, often funny, often both at the same time.

Some answers, in particular, I wrote down and carried with me from the bed to the shower to the car to the highway and back again, carried them with me and showed them the parts of my life that they spoke to:

Here, here is the road he drove the wrong way down not once, but twice.

Here, here is the river freezing over.

Here, here is the corner store where the owner never makes anything quickly.

*

For myself, I believe the best bird is the demoiselle crane, so named by Marie Antoinette who was charmed by the crane’s small stature (the smallest of the crane species) and the graceful black feathers adorning its chest which stand in sharp contrast to the trailing ivory feather plumes that stretch from the eye over the head.

This crane, however, is only delicate in appearance. It is, in fact, the only bird whose long loop migration takes it over the Himalayas in the winter. Indeed, demoiselle cranes have been filmed flying far above the 8,848-meter peak of Mount Everest as they move from the steppes of Rajasthan in India to reach the softer grasslands of Mongolia to breed and raise their young.

It is an incredibly long and arduous migration and many cranes die of exhaustion. Yet, every year, those that survive begin to fly beyond the most towering peaks in the world in order to reach an unseen almost impossible land. I would tell you what this bird reveals to you about me but I already have.

*

I’m Wondering is a monthly column where I ask and then answer a question. More than anything, I hope that as I continue to wonder, it will open all of us up to paths we can’t imagine now but feel called to by a question that won’t let us go.

Amy Lin lives in Calgary, Canada where there are two seasons: winter and road construction. She completed her MFA at Warren Wilson College and holds BAs in English Literature and Education. Her work has been published in places such as Ploughshares and she has been awarded residencies from Yaddo and Casa Comala. She writes the Substack At The Bottom Of Everything where she wonders: how do we live with anything? HERE AFTER is her first book.

Header photo: Demoiselle cranes in Khichan near Bikaner. CC 4.0

The post I’m Wondering: What’s The Best Bird? appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Check out the full series as it unfolds.

Go backstage on the Two Craigs website to see their thought process as they translate each prompt through photography and illustration.

Small

Something is only small in relation to something larger—scale. If I wanted the figure to be small, I needed to diminish it in relation to its environment.

Craig Frazier

Follow along with PRINT, at 2craigs.com, or on Instagram.

The post Two Craigs: 21/52 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Check out the full series as it unfolds.

Go backstage on the Two Craigs website to see how they set about translating the prompt through photography and illustration.

Angle

Follow along with PRINT, at 2craigs.com, or on Instagram.

The post Two Craigs: 20/52 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Pioneer 10 and 11 carried plaques conceived by Carl Sagan. The Golden Record hitched a ride on Voyagers 1 and 2. This 12-inch gold-plated copper record, covered in mathematical instructions for use, held Earthy greetings: sounds from nature, music from the bagpipes to Bach to Chuck Berry to Navajo chants, and spoken greetings in 55 languages. NASA has even commissioned engravings on its red planet rovers in case of a chance meeting with actual Martians.

Europa Clipper now travels across our solar system offering a special cosmic handshake. Aboard the robotic research spacecraft is an expression of the best of humankind— and who among us but the designers, poets, artists, and writers are best suited to translate us?

Europa Clipper’s vault (the vessel’s electronic “brain”) is clad in a triangular tantalum panel 1mm thick and only seven by 11 inches thick. The panel is designed to protect its precious cargo from harmful radiation and also features an artistic homage to life-giving water.

“Water Words,” the concept for the outer facing panel, was the brainchild of Dan Goods and Preston Dyches. Debbie Millman composed its design, representing audio recordings of ‘water’ in 103 languages, then engraved on the plate as soundwaves. A circular symbol at the center representing American Sign Language came to life through a technique known as Fourier transform. Debbie collaborated with linguistics researchers Dr. Sheri Wells-Jensen, Dr. Laura Buszard-Welcher, and interstellar message researcher Dr. Doug Vakoch of METI International on the project.

I am so thrilled to share my small part in this epic journey, which was one of the most thrilling experiences of my entire life.

Debbie Millman

The panel’s inward-facing side features an original poem entitled “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa” by Ada Limon, etched in the US Poet Laureate’s handwriting.

Directly above Limon’s poem is a microchip with the names of 2.6 million people along for the journey in a drawing of Jupiter and its four largest moons (Galilean satellites). But we’ve only scratched the surface of what’s expressed on the vault panel. Go down the rabbit hole on NASA’s website for more.

I am a proud space nerd. Like many of you, it does my psyche good to be in awe, witness the immensity and logic of the universe, and feel small and insignificant in a profound way. Last week, I saw the Northern Lights display in Colorado completely by accident—reader, I cried. Setting aside my feelings about Elon Musk—hell, I got goosebumps watching those mechanical arms catch a booster (yes, CATCH!) post-satellite launch just this week.

Human’s sheer willingness to continue to reach out across the stars is a reminder that, despite our terrestrial mess, we are still capable of wonder.

In the words of PRINT’s very own Debbie Millman, “Fly safe, Europa Clipper!”

The post Europa Clipper Heads to Jupiter in Search of Water and Cosmic Connection appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Check out the full series as it unfolds.

Go backstage on the Two Craigs website to see how they set about translating the prompt through photography and illustration.

Spin

I couldn’t resist riffing on Craig’s spinning top in his ‘balance’ photo. After drawing the little graphic top, I realized that it felt static—not spinning. So I made it into a diagram by adding a little cut paper arrow.

Craig Frazier

Follow along with PRINT, at 2craigs.com, or on Instagram.

The post Two Craigs: 19/52 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Why are you such a dot fanatic?
Not a clue, just lucky I guess. Dots are joyous, who wouldn’t want to hang out everyday with dots?

You essentially stopped doing graphic design in favor of your art, am I right?
Correct.

How long have you been a dot-person?
Dots have been my signature motif since college when vintage polka dot dresses filled my closet. It was never my intention to focus on only using dots in my art, but I keep finding new ways to stay engaged. They are extremely versatile: groups of dots, grids of dots, negative dots, blurry dots, or dissected dots. For me, dots are a vehicle to explore my visual narrative rather than an endpoint.

Can you explain your process?
They are silkscreen collages. Everything I do is one of a kind. I think of myself as an artist who combines collage and printmaking. When I begin a piece, I pick a theme: comics, old books, or maps, then I edit. Editing is time consuming but it’s fun, I get to go through my many paper collections which are an essential component in my work. The next step would be to go to the SVA Printshop and print. Discovering my love of silkscreen changed my life in so many ways. I realized I had really missed using my hands after so many years of sitting in front of a screen. I love that it has allowed me to marry my love of ephemera with paint, color, and form— and it brought me back to polka dots.

Once I have my piles of silkscreened pages, the work begins. When work is fast and easy to produce, I don’t feel the same sense of accomplishment, so I often begin with complex and chaotic compositions. My goal is to make order out of the chaos. I work with multiple layers of information: the existing printed ephemera and the printed dots which come in many sizes, negative and positive. I decide then what kind of composition I want to create and loosely tape everything together. I have many series that I alternate working on. Last winter I worked on my strip collages that I weave together. Those are slightly less time-consuming than the large collages, which take 25–30 hours to glue. It’s exhausting, if I had a superpower, it would be flawless speed gluing.

Do you believe, as I do, that there is a kind of dot pandemic of late?
I would not say they are more dotular these days, they are always timeless.

What is next for you?
A trip to Tokyo and then back to work!

The post The Daily Heller: Dizzy for Dots, Dots and More Dots appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Check out the full series as it unfolds.

Go backstage on the Two Craigs website to see how they set about translating the prompt through photography and illustration.

Coffee

It wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t explore the cup. I love drawing a cup. But what says coffee first thing in the morning is our Bialetti coffee maker—and the smell. It’s a gorgeous object and gorgeous to draw.

Craig Frazier

One of my favorite books showcases the commercial work of the great Czech photographer Josef Sudek. He created this work between 1920 – 1930 and was inspirational for this week’s word. It was important for me to create this image in one shot.

Craig Cutler

Follow along with PRINT, at 2craigs.com, or on Instagram.

The post Two Craigs: 18/52 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The UNO Artiste Series taps into this spirit of fun and connection, blending art with the nostalgia of one of the world’s most beloved games. Since its debut in 2019 with Jean-Michel Basquiat’s singular paintings, the Artiste series has become a celebration of creativity, featuring artists like Keith Haring, Nina Chanel Abney, Shepard Fairey, and most recently, Shantell Martin. Now, the series welcomes its first photographer, Gray Malin, whose work is all about capturing joy and escapism.

We couldn’t be more excited to welcome Gray Malin into the UNO Artiste Series. His photography invites fans to remove themselves from reality and experience new landscapes and environments, much like a game of UNO can do for families and friends.

Ray Adler, Vice President and Global Head of Games

Malin’s deck turns the game table into a visual adventure. Instead of just playing a card, you’re invited into his world of stunning aerial shots and vibrant, sun-soaked scenes. From tropical beaches to snowy slopes, and even a few playful animals thrown into the mix, his photography transports players to iconic destinations while they navigate the highs and lows of an intense UNO match. When you’re relegated to picking up cards after that “Pick Up 4” hits, you might pause to take in a breathtaking view of the world through Malin’s lens.

Gray Malin’s photographs, capturing everything from tropical beaches to snow-covered peaks, turn each card into a portal to a new destination. The collaboration is a reflection of Malin’s creative ethos: blending art, adventure, and a sense of wanderlust. This deck is more than a game—it’s a reminder that even in the most familiar moments, like a casual game night, there’s always room to explore the world, one card at a time.

It’s an honor to merge my photography, spanning many series of work in my portfolio, with a game I’ve loved since I was a child.

Gray Malin

“This partnership is meaningful to me because UNO’s mission to foster togetherness through play is so closely tied to my own personal pursuit to bring people together through my photography,” Malin said of the project. “I love creating images that everyone feels included in and offers a moment that families want to live within. From beach chairs to the ski lift, the scenes from my photos are meant to spark an adventurous spirit and create a shared experience through art. I hope that fans take and play their UNO Artiste Series: Gray Malin decks anywhere around the world – even in the places that have inspired my photography.”

The post Gray Malin’s Photographs Add Escapist Flair to a Classic Card Game appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

When was the last time you sent a postcard? When was the last time you carried up a stack of mail and found a small card, glossy photo on one side, handwritten note on the other, tucked in among the circulars and bills? Wish you were here!

There is something unique about a postcard. It is small and compact. It may be thin, bordering on flimsy, and yet with a corner stamp in place, it is designed to make it through the system.

How many words can you fit in the split panel on the back? Do you need words? What happens to the narrative if you send drawings? Portraits? A selfie? A sketch of your morning coffee, your pet, or from your favorite cafe? What happens if you swatch your palette (ink or paint or colored pencils) each month on a postcard and mail it to someone?

What if you record thumbnails of morning light every day for a week? What happens if you write how you really feel in that blank space and send it off?

If I look out my window and draw the shape of the tree and write the colors of the sky and, later, drop it in the mail, how will you reply? If I do it once a month for a year, what will I capture? What record will the postcards hold? What will it mean to the recipient?

Intimate and Exposed

A postcard feels intimate, a whisper in the wind, and yet its intimacy is undone by the fact that its contents are not hidden. It is not concealed. It is a message that is out there for anyone to read. Saying just enough is part of the allure, part of the puzzle, part of the dance. Maybe your words are cryptic or abbreviated or written in a shorthand that will only make sense to the recipient. Or, maybe you write plainly, hold nothing back. Maybe you have nothing to hide.

An Unassuming Substrate

As a surface, a postcard is a simple and beautiful container, a glorified index card, often with a photograph or art on one side, that we intentionally compose, address, stamp, and send on a journey to connect.

Other than the annual jury duty summons, very little real or important mail arrives as a postcard. Postcards, for the most part, are personal. They are from or to someone you know. They have been selected with specificity.

Maybe we are somewhere special, or on vacation, and are sending a note to someone to let them know that we are thinking of them. Maybe it’s a bit of a flex, a throwback to days before social media: “Look where I am.”

Maybe we simply have to share that bridge or that view of sunset or that hillside in the mist. Maybe we are enjoying ourselves so much that the desire to send someone evidence of our adventure is irresistible. We don’t really mean to brag, but we want someone to know, someone to witness our journey.

Or maybe our postcards are more humble. Maybe we are sending words from home, a note carefully tucked into the small space and a favorite art series on the other side. Maybe we have the Pantone postcards. Maybe we’ve selected a specific color. Does it reflect our mood? The sky? The color we think of when we think of the recipient?

Will you send national monuments or falling leaves, paint brushes or sunsets or roosters or cats or photos of chairs or bridges or lighthouses or quilts or children’s book illustrations? Will you send photos of works by favorite artists (like Hopper, Matisse, Van Gogh)? Will you send photos of hot sauces or birds or rainbows, stacks of books or spine art, Studio Ghibli scenes, New Yorker covers, national parks, or coffee cups?

The art is part of the equation, and then there is the flip side. You only have a small space in which to write (or illustrate) your note. What will you say?

Postcard Prompts

In a series of monthly prompts, we will create a set of postcards, each one responding to a simple nudge. You can use existing postcards, focusing on filling the blank side. This is the easiest approach. Or, you can use blank cards, your responses filling both sides.

Month by month, you will develop a set of postcards, a series of epistolary art. You might choose to work in the same medium or style or palette each month or work with repeated elements that help tie the cards together. Or you may view each postcard as a standalone piece, disconnected from others, and let the prompt guide your choices.

Simple and Mindful

The prompts will not be difficult. 

These are prompts you may have done before. But we will do them in this monthly format together as the world changes over the next year, as our lives change, and as we process whatever we are going through, highs and lows, celebrations and milestones, personal journeys, and the quest for meaning.

Who will you have in mind as you create your postcards? Will you mail them?

A Postcard from Your Journal

One of the projects that I run and that I encourage others to consider is the keeping of an illustrated journal that documents life with a combination of art and words. I use a weekly format because I particularly enjoy the ways in which taking things a week at a time allows for fluidity across a span of days. There is no pressure to finish pages or drawings every day. Instead, I work on spreads that can be built and shaped and filled in over the course of a week. It’s mindful. It’s flexible. Every Sunday, I start a new week.

Many of the postcard series prompts could easily be done in an illustrated journal or sketchbook or in the margins of a bullet journal or planner, but I hope you will consider the postcard as a format. The postcard presupposes a recipient, a reader, a viewer.

Postcard Logistics

To qualify for the postcard stamp, a postcard needs to be roughly 4×6 or smaller. The USPS lists the following specifications:

• Rectangular in shape (not square)
• At least 3-1/2 x 5 inches and at least 0.007 inch thick
• No more than 4-1/4 x 6 inches and no more than 0.016 inches thick

If using traditional, preprinted postcards, you will want to make sure the cards meet the size requirements (or plan to use a letter stamp for oversized postcards). If you are going to DIY your postcards, you can buy readymade blank postcards (plain or watercolor), use heavyweight index cards, or cut your cards from heavy cardstock, Bristol board, or watercolor paper.

Using preprinted cards minimizes the work. You’ll be sharing a photograph or piece of art you like and your own art and/or writing on the other. This is also a great way to use up postcards you may already have.

If it’s been a really long time since you saw a postcard in person, remember that on one side, you’ll need to put the address on the right and the stamp in the upper right corner. Also, be aware that the postal bar code will be added along the bottom edge. If you write or draw in that space, just know it will most likely be obscured during the mailing process.

Postcard stamps are slightly less expensive than letter stamps, but there aren’t a lot of options. Currently, postcard stamps feature sailboat art by illustrator Libby VanderPloeg. If you have old stamps floating around that aren’t enough for current first-class mail (and aren’t Forever stamps), using them on your postcards can be a good option. Just make sure they meet or exceed the postcard stamp in value.

Slowing Down

A postcard series almost sounds quaint, other than the fact that there are thousands of people writing postcards these days to encourage people to vote. Beyond that, sending almost anything with a stamp might feel just a bit old-fashioned.

As a creative project, thinking about a postcard series is exciting. I imagine postcards filled with lists, or data visualization (a la the Dear Data project), with drawings, portraits, quotes, poems, and more. I am hoping that we can push the envelope on this envelopeless space to create personal series that are unique, bold, quiet, honest, authentic, and visually awesome.

I hope we create postcards that, through their line and composition, through their art as much as their words, have something to say. I hope we send our postcards and reach someone.

An October Postcard

Not every postcard (or every piece of art) has to be deep or soul-baring or complicated. A lot of postcards just say something like “Wish you were here!” or “Wanted to let you know you’re on my mind.”

To kick off this postcard series, let’s focus on something that is relatively simple and can be tied to memory or not. It’s October, and Halloween will be coming around.

Your challenge for this month is to create a postcard (with a recipient in mind) and document a costume.

Maybe it is a costume that you remember from when you were a kid. Maybe it is a costume from your children’s Halloween years. Or maybe Halloween isn’t something that was ever a big deal for you, and you think about what kind of costume you might choose now or wish you had chosen then.

You don’t have to particularly like Halloween or be a dress-up person to do this prompt. I don’t, and I’m not. But I still find it interesting to think about my history with Halloween, most of which I don’t remember, and some of the characters that stand out for me from my parenting years, from comic books, and the world of cosplay.

You may want to separate the prompt from Halloween and think about the whole concept of dressing up (whether you do or don’t), the performative aspect of that, and even the ways in which dressing up can be used to flaunt or conceal. Maybe you are a fan of Chappell Roan and sometimes think about what it might be like to wear costumes like that. Maybe you loved Joaquin Phoenix’s version of the Joker. Maybe you love theater or anime. Or maybe you just have a soft spot for clever costumes, sewn at home or made from cardboard boxes.

So what will you put on a postcard?

I don’t dress up, but one of my favorite costumes that I’ve seen in the last few years, something that seems really “doable,” is Waldo (from Where’s Waldo), with his round glasses, red and white striped shirt, and striped hat with a red pompom. It’s an incredibly simple costume. It’s cute and clever. It looks like it would be fun. (The corresponding Wenda costume tends to involve a very short blue skirt. I would opt for Waldo. No question.)

I am also a fan of the Pantone color swatch costume. I love this idea even though it’s potentially an overthinker’s nightmare. What color would you choose?

Crayon. Alice. Rabbit. Harry Potter. Obi-Wan. Dorothy. The Tin Man. Banana. No. 2 Pencil.

Commemorate a costume on a postcard. You can draw your costume, or diagram it, or make a collage, or write it out in words. You might write the memory of a specific costume, a specific Halloween, or turn it into a poem. What does the costume say? Why this costume?

Have fun!

Notes: links to Amazon in this post are affiliate links. You can find postcards at your local souvenir stands, museums, and other shops. You can find postcard-making materials at your favorite art store or by scavenging paper products you already have.

Amy Cowen is a San Francisco-based writer. A version of this was originally posted on her Substack, Illustrated Life, where she writes about illustrated journals, diary comics/graphic novels, memory, gratitude, loss, and the balancing force of creative habit.

Header image: Assorted postcards. A. Cowen 2024

The post Connecting Dots: A Creative Postcard Challenge appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Climate change paralysis is a reality. It’s that feeling when the magnitude of the challenge seems so overwhelming that you find yourself unable to figure out what the right direction is, much less move in the right direction.

Individuals feel it, with a growing number of people feeling helpless in response to the enormity of it all (a recent study found that half of young people believe that “humanity is doomed”). Businesses feel it too. A report by The Carbon Trust earlier this year found that a large number of businesses are “greenstalling,” getting stuck in a state of “analysis paralysis” in their efforts to progress toward net zero.

Science, governments, and global organisations have a huge role to play in tackling climate change – through innovation, legislation, and guidance. But when it comes to envisioning a more sustainable future, creative thinking and the creative process are also crucial. A report last month by the Design Council in the UK found that 46% of designers feel they have the skills to help tackle the climate crisis. I agree. It’s time we start seeing the true value of design when dealing with such complex issues.

Nothing brings out creativity and innovation like a deadline – and what could be more urgent than climate change? But every deadline needs a brief to deliver that creative approach. What if we looked at the climate emergency through this lens—as the ultimate creative brief?

Time To Provoke

A designer’s role is to take the parameters of a given project and inspire, provoke, and envision solutions within those constraints.

Look at one of the most famous creative briefs in history: “Design a bottle so distinct that you would recognize it by feeling it in the dark or lying broken on the ground.” If you haven’t guessed already, we’re talking about Coca-Cola. But you don’t need to be a designer to feel excited by that challenge. That’s what a good design brief does: no matter who’s reading it, it sparks an idea, inviting anyone to contribute to the thought process.

Among the creative industries, there is always much debate about what makes the best brief – and it’s not just about stating the practical goals and needs, and laying out the hard data to build on.
It’s so important for the brief to inspire.

So when it comes to the climate crisis, a good creative brief wouldn’t just start with the obvious “Reach net zero by 2050” and other neutral sustainability metrics. Instead, it would challenge us to “Inspire hope that reaching net zero is not only possible but everyone’s responsibility” or “Create a net-zero strategy so inspiring and collaborative that every person feels empowered to create change.” It makes the challenge clearer, more urgent, and tangible.

Getting People Involved

Another area where a good creative brief can show the way is through engagement and collaboration. Ideas and solutions can come from anywhere. The discipline of design is about applying the widest possible lens and then narrowing that view based on expert feedback and collaboration with people of different perspectives. That’s when you get a tangible and impactful result.

So when we’re designing for brand experience, not only do we take into account the people who use our products at the very start of the creative brief stage, but we involve the internal cross-functional teams, external suppliers and agencies.

The Design Council distilled this process into the concept of the double diamond more than 20 years ago, with the steps of ‘discover, define, develop, deliver’ widening and narrowing the lens for the best outcome. As the then-director of design and innovation, Richard Eisermann, put it, “It’s not an instruction manual on how to design, it’s an invitation to get involved.”

If you apply this to climate change, it’s a reminder to unlock buy-in at every level. Everyone in or connected to the business should feel heard and accountable. They should all be asking questions about environmental sustainability at every stage. The preferred outcome of the marketing team or the constraints of suppliers when looking at sustainability metrics should be addressed by the brief just as much as users’ needs.

The creative brief then also allows you to frame the challenge in a language that people and businesses can understand. For climate change, you can explicitly state the ‘objective’, for example. For many businesses, this objective might be balancing economic growth with meeting net-zero targets. In some companies like Patagonia, this is weighted toward the latter – in fact, the company’s decision to make Earth its only shareholder is a prime example of how reframing the language around climate change can have a huge impact.

A creative brief also articulates audience, scope, and timelines. The ‘audience’ is who we’re designing for (in the case of climate change, people, planet and business), as well as what the competitor landscape looks like. For example, Reckitt’s involvement in the Sustainable Markets Initiative’s Health Systems Taskforce, which is a public-private partnership to accelerate net zero healthcare, shows how businesses can understand the competitor landscape not only for market growth but for expanding knowledge.

Or take the ‘scope’ in a creative brief, where you stipulate the stakeholders involved and what resources are required. For a company’s climate change ambitions, stakeholders can be governments, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (above), internal business leaders, and individual people. The ‘resources’ are investment on the one hand and external benchmarks (such as the Science Based Targets Initiative’s net zero targets) on the other.

So, a creative brief is not just about maintaining the vision that pushes a project beyond its functional requirements. A creative brief also helps you focus and keeps everyone accountable.

The Human Connection

This is one of the most important aspects of the creative brief: to look beyond the immediate need and bring humanity back into the challenge. The dialogue around net zero often fails to connect the ultimate goal with the people who will be most affected. Corporations, governments, and organisations start with statistics or reduction targets. These are all important, but they separate us from the real imperative for change, namely billions of people affected. As designers, we start with a human problem and envision around it. It’s what we’ve been trained for.

The best design-led businesses do this. Airbnb, for example, recognised that people sought more authentic, personalised experiences when traveling rather than hotel chains and identical all-inclusive resorts – and its business grew from there. A great historical example was UNICEF and Pamper’s long-running ‘1 Pack = 1 Vaccine’ partnership, which distributed one vaccine for every pack of diapers sold. The idea that consumers could directly help provide life-saving help to the developing world shows how a focus on real-world change and human challenges is key.

A creative brief is always built around the insight, the human truth at its core. Design can take the functional and strategic requirements of a problem and embed humanity and emotion to create a shared vision. The human truth when it comes to climate change is that failure means growing inequality, reduction of liveable areas of the planet, public health risks, biodiversity loss, and food and water shortages.

Finding a way to keep this front of mind at the core of the climate change challenge – using the framework of a creative brief to do so every day can be part of the solution.

Sophie Morice is a Global Brand Experience Associate at Reckitt. As a Yorkshire-born creative with a passion for sustainability and inclusion, a key focus of her work is in developing strategies that implement sustainable practices into existing business processes, whilst driving to increase brand value and creative excellence.

Header image by Andrej Lišakov for Unsplash+

The post Why Net Zero is the Ultimate Creative Brief appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Check out the full series as it unfolds.

Go backstage on the Two Craigs website to see how they set about translating the prompt through photography and illustration.

Chair

You can draw a chair with three lines—the challenge is making the lines interesting.

Craig Frazier

The only thing that could make a Hans Wegner Papa Bear chair look even better would be a Vizsla.

Craig Cutler

Follow along with PRINT, at 2craigs.com, or on Instagram.

The post Two Craigs: 17/52 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

“Don’t wish you could be a famous photographer. If you do, you will fail” – Martin Parr joins WePresent’s excellent pile of manifestos.

All Tomorrow’s Pencils – in which Spencer Tweedy reviews the stationery stores he visited on tour. My favourite bit is the comment from his dad (Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy):

“Remembering one of the only real complaints I ever heard from your teachers growing up, I’d say ‘drummers’ love writing utensils because pencils double as tappity tap tap tapping drum mallets and pens can clicky click click like maracas. In fact they’re probably the first ‘drum sticks’ a future drummer ever holds. Which comes first? The drummer or the innocent child with a maddening urge to tap out a paradiddle with a pencil on a trapper keeper?”

As a relentless desk-drummer and stationery fetishist myself, yep, this all adds up.

Thoroughly enjoying Michigan-based book designer Nathaniel Roy’s A Book Designer’s Notebook, a regular peek behind the curtain of the craft.

Recent Letterboxding, including scattered thoughts on Alien: Romulus and a slog through the Fantastic Beasts films, equal parts cheekbones, coats and gibberish.

Got a little bit lost in Kottke’s posts about maps. I particularly like Andrew DeGraff’s maps of cinematic paths, although the Fury Road one does remind me that the two recent Mad Max movies frustratingly reduced the endless expanse of the apocalypse to an area about the size of the Isle of Wight.

Weird little animations from photographer Jack Davison.

Nolen Royalty (great name) made a website that simply had one million checkboxes and unwittingly created a surprisingly complex canvas for hexadecimal-savvy teens. Love this sort of thing – the internet needs more purpose-less sandboxes like this cough cough cough bring back myspace.

If you’re going to be outed as a serial killer with a trophy wall of decapitated heads in your basement, it might as well be through the medium of LEGO.

The Belvédère du Rayon Vert, a 1920s hotel that teeters above the railway tracks in the southern French town of Cerbère. Stunning. Desperately needs to be covered in neon and rain and plonked into a cyberpunk movie of some sort

SPINNING NEWSPAPER INJURES PRINTER and other Simpsons headlines.

This was originally posted on Meanwhile, a Substack dedicated to inspiration, fascination, and procrastination from the desk of designer Daniel Benneworth-Gray.

Header photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash.

The post Meanwhile No. 211 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

I spoke to Millet about her process of creating Hardanger, and our conversation is below.

Can you talk about your inspiration for Hardanger?

Hardanger is inspired by a traditional Norwegian embroidery style, which alternates full and empty squares. This technique has a geometric aspect that I really like. I spent a semester in Oslo as part of my master’s degree in graphic design and it was during these months that I first saw this Norwegian embroidery. I started creating the Hardanger base on my return home as part of a school project. 

At first, I hadn’t made the connection between the embroidery I’d discovered in Norway and the letters I’d made—it wasn’t until I reworked it two years later that I realized that much of my inspiration came from my exchange.

For Hardanger, did you start with an existing typeface as a baseline? How did you go about designing the letterforms? Did you have to teach yourself needlepoint?

Hardanger comes straight from my head. I built Hardanger on a 7-pixel grid, inspired by embroidery but also by 8-bit typography from video games. I set myself precise constraints, such as having “open” intersections so as not to weigh the typography down visually. I had to make compromises between building legible letters and preserving the aesthetics of the embroidery. In the regular version, each intersection is “empty” to match the Hardanger embroidery principle of embroidered full and empty squares. In italics, the font looks more like a cursive, reinforcing the traditional look. I wanted the whole typography to resemble a large embroidery: a decorative element. I added combinable ornaments to reinforce this idea.

I tried cross-stitching myself, but it was a failure! However, my mother used to do it and tried to teach me. She embroidered the Hardanger A and it was really nice to see the font come to life on fabric.

Is there a particular letterform in Hardanger that you love more than the others? Conversely, which letterform took the longest to get it just right?

Overall, I’m quite happy with all the letters, with a slight preference for A, D, and X! The biggest difficulty was the ø because of the pixel size and the aperture of the O, as well as managing the spacing between the letters. I kept my 7-pixel grid for this stage, too, and it was quite difficult to get a harmonious whole given the shape of the letters.

How did technology and traditional craft come together for you in the design of Hardanger?

When creating the letters, I also looked for references to pixel typography, which was generally very detailed (with a little pixel) and really looked like the letters you’d find on embroidery primers. My idea was to break with this very traditional look by bringing in a modern touch, and I made the connection with the 8-bit/retro style. I tried to find a balance between these two worlds, as the pixel was the basis of my research. I wanted it to be large to resemble 8-bit without falling too much into this category; it’s also this size that enabled me to create openings in my letters to make them lighter and more delicate. I find it interesting to confront two seemingly opposite concepts to create a rich and complex design.

Given our state of constant overstimulation, the volume of work being generated, and now, with AI, how can type designers design something that hasn’t been seen before? Does it matter?

I think most concepts have been done before, especially in the field of typography. The challenge is to take an idea that may have been seen before and take it in a different direction to create a unique result (this is partly why I mixed the world of embroidery and retro video games, even though I honestly think Hardanger resembles other existing typography). It’s important to be aware of this so as not to plagiarize and to be able to stand out. Sometimes, certain characters look the same from one typeface to another, but this is also due to the constraints of the letters.

I don’t think it’s a problem that there are so many typefaces already, it’s a bit like telling painters to stop making new paintings because there are already too many. Typography evolves with the times, and it’s cool to see new ones coming out. In my opinion, we’ll always find a way to create new shapes, or a very particular universe for a typeface.

What’s your next challenge— any exciting projects or creative explorations, type or otherwise, on the horizon?

After Hardanger and its playful, colorful universe, I’m going for a monospace typeface, this time inspired by the first Industrial Revolution. I’m still in the testing and research phase, playing with large serifs. I’m also working on another typeface, with more or less slanted italic versions.

Hardanger is available in regular, italic, and three alternate styles. Check out Millet’s other work on her portfolio site and on Instagram. Learn more about Norwegian embroidery.

The post Stitches Meet Pixels in this Typeface Inspired by Norwegian Embroidery appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Check out the full series as it unfolds.

Go backstage on the Two Craigs website to see how they set about translating the prompt through photography and illustration.

Light

No two matches create the same flame pattern when ignited. I thought a four panel grid would be a great way to show just how unique each flame really was. I used the frame burst mode on my Leica SL2 to capture that split second moment.

Craig Cutler

Follow along with PRINT, at 2craigs.com, or on Instagram.

The post Two Craigs: 16/52 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Design legend Steven Heller served as an art director at the New York Times for 33 years, primarily for the New York Times Book Review. He is the author or co-author of over 200 books, the columnist behind “The Daily Heller”, and the co-founder and co-chair emeritus of the MFA Design program at the School of Visual Arts in his native New York City. Among his many accolades, Heller was just inducted into the One Club Creative Hall of Fame earlier this month.

In 1982, Heller met graphic designer Louise Fili, and pretty immediately the two fell in love. Fili is a typography specialist, designing nearly 2,000 book jackets while working for Random House as the art director at Pantheon Books. She then launched her own eponymous graphic and digital design firm, Louise Fili Ltd, in 1989.

Meanwhile, Heller and Fili’s son, Nicolas Heller, is a prolific filmmaker and social media sensation under the moniker New York Nico, cultivating a platform that honors the uniquely flamboyant sights and characters of New York City. He’s publishing his first book this October, entitled New York Nico’s Guide to NYC, which depicts his top 100 New York places and businesses, and the people behind them. (This book is set to be our PRINT Book Club selection for November—stay tuned for dates.)

I recently had the treat of chatting directly with Steven and Nick about their memories of Heller-Fili family life during Nick’s adolescence in New York City, with additional insights from Louise via email. I was curious to learn about what lessons the design power couple imparted to Nick, how New York shaped his upbringing and the artist he’s become, and the energy with which their creative home was infused. Our conversation is transcribed below.

(Conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity).

First off, would you mind sharing your love story with me, Louise and Steven? How did you two meet?

LF: Steve was art director of the NY Times Book Review, and I was art director of Pantheon Books. He wrote me a fan letter in March of 1982. Two sentences. We got married one year later in October 1983. The letter is framed on my desk in the studio.

SH: The fan letter was about her book jackets. We’d met at one of the exhibits I curated, introduced by Ed Koren. Then I invited her to a book party I was given at the Plaza Hotel. Finally, Marshall Arisman arranged for us to meet at an American Illustration judging. That’s when everything clicked and we moved in shortly thereafter.

Where in New York City were you two living when raising Nick? 

SH: Nick likes to call our neighborhood Union Square. We call it west of Fifth Avenue; we live a block away from Union Square, 16th Street. Nick was kind of the Mayor of 16th Street

LF: Starting at age three, Nick was known to the community as the Mayor of 16th Street. On his daily walk home from nursery school, he would pass through Union Square and check in at his regular haunts: Steak Frites, where, on seeing him, the manager would take out a tub of ice cream with Nick’s name scrawled on it. Next was Bill, the affable guard at Country Floors, who would tip his hat. At Lord of the Fleas, a vintage clothing store, they would turn around the standing mirror so Nick could see his reflection. 

SH: Would you agree that you were the Mayor of 16th Street, Nick?

NH: I don’t really remember. I remember you telling me that I was. I would say “hi” to a couple of people on 16th Street, and because of that, you gave me that title. I don’t know if I really deserved it.

I remember Bill vividly for some strange reason—because I forget most of the people from that period of my life—but I remember him. He was the security guard for this tile store, I think it was, right? And I think it might still be there?

SH: No, it’s gone. 

NH: I don’t know why a tile store needed a security guard, but for whatever reason he was always there, and he had this flashlight thing that would blink red and green colors, and he would always show it to me, and I was always captivated by it for some reason. That’s been a lasting memory for 30 years.

Louise and Steven, why was raising Nick in New York City important to you as parents?

SH: Well, I was raised half a mile away in Stuyvesant Town, and I wasn’t about to leave New York City. And Louise was ensconced. The building we lived in was this wonderful, old townhouse that had been a boarding house for actors and actresses long before we moved in. There was no alternative. 

The best thing we could do for Nick was to send them to a good school that we wouldn’t have to worry too much about. So we sent him to Little Red, which was the first lesbian-run school in New York. Elisabeth Irwin, who founded it, was one of the progressives that hired blacklisted teachers during the McCarthy era. 

How was going to Little Red for you, Nick?

NH: It was great. As you mentioned, it was very progressive. So progressive to the point that you could kind of get away with doing anything in the name of art. And that’s how I kind of got started in filmmaking. I wanted to make films that would scare my teachers, so I would discuss very unsuitable topics just to freak my teachers out. I wanted to keep pushing the boundaries and see how far I could take it.

That was in high school, but even in middle school, I remember in seventh and eighth grade, that’s when I started getting into film and writing scripts. I never finished any, I would just write scenes, and I would share them with my teachers. Even though the scenes were about very mature but immature topics, my teachers were very encouraging because they could tell that I was passionate about this art form. My parents were the same way. I think the stuff that I was making probably made you uneasy, but I think you kind of knew that I had a good head on my shoulders and it would lead to something more positive.

How did you first get into the film medium, Nick? 

NH: My earliest memory of really getting into film was, I believe, in the seventh grade, and I had a knack for memorizing the casts of movies, even very obscure movies. So that was kind of a talent that I had, and I liked the idea that I was better than everyone else at one thing, which was just remembering actors in movies. So, I would challenge students in my class to name a movie and I would name the cast. 

That was also around the time that Direct TV came out, where you could pull up a guide on your television and see what movies were playing and it would tell you the cast in each movie. So I would go on our TV and try to memorize the cast of these movies that I hadn’t even seen, and then that turned into writing scripts of my own. I would fantasize about movie ideas and cast them with real actors. By the time high school came around, I actually had the opportunity to start shooting my own stuff, and that’s what really set me on my path. 

I think I was destined to get into some kind of art, just based on who my parents are.

SH: We also had a couple of video cameras, and there was one time when you were in grade school where it was “Turn off the TV Week,” and you made your own movie with your cockatiel. 

NH: I think I was destined to get into some kind of art, just based on who my parents are, and maybe subconsciously, I didn’t want to follow in their footsteps so I decided to go another route.

Being raised by artists and surrounded by creativity your whole life, I don’t know how one wouldn’t be influenced by that. My parents are both journalists so that’s my background to an extent as well. At what point did you become aware of your parents being this creative power couple?

NH: I remember when I was a teenager, one of them mentioned that Molly Ringwald was a fan of my dad’s, and that was surprising to me; to think that this celebrity actress was a fan of my dad.

I always knew that they were prolific in their fields, but I don’t think I really realized or appreciated it until college, maybe even late into college. I think it was from people telling me that they had my parents’ books and that they looked up to them, and what have you. That’s really when I realized how important they were. 

Louise and Steven, as artists, were there any salient lessons you remember imparting on Nick once it was clear you were raising a creative child? 

SH: There wasn’t any prescription. There were no rules I wanted to instill. I was just interested in him following what he wanted to do, and as long as he could make it through high school without getting screwed up, and make it through college (which I never did), I was happy to see where this thing would take him.

All of a sudden Nick started doing music videos, and they were mostly rap videos. My strongest memory is Nick wanted to use our apartment for one of his rap videos, and I think we were going away that weekend, or at least going away for the day, and Nick suggested we didn’t come back until a certain time. When we did, there was a whole group of rappers sitting in the living room, and one of them said, “I hope we haven’t disturbed your apartment, Mr. and Mrs. Heller.” We later learned that they had been throwing spaghetti all over the place. But even though we may have had certain trepidations, we never enforced strong discipline. 

NH: I can’t remember ever really being scolded by you guys because I think, generally, I was pretty well-behaved. The one instance that does come to mind, though, where Mom was very angry with me, was when I carved my name into her conference table at her studio.

So, Nick, obviously, you’re incredibly successful in your own right, and working in a different creative field than your parents, but I’m curious if you can point to any sensibilities or ideas from them that have influenced who you are as an artist?

NH: I think the biggest thing is my work ethic. Work is really important to me, reputation is really important to me. I never want to let a client down. I never want to let my crew down. If I’m doing a project that requires a crew, like a commercial or something, I always try to make it a really happy environment where everyone feels respected and has a good time. I like to think that I’m very on top of things, too. I’m positive that I got that from my parents. I think it just rubbed off on me in one way or another because, obviously they’re very hardworking and reliable and have a great reputation. 

SH: Where did you get the guts to go up to the people that you go up to? When you’re making movies or videos and befriend them?  

NH: That’s where we’re very different because I feel like you don’t really like people. Maybe when you were my age, it was a different story. So I don’t know who I got that from, maybe it was just wanting to be different from my folks. 

Where would you say your knack for observing originated, Nick? You’re not only capturing these wonderful little vignettes and characters on camera, but you’re noticing them in the first place. How did you hone that eye?

NH: I think just growing up in New York and being surrounded by stuff. I don’t know where the curiosity came from, but it’s kind of just right in front of your eyes here. Have I always been like that, Dad?

SH: You were certainly always more curious than I was. Things kind of just happen naturally. Nick lived on 16th Street, and there were lots of people coming and going. Fifth Avenue became a mall, and Union Square was a place where characters kind of resided. When I was younger, it was called “needle park,” but then it got cleaned up so we would let Nick go to Union Square.

NH: I remember being very curious about the people that I would cross paths with, and when I became of age that’s when I started chatting them up.

SH: You became very industrious. He would put on talent shows, bringing some of these people together and they would form a traveling troop. 

It’s interesting to hear you say you don’t think you’re very curious, Steven, when you’re so clearly one of the most curious people there is, constantly writing and diving into different corners of design, and endlessly learning and sharing. It’s a different kind of curiosity and manifestation of that curiosity than Nick’s, but it’s extreme and genuine curiosity all the same. 

SH: Well, I appreciate that. I was just watching a film that was done during my show at SVA, and they interviewed somebody who said that my curiosity was “neurotic,” and that’s what it tends to be. It tends to be about producing stuff. I don’t know if Nick has the same production need or obsession. 

NH: Yeah, of course I do. 

SH: I just keep having to get stuff out and onto a piece of paper, no matter what it is. 

NH: I mean, that’s what my Instagram is. That’s why as soon as I film something, I have to put it up immediately.  And it’s not for any other reason than I’ve become impatient, and I just want to get more stuff into the world.

SH: Part of it is saying something to somebody, and part of it is expunging it. There’s the egotistical part of it, and there’s the sharing part of it, but they go hand-in-hand. 

Louise and Steven, you must be immensely proud of the person and artist Nick has become. How has his success felt to you as his parents?

LF: We are especially proud of all that Nick has been able to achieve on his own. What he contributed to the city during the pandemic was singularly admirable. 

SH: “Immensely proud” is a good way to describe it, ecstatic and overjoyed as well. I saw him make something from nothing. We could have helped him get his foot in the design field, but that’s not what he wanted. I never wanted help from my parents either and did whatever I did on my own. 

Nick has shown himself to be not just creative, but a real human being, and that came through in COVID when he went out and did what he felt he had to do. It was more than prideful, it was a word that I can’t even pull out of the air. He’s gone on to defy the Millennial stereotype of living in your parents’ basement ten times over. We can share certain things; there are certain things that he teaches me. 

I always wake up every morning and look at his feed to see where he’s been. He’s a very modest person, he isn’t always forthcoming with what’s going on, and that’s okay because I was like that as well. When I do see what he’s produced, I get all shaky inside.

The post A Steven Heller, Nicolas Heller, and Louise Fili Family Roundtable appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Not simply a news portal, MAD serves as a meeting point for creative minds to collide, where new ideas come to life and the boundaries between marketing, advertising, and design blur. The platform presented a unique challenge to the brand transformation agency Ba’ndo: express the “madness” of creativity in a structured and engaging way.

Ba’ndo tackled this project’s complexity by building a complete brand system, which included illustrations, animations, and mascots inspired by the letters in the logo. This system gave MAD a distinct voice that was energetic, curious, and full of life.

The logo itself is minimal yet striking, with retro influences. Its aesthetic draws on an 80s vibe, blended with pop art and modern elements, achieving a balance between nostalgia and forward-thinking design. The sharp lines and bold details convey MAD’s dynamic energy, while the flexibility of the logo offers limitless possibilities for future evolution.

MAD’s logo is more than just a typographic solution—it is a character with a distinct personality. Each letter of the logo has multiple expressions—bold, curious, and slightly wild—to mirror the facets of the brand.

Inspired by the MAD logo, the mascots further expand the brand’s world. Each mascot is lively, energetic, and curious—perfectly capturing the spirit of MAD. Together, they enhance the brand system, adding an extra layer of engagement and playfulness.

One of our favorite project highlights is the Instagram story generator, designed to allow users to interact with MAD’s identity in a personal and playful way. This tool, which encourages users to make minor modifications to the logo’s letters, not only creates a personal connection with the brand but also adds an element of fun and entertainment, aligning perfectly with MAD’s mission to engage its audience creatively.

For Ba’ndo, working on MAD provided a chance to explore new frontiers in brand identity design. The outcome is more than just a logo or a set of visual guidelines; it’s a holistic system that embodies the spirit of creativity. MAD serves as a platform for sparking new ideas, inspiring bold moves, and connecting people across design, marketing, and advertising — and with it, a brand designed to continue to evolve and inspire the creative community, exploring brand identity design through dynamic, expansive, and fluid ecosystems.

The post Ba’ndo’s Identity for MAD Captures the Madness of Creativity appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Check out the full series as it unfolds.

Go backstage on the Two Craigs website to see how they set about translating the prompt through photography and illustration.

Stretch

I could not help myself. I had a childhood flashback on this word. I like Gumby damn it! I received a few disturbing stares from passengers on my plane while retouching the image.

Craig Cutler, photographer

Follow along with PRINT, at 2craigs.com, or on Instagram.

The post Two Craigs: 15/52 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

At first, business was as sweet as her lemonade. Customers flocked to her stand, drawn by the refreshing drinks and her cheerful smile. But as the days went by, she noticed her lemon supply dwindling.

Worried about her business, Charlotte began to squeeze the lemons harder and harder. She squeezed until her arms ached, trying to extract every last drop of juice from the fruit. Soon, all that remained were dry, lifeless rinds, yet she continued to squeeze, desperate to keep her business afloat.

One night, as the entrepreneur sat surrounded by piles of exhausted lemons, a wise old gent passed by. Seeing her distress, he stopped and asked, “Why do you squeeze so hard, young lady?”

Charlotte explained her predicament, and the old gent stroked his grey beard and smiled knowingly. “Ah,” he said, “You are only seeing what is, not what could be. Let me tell you a secret: a lemon is more than just its juice.”

True success comes not from exhausting your resources, but from nurturing them and allowing them to grow in unexpected ways.

The next day, with renewed energy, Charlotte set about transforming her business.

First, she changed the name of her stand to “Lemon Stan,” declaring herself a true fan of the citrus fruit. She then took the seeds from the used lemons and planted them in pots along the street. Then, she boiled the rinds to create a refreshing “Lemon Water” and a delightful lemon-scented perfume.

With a grater in hand, she turned more rinds into fragrant lemon zest, packaging it in small, colorful sachets.

As curious customers approached, drawn by the new aromas and products, she shared the story of her lemon revelation.

People were charmed by her creativity and enthusiasm.

Soon, “Lemon Stan” became the talk of the town. And with her new revenue, Charlotte bought more lemons, but this time, she used them wisely. She baked lemon cakes that melted in the mouth and brewed crisp iced tea to complement her lemonade.

Before long, she introduced a drink called “Arnold Palmer,” a perfect blend of lemonade and iced tea.

The community’s love for “Lemon Stan” grew, and so did her business. Eventually, she opened another stand on a different street, spreading the joy of lemons throughout the town.

As the entrepreneur’s little lemon empire flourished, she often thought back to that pivotal moment when she stopped merely squeezing lemons and started seeing their full potential. She realized that true success comes not from exhausting your resources, but from nurturing them and allowing them to grow in unexpected ways.

And so the tale of the Lemon Stan became a beloved story in the town, reminding everyone that success is not about squeezing all you can out of your resources but being resourceful with them.

Rob Schwartz is the Chair of the TBWA New York Group and an executive coach who channels his creativity, experience and wisdom into helping others get where they want to be. This was originally posted on his Substack, RobSchwartzHelps, where he covers work, life, and creativity.

Header photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash.

The post The Parable of The Lemon Stan appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

The brand update was a full-throttle extravaganza in true Lolla fashion, with the rollout beginning at Lollapalooza Chicago in 2023. If you were at Grant Park for this year’s mega show featuring Megan Thee Stallion, SZA, Hozier, and Chappell Roan, it was hard to miss the brand’s expanded digital and IRL footprint—vibrant pinks, electric blues, and dynamic graphics dancing on every surface. With over 10,000 branded touchpoints at the festival, Someoddpilot ensured Lolla’s identity was as omnipresent as the music blasting through the speakers.

Why the need for a brand refresh? Well, the festival’s audience has grown up and out—450,000 attendees last year alone—and with that, so have their expectations. Lollapalooza sought to meet this new crop of music lovers where they live: on TikTok, in the digital art world, and within the pulse of modern youth culture. So this year, C3 Presents and Live Nation, the festival’s parent brands, handed Someoddpilot the keys to drive Lolla’s brand into the future.

Someoddpilot certainly brought the goods. Born 25 years ago as an indie record label and known for another Windy City legend — the Pitchfork Music Festival — the Chicago-based agency was the perfect fit to bring Lolla’s brand identity into the now while staying true to its alt-culture origins. They dug deep into the 90s, when zines ruled, and the Xerox machine was the designer’s best friend and brought that gritty, DIY aesthetic into the 21st century.

Think cut-and-paste compositions, bold streaks from inkjet printers, grainy photos, and op-art graphics—all with a slick, vibrant twist. It’s a nod to the punk, metal, and electronic scenes that birthed Lollapalooza in the first place, but with a modern punch that resonates with today’s digital natives. It’s tangible nostalgia with a digital filter in the best possible way.

And it’s not just Chicago that’s getting the fresh look. Lollapalooza’s visual identity is going global, popping up at the festival’s offshoots in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and even Mumbai. This year’s 20th birthday celebration also birthed a new festival logo—a cheeky nod to the past where “20” sits snugly in place of the original logo’s double O’s.

Someoddpilot and Lollapalooza smartly made the updated identity flexible—after all, a music festival is chaotic, colorful, and (let’s be honest) unpredictable. The new identity shines across social media, digital ads, out-of-home displays, and within the festival grounds.

As Lollapalooza strides into its third decade, it’s not just keeping pace with the times—it’s defining them. With Someoddpilot at the helm, the fest embraces its past and charges into the future, one Xeroxed graphic at a time. Here’s to 20 more years of music, madness, and killer design. Cheers, Lolla!

The post Someoddpilot’s Colorful, Gritty Tribute to Lollapalooza’s Alt-Culture Past appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Check out the first five prompts and keep up with the continuing series here.

Layered

Follow along with PRINT, at 2craigs.com, or on Instagram.

The post Two Craigs: 14/52 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

It’s no surprise that graphic designers are getting in on the fun.

Art of Play, a maker of artful amusements, just launched “Tarot of Oxalia: A Guide for Storytelling & Self-Discovery,” a unique tarot deck that combines the allure of Greek mythology with the wonder of science fiction. Designed by renowned art director and illustrator Kelly Thorn (Young Jerks), this modern tarot interpretation promises to evoke a new kind of creative play.

The Tarot of Oxalia takes the classic imagery of the iconic Rider-Waite tarot deck and sprinkles in a little cosmic fantasy. Folding science fiction, mythology, and elemental astrology into one vibrant deck, Thorn invites us to explore the outer limits of imagination and harness personal intuition through tarot.

Thorn describes her influences throughout her creative process on the Art of Play blog: traditional tarot symbology to 20th-century occult mystics like Hilma af Klint and personal experience, like a walk in the Memphis heat.

Whether you are a tarot newbie or a seasoned reader, you will find something to love in the 80 works of art in The Tarot of Oxalia deck.

People often believe tarot is about predicting the future, but it can also help tremendously to understand the present and the past. Once you let yourself be led by the cards, a conversation between you and the tarot begins, and you can fully understand where you’re coming from and where you might go.

Kelly Thorn, the artist behind Tarot of Oxalia

The Tarot of Oxalia has blown through its Kickstarter fundraising goal on Kickstarter. Check out the campaign, running through Thursday, September 12.

The post Kelly Thorn’s Tarot: A Modern Take on Self-Discovery and Storytelling appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

For decades, Sunrise Bakers has been more than just a bakery; it’s been a rite of passage for anyone visiting Dehradun. The bakery’s walls have witnessed the comings and goings of celebrities, politicians (an ex-prime minister among them), and everyday folks who can’t resist its iconic rusks and biscuits. But the digital age comes calling, even for beloved community institutions. The bakery tapped Bombay Design Centre to reimagine Sunrise Bakers for today’s tech-savvy, Instagram-loving generation.

What does it take to bring a 70-year-old brand into the 21st century? A lot of love, a deep respect for tradition, and a sprinkle of modern magic.

“We are immensely proud of our legacy and grateful for the unwavering support of our community,” says Rishika Jolly of Sunrise Bakers. “This overhaul is a testament to our commitment to preserving our heritage while embracing the future.” And that’s precisely what Bombay Design Centre set out to do—craft a dawn for Sunrise Bakers that’s as warm and inviting as fresh baked goods.

The brand strategy began with a deep dive into the bakery’s history, one that’s as golden as the crust of their beloved pista biscuits. Ankur Rander, CEO of Bombay Design Centre, describes the experience as thrilling and humbling. “Reimagining a legacy bakery for the new generation was quite exciting for us,” he says. “We aimed to ensure that every element of the new design honoured the bakery’s rich inheritance.”

The result is a brand identity that feels like a warm hug from your favorite aunt—familiar and comforting with a dash of contemporary flair. From the shelf-popping new packaging to an engaging new social media presence, Sunrise Bakers is ready to capture the hearts of a whole new generation. The new e-commerce platform allows the bakery to be just a click away, ensuring that no matter where you are, you can get a little taste of Dehradun delivered right to your door.

Sunrise Bakers has stayed true to its roots, proving you can teach an old bakery new tricks. With its established reputation and fresh design, Sunrise Bakers will remain a beloved destination for another 70 years—one that connects the past, present, and future with every crumbly buttery bite.

The post Sunrise Bakers’ Warm and Inviting New Brand by Bombay Design Centre appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Cake Sketchbooks from Ernie Studio

We all have a zillion empty notebooks kicking around already, but everyone needs a hand-made notebook that looks like a slice of cake to add to the mix! The Ernie Studio lovingly crafts these whimsical and celebratory sketchbooks from a cotton fabric cover decorated with modeling paste and polymer clay sprinkles on high-quality bookboard.

Klizia 97 Stapler

No desk is complete without a handy dandy stapler on hand, and these classic whale-like staplers from Klizia have a satisfying retro flair we love in our old-school office supplies. Plus they come in an assortment of fun colors!

Euroway Ring-A-Date Perpetual Wall Calendar

Your office is begging for a wall calendar, and it doesn’t get much better than the ring-a-date calendar design. Originally designed by Giorgio Della Beffa in 1970, the ring-a-date calendar was an instant hit back in the day, and remains a top-tier office must that can be used year after year.

Toyo Steel Boxes

If you’re a designer or artist, it’s imperative that you surround yourself with little boxes for all of your supplies. TOYO makes a line of colorful steel boxes in a variety of sizes to suit all of your needs.

Kaweco Sport Series Pens

Kaweco is a heralded German pen brand whose Sport Series line of pens is second to none. The range contains fountain pens, rollerballs, ballpoint pens, and more, each in the same funky barrel shape available in a spectrum of materials.

Emilio Braga Notebooks

Emilio Braga Stationery is a fifth-generation stationery shop in Lisbon, Portugal, known for its funky interpretations of classic composition notebooks. With different colors and designs released periodically, these notebooks will surely help inspire you to do your best work.

OHTO Liberty Ceramic Rollerball Pen

We love the smooth and silky ink line of a rollerball pen, and the ceramic barrel of the OHTO Liberty is the perfect weight that means business without giving you a hand cramp. The cartridge is replaceable as well, and available in a variety of colors.

Koh-I-Noor Pencil Lengthener

Extend the life of your pencils with this pencil lengthener from Koh-I-Noor! Suffering through pencil stubs is a thing of the past.

Hand Painted Notebooks from Dana Herbert

For those who prefer spiral-bound notebooks, these beauties from Dana Herbert feature eye-catching covers that are painted by hand and foil stamped on antique foil presses, making each notebook completely one-of-a-kind.

Cloudnola Flipping Out Text Clock

For all of you analog clock loyalists, it doesn’t get much more analog than this text clock designed to evoke the nostalgia of airport and train station schedule flipboards.

Vintage Panasonic Electric Pencil Sharpener

Get transported back to elementary school classrooms with a vintage electric pencil sharpener. This Panasonic design even lights up once your pencil is fully sharpened!

Blackwing Pencils

Once you go Blackwing, you never go back (take it from me). Considered the Cadillac of pencils, Blackwing offers their pencils in a range of lead grades (hardness), and periodically releases new designs you’ll want to keep adding to your collection.

The Task Pad from Shorthand

Shorthand is a stationery store and letterpress print shop in Los Angeles that makes their own line of products. One of their most beloved signature goods is their Task Pad, whose pages feature boxes to check off your to-do list as you go. Plus they’re available in a handful of colors and made with love by human hands!

The post The Ultimate Design Lovers Guide to Back to School Shopping appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Eno, Devo, and All Things Metal celebrate artists who are more than just players, composers, and producers. Each film’s subjects connect deeply to other art forms, particularly the visual arts and design. Their work speaks across mediums, each in its own way.

Eno

Eno profiles Brian Eno, an intelligent screen presence and creative force, as a musician (Roxy Music), producer (David Bowie, U2, Talking Heads, Devo, Coldplay), and composer of ambient music and soundtracks. The groundbreaking film by Gary Hustwit chronicles Brian Eno’s five decades at the edge of musical creativity, technology, and artistic innovation.

Deeply influenced by the experimentation of the art school movement in Britain (“school” attendees included John Lennon, David Bowie, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Ray Davies, and Pete Townshend), which fostered the notion that they were not just entertainers but artists, and interestingly, gave them ironic detachment. Eno learned about John Cage, “who practiced ‘aleatoric’ or chance/random music; and the desire to raise pop music to a new level of ideas.“ In this atmosphere, you could just as easily make music as make a painting or write a poem. They were encouraged to see music as a repository of pop culture, using “atonal and atypical musical elements like guitar feedback, distortion, or eastern influenced sounds.”

When you don’t stick to a single idiom or style, there’s a danger of being dismissed as too diffused and unfocused, but Eno has overcome this with his seriousness, straightforwardness, unfailing instincts, and luck. His work has been called synesthetic — “when your brain routes sensory information through multiple unrelated senses, causing you to experience more than one sense simultaneously.”

In the film, Eno talks about making music as a creative process like gardening: planting seeds and filtering landscapes to “sculpt” music in an environment of exploration. The ambient music he is known for derives from the stillness or close-to-nothingness he experienced watching the 1969 Apollo mission. The Apollo experience motivated his music for the 1989 documentary about going to the moon, For All Mankind. Eno describes the process as “watching the auditory system in operation,” thus demonstrating his intuitive comprehension of the brain “seeing” patterns.” It makes sense that he admires the work of the Dutch artist Mondrian, a disciplined artist and theoretician.

One of the most important aspects of the film is that it uses a generative software program to select footage and edit the film so that every screening is a different version of the film. In effect, the film mirrors Eno’s abundant process, creating music compositions using a system of sonic elements that create endless variations in its own ecosystem.

Devo

Few groups embraced sci-fi, satire, and surrealism with the gusto that the Dada-inspired, US new-wave, art-punk, synth-pop band Devo did. It started as a literary and art movement, sentiments still shared by founders Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh (who has gone on to do film & TV scores including Pee-wee’s Playhouse, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Shameless), their brothers (the Bobs), and Alan Myers.

In their review of Devo, directed by Chris Smith, Variety described the band as “Performance-art showmen, pioneers of music video, satirical absurdists with a big message (that American society wasn’t progressing — it was devolving),” the opposite of the promise of post-WWII America.

Devo members showed a geeky knowledge of art history mixed with humor and camp. Their best-known song is “Whip It;” in the video, they sported upside-down flowerpot hats, jumpsuits, and distinctive goggle eyeglasses (inspired partly by the industry in their hometown, Akron, OH, home to rubber manufacturers like Firestone)—truly an art band.  

As art students at Kent State University in Ohio, Mothersbaugh and Casale were forever changed by the National Guard killing of students protesting the Vietnam War on campus. “There would be no Devo without Kent State,” says Mothersbaugh in the film. They were more comfortable identifying themselves as absurdists, aliens who came to Earth to infiltrate the culture. The group’s influences include Dada and Surrealism (two European art movements that emerged between the World Wars), Andy Warhol, and science fiction (the 1932 film Island of Lost Souls where Bela Lugo’s character’s response to Charles Laughton’s mad scientist who tries to turn animals into humans says “Are we not men?” became their catchphrase).

Before shifting to music, Mothersbaugh and Casale were performance artists. They were music video pioneers before the emergence of MTV (their first film won a prize at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, featuring graphic art by Mothersbaugh). Playing at NYC’s CBGB and Max’s Kansas City, they attracted admirers such as Debbie Harry, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, John Waters, Iggy Pop, Leonard Cohen, and John Lennon. Ultimately, they were considered too weird, arty, and subversive for the mainstream.

All Things Metal

All Things Metal profiles Dan, Joel, and Andy Patterson, three brothers who run the Santa Barbara Forge + Iron. The custom metalwork shop believes “great design coupled with beautiful materials make our day-to-day lives richer and more rooted.” But for the Patterson brothers, metal also means music—heavy metal, specifically, a passion they share with the documentary’s director, Motoki Otsuka.

After hours, they turn their forge into a film studio, creating elaborate music videos, for which they have a rich back catalog, mainly for their consumption. The brothers make the costumes, props, and even creatures for elaborate music videos featuring music they write, produce, and perform. Their musical and artistic endeavors showcase their neurodivergence as well—the brothers all have Tourette’s syndrome, a condition yielding repetitive movements or unwanted sounds (tics) that cannot be easily controlled.

There is barely a distinction between making music and crafting metal for the Pattersons.

Fine art, music, and craft often converge in the lives of multifaceted visual artists and designers. Frequently, medium-dabbling is a trait of those designers who’ve made a big mark, have long, prolific careers, and whose names have become part of our cultural lexicon.

Soaking up the genius of Brian Eno, Devo, and the Patterson brothers could be just the inspiration you’ve been seeking—as if you need additional motivation to watch and learn.

Susan Morris works across media — film, television, radio, exhibitions, public programs, print, digital media — specializing in the arts and culture with a special emphasis on architecture and design. She has worked at the Ford Foundation, NEA, NY Times Television, Louise Blouin Media (Editor-in-Chief, Modern Painters), WNYC/PRI (founding Executive Producer, Studio 360), WNET/Thirteen, IFC, Bravo, J. Paul Getty Trust, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cooper Hewitt, MoMA, International House, Rockefeller Foundation, and has written for Architect’s Newspaper, Design Observer, Dwell, Artbyte, Documentary, House & Garden, and Eye.

Header image: Still from Eno, a film by Gary Hustwit.

The post Docs for Designers: Medium-Dabbling Musicians appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

When tasked with celebrating two and a half centuries of literary brilliance, you want to do it with style. So Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, England, has partnered with Pentagram to craft an identity every bit as enchanting as the author’s novels.

Celebrating Austen’s upcoming 250th birthday year, the identity beautifully captures the author’s love of nature, sharp wit, and enduring elegance. The design features a Blush Noisette rose, reminiscent of the one adorning the house’s doorway, alongside an oak leaf and acorn inspired by a Wedgwood dinner service Austen once praised. The ‘Chawton Leaf’ pattern, found in the dining room wallpaper and dating back to Austen’s time, also plays a key role, weaving history into this fresh, visually enchanting identity.

Domenic Lippa, Partner at Pentagram, shared a bit of insight into their approach, saying, “We wanted to capture the essence of celebration and occasion without detracting from the classic Jane Austen’s House logo.”

2025 is a landmark year, and Austen’s 250th birthday is the perfect occasion to throw a year-long party. Lizzie Dunford, the director of Jane Austen’s House, is already bubbling with excitement: “Two and a half centuries after her birth, her star shows no sign of dimming.” Quite the contrary—if anything, Jane Austen’s allure has only deepened with time, proving that good taste (in literature and life) never goes out of style.

So, mark your calendars, Austenites. Next year promises to be a veritable feast of exhibitions and events, all set against the backdrop of the house where Jane herself revised, wrote, and published her timeless classics—Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and others. Since we can’t find a way to time-travel back to 1811 for a proper Regency ball, visiting Chawton in 2025 is the next best thing. Visit the Jane Austen’s House website for the festival lineup, further news, upcoming events, and exhibitions.

Imagery courtesy of Jane Austen House. Photography credits to Rob Stothard and Peter Smith.

The post Jane Austen’s House Unveils a Celebratory Identity for Her 250th Birthday appeared first on PRINT Magazine.

Check out the first five prompts and keep up with the continuing series, here.

Fork

Follow along with PRINT, at 2craigs.com, or on Instagram.

The post Two Craigs: 13/52 appeared first on PRINT Magazine.