Buckminsterfullerene

A deformable cover (1) - Coverjunkie.com: 

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Novum 11/11 – Making Of Cover from Paperlux on Vimeo.

Such fucking brilliant awesomeness. Shit. I mean, I've made Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes before, but the mechanized process is just awesome. I can't get over the suction thingies just sucking the paper up, around 02:42. I want to own this magazine too, just so I can play with the cover and the pretty colours.

Buckminster Fuller is the first famous famous architect I heard of, back in science class at school. I still think he's, well, somewhat superior to the other starchitects because he imagined nature before it was discovered- his geodesic dome structure is repeated in the carbon isotope named after him.

My attempt at the dome, around 2 years ago now:

Designing the life and death of

How the Newsweeklies Covered (and Designed) the Death of Steve Jobs - Grids - SPD.ORG - Grids:

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Amazing article on what went on behind-the-scenes at Time, Bloomberg Businessweek and Newsweek. Reading about the sheer energy and the commitment driving each team-member as they worked towards the absolutely brilliant covers and spreads is exhilarating. And since the decision to go with special issues focusing entirely on Jobs was so last-minute (for obvious reasons) the office environment doesn't seem much different from an all-nighter the day before the final for a group project. When you're just so crazily focused on making the deadline, it's like a major case of tunnel vision. Seriously, you have to live it to believe it. Rohan, Varun and I got the crazies while trying to finish ANDC: I reached home at 3 in the night, no lunch, no dinner, but many phone calls and lets-abuse-the-battery-backup-limitations-of-our-laptops sessions and even more place hopping later. We went from Ghaziabad to Indirapuram to hostel to New Friends to Julena to ITO to hostel to Julena, all in the course of some 7-8 hours, in the pursuit of a working plotting machine.

I want to own all the three magazines. Time and Newsweek for the brilliant cover-photographs, but especially Bloomberg Businessweek because the cover-back spread is printed on a metallic silver base. Gah.

Art is for everyone

From Art Direction Explained, At Last!, an imaginary (but well researched) conversation between legendary graphic designer Pierre Bernard and maverick adman Pascal Gregoire:

GREGOIRE: Wait a minute! Weren't you also mixing codes with your Louvre logo? You used a black-and-white photograph of a cloud as the background for the word LOUVRE, spelled out in all caps. The letters look like they have been carved out of marble, yet they float in space. It makes no sense.

BERNARD: I was trying to convey the idea of grandeur, something associated with the Louvre institution, but also with the concept of public space and the democratic values attached to it. Originally, I had proposed a logo inspired by I.M. Pei's pyramid, but he vetoed it. It was written in his contract that the only triangle would be his triangle. So I decided to evoke the presence of the glass pyramid by integrating in the design of the logo a photograph of the cloudy Parisian sky as seen through Pei's iconographic skylight. 

I learnt many things from this anecdote. One of which is: I.M. Pei has a hell of an ego.