The Ford Family Introspective The Ford Family Posted on: 17 July 2017 Another treasure from our show and tell sessions, Bill recently showed us a copy of a Volkswagon advertisement from 1965 that featured his family (the yellowed nature of which inspired the previous blog posting), revolving around a pun on their last name. While working at a photography studio in Detroit, Bill’s father was approached by Volkswagon to be featured in an advertisement, inspired by his name and the fact that he was driving their Station Bus. The photograph was staged outside their Riverside house—in Windsor, by Lake St. Clair—and featured his entire large family, as well as the neighbour’s dog, who decided to jump into the photograph. The advertisement reflected the quirky, playful direction that Volkswagon’s branding was taking at the time. Posted on: 17 July 2017
Picas and Points 30 January 2019 While one of us brandished a ruler festooned with picas to measure a design recently, it occurred to us that picas are likely alien to most people, though we use them throughout most of our work. Both picas and points are units of measurement that are peculiar to and invented for graphic design.
Portrait of the Designer as a Young Monster 28 June 2019 As we descended on the kitchen table for this week’s team-building exercise, we found a metre-long array of brightly-coloured containers of modelling dough splayed across the table, beckoning us like an aesthetic smorgasbord. Edith had scarcely finished instructing us to produce miniature “monster” versions of ourselves with the curious substance hidden within before the canisters were already half-empty, the polychromatic contents being vigorously shaped into our beastly counterparts.