#architectural graphics

[vignellicenter]

Open Houses are back this week! Theme: Photography

Wed 3/22/2023-Thu 3/23/2023 10am-4pm each day. Free and open to all!

Want to see original artifacts from the archives but don’t know where to start? Now you can have a look! No appointment required.

Theme: Photography

The Vignellis’ archives is full of examples of photography. They partnered with photographers again and again in their designs for the artwork in posters, catalogs, and numerous monographs on nature, culture, and even photography itself. Vignelli Associates created graphic identities for photographers and photography exhibitions. We’ll display marketing photographs alongside their actual design artifacts and see for yourself how their thoughtful use of images showcased their designs. The archives contain numerous examples of photo formats from vintage Polaroids to digital images. In some cases, photography is all that survives as record of a design. Join us in highlighting the importance of photography and the Vignellis.

We will have a vintage slide projector straight from the Vignelli Associates office up and running! Stop by and see original slideshows assembled by the Vignellis’ themselves!

As always, our galleries are open to the public and feature the greatest hits of the design work of Massimo and Lella Vignelli. But for the Open Houses, our archivist will be digging deep into the archives to show you one-of-a-kind original sketches and other artifacts of the Vignelli design process. You can see the designs that you know and love, but expect many surprises even if you are a Vignelli “superfan!” Please drop in and stay for a few minutes or stay for hours.

More details about Open Houses can be found on the events page on our website: https://www.rit.edu/events/vignelli-center-open-house-1

 Image descriptions:

Irvin Blitz graphic identity (invitation on transparent plexiglass), c. 1986, Vignelli Associates (designer: Michael Bierut executed by: Tamar Cohen)

 Ndebele: Photographs by Margaret Courtney-Clarke book cover, 1986, book design by Massimo Vignelli

Portrait of Lella and Massimo Vignelli (35mm transparency), c. 1980s, Photographer: Luca Vignelli

NYC Subway Map Debate (b&w 35mm negative), 1978, Photographer: Stan Ries

Kroin graphic identity examples (35mm transparency), c. 1980s, Photographer: unknown

Hauserman Los Angeles showroom (35mm transparency), 1982, Photographer: Toshi Yoshimi

Knoll shopping bags being carried during Designer’s Saturday (35mm transparency), 1973, Photographer: Alessandro De Gregori

Knoll Bertoia poster, 1979, Photographer: Don Kennedy

Sasaki Colorstone dishware (4” x 5” color transparency), 1985, Photographer: Luca Vignelli

Compact stacking dishware (35mm transparency), 1964, Photographer: Norman McGrath

[zlatokryletz]

Glowing plein air study amidst the lilacs in bloom and architectural details everpresent in their poise💜

[arquigraph]

Fictional Landscapes

Definitely, Chernikhov’s graphic representation anticipated a Century, it was also influential on architects and designers from Zaha Hadid to Yourself.

‘ – Architectural Fictions.’ Eleanor Gawne, AA blog 

 .. Iakov Chernikov (1889-1951) published over fifty works in his lifetime, including six works between 1927-33. Collectively, they can be seen to propose a ‘detailed course of liberating, stimulating education in the fundamental disciplines of three-dimensional design as they are encountered in the complex functional and expressive tasks addressed by architecture’. ..

One of Chernikov’s works in the AA Library, Architectural fictions: 101 coloured prints, 101 architectural miniatures (Moscow/Leningrad, 1933), was lent to the Imagine Moscow exhibition, held at the Design Museum earlier in 2017…

Consisting of 101 pages of drawings, the book also included explanations of their technique and basic principles behind them. Although published in Russian, the title pages are printed in Russian, German, French and English (in English, the word ‘fiction’ is used instead of ‘fantasies’.) The subject of the drawings is the new age of the city and industrialisation, of what Saski calls the ‘possibilities of the near future, images which had arisen in the author’s mind’. The drawings have been described as finding appropriate expression for the institutions and architecture of post-revolutionary nation. Each image has an elaborate, not very informative description; axonometric projection is the preferred drawing style. His drawings have been considered not just fantasies but insights into the possibilities of technology; the designs feature free and bold curves, and steel trusses in industrial settings.

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[exhome]

Eliel Saarinen's winning competition design for the Parliament House in Helsinki was rendered with ink, gouache, and watercolor in 1908.

[vignellicenter]

Open Houses are back this week! 

Theme: TypographyWed 2/22/2023-Thu 2/23/2023 10am-4pm each day. Free and open to all!

On February 22, 1991, “A Few Basic Typefaces” exhibition opened at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in NYC. Massimo Vignelli was awarded their annual Master Series award which included an exhibition. He chose to highlight work in only a few typefaces: Bodoni, Century, Garamond and Helvetica. This week marks the 32nd anniversary of this exhibition.

SVA’s Masters Series began in 1988 as “an annual award exhibition to honor great visual communicators—designers, illustrators, art directors and photographers—of our time.”  Massimo Vignelli was the 3rd person to receive this honor. 

“It was a polemical exhibition to protest the inflation of meaningless typefaces polluting our world.“ Vignelli: From A to Z, p. 187 

For our Open Houses this week, we will be revisiting this exhibition and invite you to think about designing type and designing with type. You will be able to view many of the artifacts from this 1991 exhibition plus some designs done after 1991 that includes these 5 typefaces.

From the exhibition records, we found that the exhibition plan originally included designs using Times New Roman as well. You will be able to see these works too. Along with images of the original exhibition, the original exhibition checklist, and other documentation. Plus numerous OTHER typefaces, many custom, that appear in the Vignellis’ work. Futura. Optima. Didi. Bloomingtype. Our Bodoni. Our Futura. 

Plus numerous custom alphabets for architectural graphics, logotypes, etc. And we’ll have examples of designs using type that might seem very “un-Vignelli.”

 More details about Open Houses can be found on our website: https://www.rit.edu/vignellicenter/events

[zlatokryletz]

Studies of intensely sunlit ancient ruins 🏰 Again teal is the colour💙

[zlatokryletz]

As if anything could be more whimsical to fit the present rare calendar date than the no less rare Futuro house itself!👽 And in its natural environs at that😳 Intense indigo blue indicates the exact colour effect the blinding mountain sun has on a daring pleinair practitioner. The entire experience was that of purest, heart-mending joy✨ - being able to witness the legendary structure live and as striking as ever🌞