Brian Paul Nelson – Branding / Design / Illustration">Brian Paul Nelson

I love when I come across design that utilizes photography, illustration and type so well. These awesome vintage Porsche posters still hold strong today, I just wish some of their cars still looked like the ones here — especially that top one, with the numbers and all. The warm color palette along with the diagonal layout of certain elements really evoke speed and energy, which says a lot about the type of cars Porsche produced during the time these were created. Would love to have one of these up on my wall.

Check out the larger versions and more at Pelican Parts.

Chromeography is an on-going site dedicated to chrome badges, emblems and logos on vintage cars, cameras and appliances. To me, this kind of stuff is what really adds soul to items like these and makes them feel as if they are one of a kind. Type just isn’t set like this on most of this sort of stuff these days and definitely not in chrome — well true chrome. I pulled some of my favorites from the large, continual list of the site that’s worth checking out.

With the Olympics about to begin, I had to post these amazing posters from the 1972 Munich Games designed by German Designer Otl Aicher. He is best known for being the lead designer of the ’72 Olympic Games which was completely branded without compromising to the core philosophies of design. The whole campaign would be just as successful today as it was almost 40 years ago. Not to mention, you can’t beat the layouts, type and color combinations above, they are so on point with each other. Now days it has unfortunately come down to things like this, this and this, which falls really short when you begin to compare. Recently is just seems like the designs have been pushed out the door once a mediocre concept has been determined. So unfortunate.

View the posters above along with more from the ’72 Games at Blanka, where you can also purchase some of the originals, at a hefty price of course. Check out more Otl Aicher and Olympic goodness at this flickr set as well.

“Good design is as little design as possible.” Truer words have never been spoken and by quite possibly my favorite industrial designer, Dieter Rams. To me, Braun produced some of the best industrial product and print design for nearly the last half of the 20th century, which was backed by the brilliance of Rams for more than 40 years. All of these products are perfect in their own right and don’t require anything more to make them functional or aesthetically pleasing, which is why they still look just as great today as when they were produced. Wonder why Apple products look so nice? Jonathan Ive, Senior Vice President of Industrial Design has stated before that he is heavily influenced by Rams and his work. Nonetheless, Ram’s work gets me so freakin’ excited about design each time I see it. Be sure to check out the flickr pages and short documentary below.

Dieter Rams flickr
Braun flickr

via AisleOne