ISO50

Ever since I saw his great 2007 Holiday Card on I’ve been waiting to see more from Gavin Potenza.  When I awoke this morning this nice little birthday present waiting for me on FFFOUND. I love the concept and I love the fact that it’s purely a design exercise, which is very fitting considering the name of his site (exploratorydesign.org). As I say in my workshops, that’s when most people will do their best work, when there is no spec, no client, no parameters other than your own.  Just you, your imagination, and your tools. As he says on his site, this piece was inspired by Otl Aicher, one can’t really go wrong with that kind of source.

It’s minimalist, reserved design like this that intrigues me more and more these days.  To me, modernism is about taking all your ideas about color and type and form and expressing them in the most efficient way possible, which I think is the very core of what we are all trying to do as designers. Also, stamps are awesome, I collected them when I was a kid…along with my obsessive hoarding of any other printed material I could get my hands on.  Unfortunately I only had access to boring American stamps so it got boring real quick.