A few days ago, I received the 365: AIGA Year in Design 28 in the mail. It said that they had shrunk it down from previous years, but I don’t have any other editions to compare it to, since I didn’t get anything like this last year, even though I was already an AIGA member then (maybe it’s because I had a student membership.) It’s hard to see the scale from the photo, but the page size is 5″ x 7″.
So this book had design work from two competitions: 365: AIGA Annual Design Competitions, and 50 Books/50 Covers, which I had talked about in a really early Flush post. The section dividers, eight of them for the 365: AIGA Annual Design Competitions, and only one for the 50 Books/50 Covers, were cleverly designed (by Thirst/3st, directed by Rick Valicenti). Each divider spans two spreads, but the left page of the first spread and the right page of the second spread actually make one composition. And the concept of the dividers basically had to do with “me,” where the identity design section divider says “It’s Me,” for example, and the information design section divider says, “Believe Me,” and so on.
What’s also cool is the cardboard packaging was intentionally minimized to go with being green, and, they even spelled out “Recycle Me” (which I just realized right now relates to the section dividers) with teeny holes. I wish they had made that more obvious, though, because I almost missed it before I recycled it.
Visually, I’m not really a fan of the blue-grid sphere motif (see first photo). The sphere/globe reminded me of some cliché 80’s AT&T; commercial where it’s all mysterious with the black background and light type or lines. I don’t know what the idea behind the globe thing is.
Flush.
This entry was posted on Sunday, January 6th, 2008 at 22:25 and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
hey! I got this in the mail, too! It’s such a nifty little book… I wish I had it now, I left it at home in the bay and I haven’t flipped through it yet :(
Eh, it’s okay. Not something you would go through constantly. The smaller design actually made it less engaging, so I don’t know how they could resolve that.