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Industrial design of the 70s and 80s.
1. Kenwood Whisk — Kenneth Grange — 1971
2. Sony PS-Q7 Turntable — 1982
3. JVC Videosphere Television — 1970
4. Olivetti Divisumma 18 — Mario Bellini — 1972
Source: The Philadelphia Museum of Art
Designer Shawn Hazen's personal collection of vintage calculators. The Triumph-Adler Concorde 1 from 1986 is blowing my mind with those colors and the angled corners... my goodness. I need to find one.
Pastels in product design. I'd love to see this make a comeback.
1. Seiko h-timetron — 1999
2. Philips PMC 100 — 1986
3. ETP 55 Typewriter — 1983 (Source: MoMA)
4. Bang & Olufsen Beocom 1000/2000 — 1985
Typographer and graphic designer Margaret Calvert designed UK's road sign system, the Glasgow Airport logo and signage, and the Transport, Rail Alphabet, and Motorway typefaces. Here's a sample of her influential work.
The lost art of VHS tape design. For Generation X, shelves of these tapes were our Netflix. The Polaroid designs are my favorite.
A large collection of covers here:
1960s ads for Volkswagen of America designed by Helmut Krone. My favorite bit is how he deliberately left widows and cut sentences in half to keep the text blocks from being solid.
More here:
90s posters by Paul Rand that utilize squares as the main element.
1. Tokyo Communication Arts — 1991
2. 79th Ginza Graphic Gallery Exhibition — 1992
Source: Cooper Hewitt
Initial sketches and final logo for the Centre Pompidou done in the late 70s by Jean Widmer. The logo is an abstraction of the building facade. Widmer devised the idea while sitting at a café facing the Center and sketched it on the tablecloth.
Source: Centre Pompidou
The "cascading type" aesthetic was developed over 50 years ago but is still popular today. Here are some excellent vintage examples of the style.
1. Burton Kramer — 1978
2. Rolf Harder — 1965
3. Wim Crouwel — 1974
4. Jacqueline S. Casey — 1968
Sources:
Real logo specs from back in the day. Notice how there are no golden ratios or random circles. That’s because these were actual specs on how to reproduce the logo, and not arbitrary shapes and measurements like you see today.
These were designed in the 1920s by Dutch designer Piet Zwart. He was ages ahead of his time, and there is much for us to learn from his work.
More here: