Jean Jullien’s sweet summer goblin cover for the Yale University Art Gallery 2009 Calendar!

Jean is a mega-talented London-based illustrator & designer who has a penchant for cuddly characters, costumes, and cut paper. His three-dimensional cover for Victionary’s 2008 Stereographics: Graphics in New Dimensions caught the eyes of the design world, and he’s since finished a number of projects and produced new exhibition work that explores an expanding galaxy of characters and his own playful visual language. Jullien gradated from Central Saint Martins just last year and is now studying at the Royal College of Art while continuing to produce a steady stream of colorful commerical work for clients like Print Magazine and The Guardian.

Non-Format’s stellar cover for the Yale University Art Gallery’s Summer 2009 Calendar!

This gem of a design sparkles with custom typography that Non-Format designed specifically for the YUAG cover. What’s wonderful is how the gentle abstraction they deployed to create the letterforms lends itself to the satisfying activity of decoding the expected series of words, yet the overall design can be appreciated on a purely formal level.

Non-Format is the international design super-team of Kjell Ekhorn and Jon Forss. Working together for nearly ten years, the pair have produced a steady stream of innovative design and illustration. Their list of clients is star-studded with names like Coca-Cola, Nike, M&CSaatchi, Graniph, the Tate Modern and EMI (among many others). They have art directed the independent music monthly The Wire and also Varoom: the journal of illustration and made images. In 2007, Die Gestalten Verlag published Non-Format Love Song, an artist monograph that features their award-winning work.

Steven Harrington’s Summer 2009 calendar cover for the Yale University Art Gallery!

Steven’s addition to the series features his adorable personal iconography in a collegiate still life, complete with yarn ornaments and anthropomorphic objects. Harrington is based out of Los Angeles (check out the behind-the-magic peek into his California home at Design*Sponge) and has produced a stunning array of graphic gems, stellar art, and awesome goods under his own name and as co-owner and director of the graphic design studio National Forest Design. With influences ranging from classic Time-Life Encyclopedias circa 1965-1972, to thrift stores, owls, and the Moody Blues, Harrington’s distinctive style merges hand-drawn nostalgia with illustrative and dimensional cut paper objects, creating a recognizable universe of playful characters, symbols, and starscapes. His work has been exhibited widely, in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Paris, Berlin, Milan, Tokyo, Montreal, and Melbourne.

Summer is definitely here in the balmy Northeast, and that means it’s time to feature another set of Yale University Art Gallery Calendar Covers!

This cover for the Summer 2009 calendar is by digital typeface pioneers and respected graphic design publishing luminaries Emigre (Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko), and utilizes a typeface Emigre distributes (a shadowed Los Feliz by Christian Schwartz) against Puzzler type designed by Zuzana. Emigre is widely recognized as a hugely influential force in the field of digital typography and design, known both for designing or releasing many cutting-edge typefaces– early dot-matrix fonts, high-resolution typefaces, and vector-based designs– as well as for publishing Emigre magazine between 1984 and 2005. The magazine was a venue for radical digital experimentation, highlighting the potential of the studio’s innovative typeface design and establishing an early forum for a growing community of digital designers. The entire run of Emigre is now part of the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection.

Labour is a do-it-all creative office in Williamsburg headed by Ryan Dunn and Wyeth Hansen, long-time collaborators who lend their magic touch to just about every type of media: video, typography, illustration, identity work, music composition, and so on. Recently they focused their prodigious talents on creating this cutting-edge design for the Yale University Art Gallery Calendar Cover Series.

Ryan and Wyeth are also ADC Young Guns, part of a cohort of top under-30 creative professionals recognized for their visionary and highly personal approach to design, typography, and media. They recently sat down for an interview about their work. For more video goodness, check out their website, which is chock full of reels for clients ranging from VH1 to the Museum of Modern Art and AIGA. Hot stuff!

2008 postcard for the Yale University Art Gallery’s Parents’ Weekend schedule of events.

 2008 Members’ Events postcard for the Yale University Art Gallery.

This postcard was featured as a winning entry in Print Magazine’s 2008 Regional Design Annual. The issue of the Annual was a very special one for us– we created the cover and the six spreads that introduced each regional section. It was quite an honor to work with the amazing staff at Print on this project, and we were thrilled with the chance to experiment with dimensional type in a way we’d only dreamed about, using the facilities at the Yale School of Art.

The leaves are starting to change colors and there’s a chill in the air. What’s one thing to look forward to with the turn of the seasons? Another set of awesome Yale University Art Gallery covers by some of the most creative and interesting designers and graphic artists around the world. This Fall, international design super-center Hort lent their tremendous talents to creating a unique still life that mirrors and subverts traditional Autumnal displays. It’s an excellent addition to the Art Gallery Calendar Cover series!

All over the United States, millions of students are returning to school. The youth of America are settling down with their books and schedules, finding their way through the maze that is the new school year. Yes, Fall 2008 is definitely in the air, and what better marker than a new contribution by Damien Correll to the Yale University Art Gallery Calendar Cover series?

Damien does really amazing type work and illustration from his studio in Brooklyn. He’s a member of the creative powerhouse Rad Mountain, and Damien’s signature style has made an impact for clients ranging from Nike and Urban Outfitters, to awesome arts magazines like Swindle, Juxtapoz, and Faesthetic. His illustrations and type are complex and playful, fun and bright– and the design he created for this calendar cover is just a-MAZE-ing! We love it.

Yes, summer may be winding down. But some design stands the test of time. Todd St. John’s handsome woodcut fold-out type for the Yale University Art Gallery Calendar Cover series certainly looks brilliantly cool and contemplative (and organic and fun!) no matter what the season. It’s a beautiful contribution to the series, which invites talented designers to render standard text for the Gallery’s seasonal calendar of events.