You know what Mr. Cina’s new years resolution is. The man is unstoppable. Time to make mine….I guess it’ll be a Chinese New Year’s resolution.

Happy Monday. Work hard.

Ten people, ten tracks, ten album covers. The Mixtape Club is a celebration of the mixtape. Every graphic designer is a dj, whether in the closet or out. Brought to you by my former coworkers Steve and Brian with the help of some like minded cohorts. Enjoy the Hump Day tunes.

The work of Japanese designer Hideki Nakajima is quite well known. He’s had a prolific career working with luminaries such as Ryuichi Sakamoto and Issey Miyake. Nakajima has been in the game a while, but he continues to create.

It’s really interesting to see these older designers transcend into a level of graphic mastery. Just thinking about this creates thousands of thoughts about design vs. art and I’ve had many conversations about it. But when I see the personal work of designers like Nakajima, I see someone who is creating art with design processes inherited from their pratice. Peter Saville himself stated that design is art without the need to defend one’s moves and intents. But just because much of this type of work is purelly form-based, does not discount its greatness. Rather, I think that this ‘old-master form design’ work transcends design due to it’s obviously calculated and meditative qualities. Designers like Karl Martens and Bruno Munari come to mind. These guys created work that broke the boundaries of client-based design, but they only did so by a thorough lifelong pursuit of form. True mastery. It’s great to see Nakajima rise to those ranks.

Mr. Pagan sent this link earlier to me today and I walk away very impressed. Having not seen this work before nor been familiar with this, Moving Brands, well, they have me moved. I guess this is a new site. A pretty impressive new site at that and better yet, a really awesome body of work with some branding I had seen before and others that I had not. I enjoy the way they are perceiving and concocting some of their work. I think, true to their names, they really are approaching branding in a way that moves beyond the two dimensional plane. You should check out their reel to even get a glimpse of this. But I feel that even their static work, captures this movement. Overall, as I said before, I walk away, quite impressed.

Really love this SwissCom work. I think if a brand can smell good, well, this work here, makes it smell good.

Really dig this stuff below. Looks like it is for the launch of the KEF Muon Speaker. I wish I could have been here to see this stuff in motion:

And don’t forget to check out their reel.

Had a little GH get-together over the weekend. Just wanted to say again, thanks to all those who made it out. We were all happy to see you all. Hoping to have many more of these in the future. For those around the way, one is coming to your neighborhood soon! In the meantime, hope people are all well and here’s to a happy holidays and hopefully, crossing fingers, a better new year! Cheers. Hugs. Happy.