Minimalist Graphic Design vs. Scientist & Innovators

There are a surprising number of graphic designers and typographers who have riffed on the themes of scientists and the history of science, and there are a large variety of minimalist images for your favorite scientists, mathematicians and their work.

Consider Amorphia Apparel's collections Monsters of Grok, "rock band style t-shirts to celebrate the world's great thinkers" and Hirsute History, "the giants of history, illustrated by their hair", both of which are replete with scientists. I like their captions too, especially for the subset of Badass Women of Science released for Ada Lovelace Day.

Emmy Noether

In the style of Depeche Mode

Mathemetician Emmy Noether was so hardcore I can't even wrap my feeble brain around her accomplishments in the field of abstract algebra, theoretical physics, field theory, ring theory and so on. So I'll have to rely on the good word of Albert Einstein who called her "the most significant and creative female mathematician of all time." She's even got her own theorem, yo, "Noether's Theorem" which explains the relationship between symmetries and conservation laws.

Emilie du Chatelet

In the style of Death Cab For Cutie
Emilie du Chatelet knew a thing or two about a thing or two. During the Age of Enlightenment she was standing toe to toe with her male counterparts in the realms of physics and math. She put forth a new understanding on the nature of light, and predicted the existence of infrared radiation, helped prove that kinetic energy was indistinct from momentum (suck it, Isaac Newton), and invented the idea of financial derivatives. In the words of her boy-toy Voltaire, she was "a great man whose only fault was being a woman" uhhhhhhh, thanks?

Hypatia
In the style of Husker Du
Philosopher, Astronomer, and History's first well documented woman in the field of mathematics, Hypatia of Alexandria was kicking ass in the age of togas and sandals. (Reportedly) murdered by a Christian mob, she has alternately been cast as "a most beautiful, most vertuous, most learned, and every way accomplish'd Lady" by fans and a "a most Impudent School-Mistress of Alexandria" by haters.  

Ada Lovelace, Mathemetician and Programmer, Hirsute History

Tycho Brahe, Astronomer, Hirsute History

Or, consider these minimalist math posters by graphic designer Hydrogene.

Pythagoras by Hydrogene - the image neatly summarizes the theory we all recall from high school: the square of the hypotenus of a right angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

Gauss by Hydrogene - the image shows a Gaussian distribution of course

Euler by Hydrogene - the image illustrates Euler's formula

Minimal Posters - Six Women Who Changed Science. And The World. Marie Curie's image illustrates an (old-fashioned) image of Radium, the radioactive element she first isolated, Rachel Carson's image illustrates a ban on DDT based on her pioneering environmental science, Sally Ride is of course shown as an astronaut, pioneering computer programmer and developer of the first compiler of a computer language, Grace Hopper, is also attributed with coining the term 'debugging' based on an actual moth removed from a computer, biophysicist Rosalind Franklin's x-ray crystallography was what allowed Watson and  Crick to deduce DNA's double helix structure, and Jane Goodall is illustrated by a great ape for her revolutionary primate studies
(Source: hydrogeneportfolio)

Kapil Bhagat has cleverly used typography alone to illustrate  scientists and their most fundamental contributions.

Kapil Bhagat's Newton succinctly references his Law of Universal Gravitation and alludes to the (probably apocryphal) story of the falling apple as inspiration

Kapil Bhagat's Einstein incorporates his most famous equation by literally replacing E (for energy) with mc² (for mass times the square of the speed of light)

Kapil Bhagat's Copernicus shows his heliocentric model of our solar system with C as orbit, yellow o as sun and the little blue dot on the i as Earth.

Kapil Bhagat's pioneering chemist Lavoisier is illustrated with 'oi' as one of his glass vessels

Selman Hoşgör's illustrations of inventors and discoverers are less minimalist, but very graphic design, and they succinctly encapsulate the innovator as well as the innovation.

Selman Hoşgör, Wilhelm Rontgen, who discovered x-rays

Selman Hoşgör's Emile Berliner, who invented the gramaphone

Selman Hoşgör's Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone

Bruce Seaton, of Seatonworks has a series of minimalist scientists in two colours.

Bruce Seaton, of Seatonworks, Louis Pasteur

Bruce Seaton, of Seatonworks, Oppenheimer

Bruce Seaton, of Seatonworks, Marie Curie

 

I love these Saints of Science by Steven P Hughes which hint at their astronomical work.

Steven P Hughes Stephen Hawking (whose halo looks like a blackhole)

Steven P Hughes, Neil Degrasse Tyson (whose shadows look like outer space).

Art about (or from) Chemistry

I find it amusing how this 'True Colours Miniatures' project is billed "a framework in which nature can express itself and maintain beauty" as if it were in anyway surprising that a natural process (or a chemical process) would create something beautiful and colourful. This artistic, design project is quite literally a chemistry experiment (with typographical flair); Dutch designer Lex Pott (for Found By James) took 6 panels of brass (an alloy of copper Cu and zinc Zn), aluminium (Al), steel (an alloy which is mainly iron Fe) and copper (Cu) and then incited various oxidation reactions everywhere on the plate, except for text recording the materials used and produced.


 ᔥ Bloesem

He has used oxidation previously in his work, including a series of mirrors of differing tints, and various furniture, and has more in the 'True Colours' series on his site.

Canadiana for May two-four - Happy Victoria Day!

Typography meets contemporary Canadiana in Vancouver design firm 10fourdesign's Canada icon font:





If you can identify and understand the cultural significance of each (or most) of these icons you may be Canadian, or deserve honourary Canadian status. So, happy Victoria Day! Take the day off, declare it summer, relax with friends (and two-four) and watch some fireworks.

Confused? Just ask, eh.

Periodic Table

The place where scientific pun meets typography meets furniture design is surprisingly lovely. A scientific toy company, Thames and Kosmos needed a conference table and put forward the clever idea that they clearly needed a Periodic Table, of the elements. The table was designed by Jackson Morley with type design and hand painting by Josie Morway. She writes, "It's 16 whopping feet long and features a large slice of the periodic table, each element hand painted (and jubilantly, by me) in a different typeface."

4/4" maple top with steel support structure. 192" x 42".
Fabricated by Jackson Morley using shop time at Keeseh Studio and the Steel Yard.

I want to know if the nature of the elements dictated the typeface designed.

Be sure to check out Josie's portfolio for beautifully painted animals and original type design. You can also find her at fruitful harm.

Fonts in the Wild

Old Tom Foolery Typestasche poster via whorange.



Periods in different fonts by Fiona Banner at The Multiple Store via I'M REVOLTING.

Happy Canada Day! Hinterland Who's Who Edition

From me, and a few of my favorite Canadian creators, with some of my favorite Canadian creatures:



inkyspider



besideherself


Rudolf Kurz


WhiteRavenArts


Evelyne Bouchard


ploverwing (Amie Roman)


LynnM


Geneviève Jodouin


minouette

Dinosaurs, Typography and Aliens

GOODNESS!
Graphite

Check out the portfolio of American illustrator Micah Lidberg, even if the navigation is annoying. It's worth it. (via Crafty magazine)


The Few
Graphite/digital


The Visit
Graphite/ink/digital


4 Matters
Ink/digital


Angry Cloud
Ink/digital

Defiant Satire, with Samurai Frog

Artist Tenmyouya Hisashi takes traditional Japanese art, modern culture, graffiti tags and Japanese typography, Western stereotypes about Japan and makes a heady mix. These are some of my favorite things.


Japanese Spirit #13
2000
Acrylic, Gold leaf, Wood
106.5×91cm



Kanji Maple Leaves Graffiti Cedar Door Painting
2000.10
Acrylic,Gold leaf,Ceder panel door
185.4×177cm

What if Japanese graffiti artists used kanji (characters, rather than romanji - transliterated Japanese in Roman characters)?


Tattoo Man's Battle
1996
Acrylic, Wood
60×41.3cm



A Tree Frog Pretending to be a 'Warlord Frog' (Leopard Frog)
2002.9
Acrylic, Wood
20.2×29cm

A think the samurai frog is the coolest thing ever.


RX-78-2 Kabuki-mono 2005 Version
2005.3
Acrylic, Gold leaf,
Wood
200×200cm


Nine Kamakura Samurai
2001.8
Acrylic, Wood
59.8×42cm

Tenmyouya Hisashi writes,

I created these works in 2001 for the exhibition, "One Planet under a Groove: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art," which began at the Bronx Museum and went to various other museums in the United States. This could be called the ukiyo-e version of the "Japanese Spirit" series. These images were conceived especially for the eyes of non-Japanese viewers. Both of these works were published in the monthly magazine, "GETON!," and after the publication of "Kamakura Nine Samurai," the Great Buddha in Kamakura was actually defaced with spray-painted graffiti. This crime may have been committed by someone who saw my work in the magazine.

I've had the great pleasure of visting Kamakura, including the Daibutsu or giant Buddha. You can even go down a set of stairs and inside of the sculpture itself- in the belly of the Buddha. The fascinating thing is that it is covered in graffiti, on the inside... dating back centuries. The earliest one I found was dated seventeenth century.