Book: Making and Breaking the Grid (Rockport Publishers)

Among my favourites is this book by Tim Samara.
It gives really good examples on grid construction as well as grid deconstruction.
Some typical spreads:Picked it up at amazon.com.

Saul Bass

School work again. This one is from my very first semester at the university. In the Graphic Design History class we had to draw from various names of graphic designers that were put on little pieces of paper, and then make a 4-page publication about that guy in a style that he used to have. Mine was Saul Bass, whose work I already had liked a lot by that time. You can check out some of his work at notcoming.com under this link: http://notcoming.com/saulbass/index.php
At that time it was only his work featured on notcoming.com, but now I visited the site, and found that by now it features a lot more films that are not coming to a theatre near you.

A women's weekly magazine

Cover and a few spreads from a women's weekly magazine that we had to make last semester as an assignment in school. We had to take an actual national weekly mag (everyone the same one), and remake twelve pages (also fixed by our teacher). I worked a lot on it. We also had to take into account that this was not an expensive glossy magazine, that it is to be produced over ad over every week, and we had to consider what possibly could be expected or accepted by the audience. In the end I was rather pleased with the result.

Brochure cover

This is a cover for a fictious catalog of musical instruments. I made this at the admittance exam for the university. We had to do everything by hand. The exam lasted 8 days long, that is, two weeks. This assignment was given at the last day of the first week.
What I wanted to convey here, was the feeling a guitarplayer might have on stage, having all lights turned on him. Also, I wanted to convey some energy.

Inspiration: Spot color and B/W photos

Another nice layout by Le Corbusier. Simple, bold, lovely.
I gotta tell though that I've got a love-and-hate relationship with modernism. They taught (as far as I know) that only what's functional can be beautiful, and that the curves, leaves and other decorative shapes of former times were not functional and thus were to be avoided in favor of straight lines, squares and angular shapes. This principle is not true. Functionality and beauty are not synonymous. Function and beauty CAN and SHOULD walk hand in hand but there's no such relationship between the two. A functional thing might just as well be beautiful as disgusting. And a thing that has no function might as well be beautiful as ugly. A beautiful thing that cannot be used although it should, is no good. A beautiful type that cannot be read although it should, is no use. What I think is that Modernism lay down such principles because they wanted so much to break with the past. I don't think they always lived what they preached.
So all in all, I hate Modernism, and I love it.

Inspiration: A square format and paper montage means ne plus ultra to me

Spread from a Knoll book by Vignelli Associates. The picture is taken from Making and Breaking the Grid by Timothy Samara.