Whitehouse and Company (WandCo) is no more.
If you seek experiential graphic design services, Ben Whitehouse is a Creative Director at Two Twelve NYC.
Roger and Helga are enjoying jet-setting between New York and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Feel free to say hello.
Fourth in a series of major Times Square Office signage and wayfinding programs we have completed, a fifty-foot illuminated beacon identifies FXFowle’s Eleven Times Square. A comprehensive signage program including this beacon and the Subway station on 42nd Street are all part of this new development. Despite its Times Square address, it actually sits on Eighth Avenue immediately north of the New York Times building. See more details in our Projects section.
Today, it is almost a shock to see the sort of striking minimalist design that was probably most associated with Massimo Vignelli in the Sixties. It is a reminder that a simple typographic system and color palette, expertly used, can hit you right between the eyes a lot more effectively than many of the graphic gymnastics we are now more familiar with. This Helvetica Hypothesis, by designer Jung Hwan shows how it works.
For years now, Harry Beck’s 1931 angular London Transport tube map has been the seminal example of how to diagram transport systems. However, the system is much more complex now than when it began and designer Jonathan Fisher has responded to the resultant cartographic complication by suggesting a map based on the more conceptual idea of radial and circular lines, which is more how you tend to think of your travel in London. Interestingly, Harry beck also did some initial sketches which showed that a similar concept had also crossed his mind. Above, we compare the new suggestion with the familiar existing layout.
Working in association with Lance Wyman, we have recently completed the design phase of a wayfinding and branding system for Union Station Washington. After considerable research, and the creation of a detailed masterplan document, the key proposal of this difficult and complex project is an overhead light track and fingerboard system, clearly defining the major circulation routes, and providing directional information to a carefully chosen hierarchy of destinations.
In 1968, our colleague and Wyman/Whitehouse partner Lance Wyman created the now-famous Mexico Olympics logotype. So memorable it has become the de facto logotype for the country in many instances. This typeform was informed by the concentric structure seen in Huichol wool thread panels and spiral Pre-Columbian stone carvings. At the TEDx conference in San Miguel de Allende this year, the theme of the conference Future Now was titled by designer Lynn Rawden in Ideoma Liner, a typeface designed by the Ideoma Communications Agency, a new typographic interpretation of this cultural reference and an exciting continuation of the theme.
This year’s TEDx in San Miguel was packed to the gills, and predominantly with young people, many of them local students. Here, Xavier Fux speaks of Urban Agriculture as a promising strategy for the new Millennium. Other contributors included Sara Hoch, who has successfully dedicated herself to the revival of the Mexican film industry, and, as Director of the Guanajuato International Film Festival, is responsible for an extensive new headquarters for GIFF here in San Miguel, construction of which will begin in January, and which will include two auditoriums and extensive film, video, and sound production and post-produchtion facilities.
A gorgeously shot short film about Baltazar Ushca who has harvested ice traditionally from Ecuador’s Mount Chimborazo for over 50 years.
While I head off into the sunset to the 2013 SEGD conference in San Francisco, the New York studio will be manned by Roger and staff to answer all pressing client issues. I’m excited to be back in San Francisco – one of my favorite best coast cities. Unlike Los Angeles, San Francisco understands what it is to live in a city with occasional crappy weather. Call it what you will, it makes the citizens a much more relatable bunch than those farther south, who can’t truly appreciate the urgency to enjoy good weather.
Today Roger Whitehouse spoke to current students and faculty at Parsons School of Design in New York City. He discussed how lessons learned at The Lighthouse project, in New York, were invaluable to understanding that perceptions on how people encounter spatial environments are not universal.
