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February 08, 2013

Transparent things

James McMullan illustrated Nabokov’s Transparent Things for Esquire in 1971.

January 18, 2013

First Look: Fred Troller

New stuff in our collection by Swiss-born designer Fred Troller.

January 16, 2013

First look: George Tscherny Collection

We’ve just received the first installment of our new George Tscherny Collection, which includes gorgeous modular displays for Pan Am terminals, corporate style manuals, and branded promo items and service uniforms.

January 07, 2013

Lucky number 13

A series of talks at SVA in 1971 and 1972 featured a pretty spectacular line-up: Carl Andre, Larry Bell, Michael Heizer, Donald Judd, Allan Kaprow, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenberg, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra, and Andy Warhol. The poster art, by John Sposato, reads as minimalism sent through the Push Pin filter (even though Sposato, who still teaches at SVA today, was, to my knowledge, never employed by the studio), right down to the slowly unfolding plays on depth and perspective.

January 07, 2013

Foot fetish

The transfigured shoes of Push Pin Studios.

January 05, 2013

The White Album

James McMullan’s expressive illustrations add layers to Joan Didion’s novelistic essays.

January 03, 2013

Push Pin and the P-Head

From the Push Pin Slide Collection: what appears to be a study for an alphabet based on the 1971 PBS identity designed by Lubalin Studio.

November 06, 2012

Red letter days

Slightly more legible version of the snapshot available on our Flickr.

March 13, 2012

Saturday’s Generation

Are you a member of Saturday’s Generation?

January 13, 2012

Brushes with history

Another example of paintbrushes (standing in for the artist) combined with another object (here, amid or as the hammers on a typewriter) follows the one we featured last week. The poster this detail is from originally was made to promote a panel discussion between the artists Alice Aycock, Alex Katz, and Lucio Pozzi with critics Lawrence Alloway, Hilton Kramer and moderator Donald Kuspit on the relationship between the artist and critic.

May 24, 2011

Stop the presses

Container List is on Twitter! Follow us for new post alerts as well as anything else we find that we think may appeal to you, beloved readers.

February 11, 2011

Love letter to NY

The piece will be available for free for the next six days at the BBC web site.

June 04, 2010

Subscribe to Push Pin Graphic

The thing that fascinates me most about Push Pin Graphic is how unpredictable they manage to be all the time. Even apart from the contents of each issue, every promotion contains — no matter how generic the thing as a whole may be — some off-kilter element that has a defamiliarizing effect on the whole endeavor. The Cherie Currie-esque figure here has no other reference anywhere on the page, she’s just hanging out in the margin of the tearaway.

May 28, 2010

From Rome to Rio

George Tscherny completed a bogglingly wide range of work standardizing the graphics for Pan Am in the early ’70s, redesigning everything from timetables to stewards’ aprons over the course of two years. These city guides are of a piece with the company’s other projects of that era, recalling both the bold imagery of Chermayeff & Geismar’s posters for the company and Tscherny’s own modular environmental graphics.

May 18, 2010

Run Joey Run

Needless to say, that wedding never took place, not after Julie accidentally took a bullet intended for Joey from Daddy’s gun. Classing up the joint considerably are James McMullan’s expressive illustrations for the album’s cover, which covey a sense of desperation and actual emotional stakes.

May 02, 2010

Performance Spaces

This striking invitation features an image from David Oppenheim’s “Parallel Stress,” in which a figure cups the interior curve of two mounds of earth (in the other, I believe, he hangs in space). The washed-out monochrome palette makes it all blend together, giving the sense of the artist as an organic component of the environment: which aptly reflects this exhibition’s emphasis on the intersection between installation and performance art. Featured in Performance Spaces: a series of printed scores (“songs written for specific birds and athletes”) and the documentation for “Silent Ping Pong” by Bill Beckley, a performance installation by Terry Fox, a confrontational sculpture by Howard Fried, and Dennis Oppenheim’s “Gingerbread Man.”

September 24, 2009

Chermayeff & Geismar for Pan Am

We have written on Tscherny’s artwork and modular displays for Pan Am. And now we’ve also uploaded more of C&G’s posters in the series (in our Flickr).

August 14, 2009

The Pancake King

In 1971, Phyllis La Farge and Seymour Chwast collaborated on the children’s book The Pancake King, which described the rapid ascent of a young master of the griddle pan. It spoke of the joy of breakfast, the perils of fame, the importance of family and of maple syrup. More spreads from The Pancake King are viewable on Flickr (thanks to Norman Hathaway), and show Chwast’s dexterous use of scale and bleed between spreads, and tidily-set Bodoni. The book was included in AIGA’s Fifty Books of the Year.

July 10, 2009

Seymour Chwast for McDonald’s

In 1979, McDonald’s hired Seymour Chwast to contribute one version of the packaging for the introduction of their new product, the Happy Meal. The promotion cost one dollar, and comprised a hamburger or cheeseburger, twelve-ounce soft drink, a small order of french fries, and a McDonaldland Cookie Sampler (not pictured). Along with their comestibles, the first customers could look forward to discovering either a McDoodler stencil, puzzle book, a McWrist wallet, an ID bracelet or McDonaldland character erasers.

June 22, 2009

Script pattern by Ivan Chermayeff

Ivan Chermayeff designed this poster for AIGA’s “Color” exhibition in 1974, which collected work by artists, photographers and designers. Tightly flowing script creates a pattern made out of textual gibberish, where exaggerated descenders are punctuated at intervals with large blobs of ink. Click through for the whole image, with Chermayeff’s colorful signature.

The Container List Blog

Transparent things

First Look: Fred Troller

First look: George Tscherny Collection

Lucky number 13

Foot fetish

The White Album

Push Pin and the P-Head

Red letter days

Saturday’s Generation

Brushes with history

Stop the presses

Love letter to NY

Subscribe to Push Pin Graphic

From Rome to Rio

Run Joey Run

Performance Spaces

Chermayeff & Geismar for Pan Am

The Pancake King

Seymour Chwast for McDonald’s

Script pattern by Ivan Chermayeff

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