Words of Wisdom from Massimo Vignelli

If you can design one thing, you can design everything. – Massimo Vignelli

Massimo Vignelli lives by his famous mantra. He is a packaging designer, a furniture designer, a graphic designer and so much more. Vignelli has designed the identity for American Airlines, and signage for the NYC Subway System and the DC Metro system. In 1971 Vignelli opened Vignelli Associates with his with and partner, Lella. Together they crated work for companies like Knoll, Benetton, Heller, IBM, Bloomingdales, Xerox, and the Guggenheim among others.

Read What Bob Gill Reads & You’ll Be a Better Designer

One of the sites you need to bookmark if you are serious about self-educating on both the latest design trends and classical schools of design, is Designers & Books, which, by the way, also holds an annual fair that features meeting series with authors of the books, special guests on various design topics and, of course, many publishing houses on site that bring a great, almost overwhelming, variety of the books you can buy right there and then, some of which you could have signed by the author in presence. Like I did with the book I got at the last year’s fair “100 Unforgettable Dresses”.

It was a very educational and inspiring event. Here are some of the highlights from it. I also got to meet some of my graphic design icons, like Tom Geismar, whose book on the corporate design and branding “Identify: Basic Principles of Identity Design in the Iconic Trademarks of Charmayeff & Geismar” I’ve read cover to cover in just one week. (Thank you, mom, for giving it to me on my birthday!)

One of the D&B latest blogs caught my attention because it featured a reading list by Bob Gill, another of my favorites! I can never get enough of his illustrations and conceptual graphic designs for Esquire and his art direction at the Pentagram. So, if you are want to become a better designer, here’s Bob Gill’s Book List:

Simply Translating An Ad Into Another Language Doesn’t Always Do The Job

As a student and to-be professional, I start my days checking in with various industry publications and newsletters to be up to date on all the creative and technical news in the industry. My favorite go-to sources of information are: Adweek, ADC, Mashable, IHaveAnIdea, Social Media Today, Advertising Age, Wallpaper, Print, How, Communications Arts, Design Week, Art Director’s Club (which membership you should get, because it’s one of the best hands-on organizations in the world for design inspirations, portfolio nights, networking events, and latest design-across-all-medium exhibitions and news), Inspiration Feed, Enfused, Designers & Books (for the latest reads), Behance/Dribble (for the latest portfolio uploads of my design ‘comrades’ across the world). Yes, it’s a very overwhelming list…

Being a big fan of the advertising industry, since the first time I saw an old ad “Think Small” for VW bug, I love reading about various agencies around the world and learning about their work. I just recently came across a great article by IHaveAnIdea about Havas Worldwide Switzerland ad agency, which talked about the ‘corporate’ culture of their agency and how they approach many aspects of their projects and clients. I found it extremely interesting and much of it ‘spoke very closely’ to how I picture an ideal creative environment of an ad agency.

Simply translating an ad from one tongue to another doesn’t always do the job…