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In 1979, the week the first movie premiered, Paramount launched a daily Star Trek comic strip. Thomas Warkentin was the first writer/artist to work on the title and I loved his attention to detail.

The strip adapted the production design of the first motion picture and Warkentin even went so far as to put small details on the viewscreens that was often wasted when printed small in the paper. I had a drawer full of the clipped strips, they’d turned a nice gold color over time.

The strip itself has never been reprinted, lost in a world of legal ownership issues. But the entire run can be found here. Though not in the best user friendly format. There’s also links to some great UK-based Star Trek comics from the 1970s. Handy checklist here.

Tags: art, cool finds, design, design history, illustration, star trek by steve
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When Star Trek first became a global sensation, Toru Kanamori landed a gig illustrating Japanese translations of the original series stories. Wouldn’t it be great to reprint a bunch of these in an art book with text from the Blish novels?

You know, I’d love to design something like that. Somebody call me.

For more about the work of Toru Kanamori, jump here.

Tags: art, cool finds, design, design history, illustration, publication design, star trek, thoughts by steve
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The Enterprise by Ken Adam

Somewhere in the limbo that was the 1970s was a never-completed UK-produced film Star Trek: Planet of the Titans.

They made it as far as the conceptual illustrations. Ken Adam was hired as production designer and Star Wars visionary Ralph McQuarrie set about redesigning the Enterprise.

Article here. More McQuarrie art here.

Enterprise interior

Enterprise shuttlebay

Tags: cool finds, design, design history, illustration by steve
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Sir Ken Adam was the production designer for the Bond films.

He also developed the forced perspective look of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (his War Room made a retro/1960s/1980s appearance in Watchmen). Many of the recent Bond films still reference his work.

Interview here. Book here.

The War Room from Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, 1963
 

Tags: cool finds, design, design history, illustration by steve
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‘Transparent plastics and wooden veneers were mixed and colour schemes were limited to tones of pure whites and greys, the only splash of colour being allocated to switches and dials’

Designer Dieter Rams’ work for Braun inspired Jonathan Ive at Apple. And just opened at the London’s Design Museum is a Rams retrospective. Details here.

Tags: cool finds, design, design history, exhibitions by steve
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The jazz-inspried work of Edu Camacho. MySpace here. His work reminds me of several artists, including Fortunato Depero and Ben Shahn.

Edu is part of a group show Friday night (tomorrow): which includes paintings, illustration, projected photography and short film. November 20, 2009 in at maumau underground in Barcelona. Details here (translated).

Tags: art, cool finds, design, events by steve
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Peter Lorenz’s Illustrated 007: The Art of James Bond blog looks at all forms of artist interpretations of the British secret agent. Including these great pulp renderings.

Click on the images for the related posts.

Tags: cool finds, design, design history, illustration by steve
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Mitchell Hooks was one of the pioneers of the ‘literal’ illustration style employed on pulp paperback covers.

Overview here. Flickr collection here.

And
UK Vintage has a whole photostream of paperback covers in the same genre here. Even more here. And gads, here.

Found via Drawn!

Tags: art, cool finds, design, illustration, publication design by steve
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Author James Blish turned the original episodes of Star Trek into short stories, which have been printed and reprinted by Bantam Books.

The original cover paintings (above) were top notch. Lou Feck’s incredible brush strokes and fanciful landscapes took Star Trek beyond the confines of a television SFX budget (he did #s 4, 7 and 8). Eddie Jones made a blasted Klingon engine look really cool on #10 (Jones did the later numbers in the series, under the pen name S. Fantoni).

And the type: Helvetica Condensed and some ultra bold numbers (you know, like one of my fonts).

Cool design for explorers on the edge of space. Here’s Modern Fred’s Flickr/photoset of the bunch. And while you’re out exploring, check out Fred’s other space age modern snaps.

Tags: art, cool finds, design, illustration, star trek by steve
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The U.S.S. Kelvin, 2009

J.J. Abrams made a few changes to Star Trek.

Plotwise it had something to do with a black hole or alternate reality time travel singularity cinnamon gumball something or other. Below is what Abrams’ U.S.S. Kelvin would have looked like if it fit the style created by Star Trek’s original designer, Matt Jefferies.

Renderings by Kenneth Thomson Jr.

Star Trek’s 1960s production design is a reflection of its era. Cold War, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit – or Mad Men – in outer space.

Jefferies’ original Enterprise model sported antennas on the engines, a radar dish up front with deliberate nods to the military. I think that triangle thing under the forward hull may be for an anchor. Maybe.

Battleship Wisconsin

The ships from the original series also sported traditional ‘painted’ surfaces – battleship gray hull – plus, identification tags, banners and typography. Port and starboard navigation lights. Just like the Navy. [Read more →]

Tags: design, design history, fashion, illustration, star trek by steve
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Competing Helvetica billboards, a visual from my morning commute

I’m not much of a purist. Well, that’s a lie. When it comes to type I am. Well, not always. I argue with myself a lot about it. It either works or it doesn’t. My litmus test: ‘Does it communicate?’ And if the goal for the local business is not to be read, then often, it works.

An article in this Sunday’s New York Times is all about this. Once one starts to see type, it’s all over. Read here.

Thanks to Susan and Jonathan for forwarding

Tags: design, education, thoughts, typography by steve
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