Piatti was most well known for his illustrated children’s books. Most of the stories centered around animals, particularly owls. His signature style has a sense of innocence, strong colours, and thick black outlines.

Although a Google search would suggest that was the extent of his work, Piatti was also an incredible poster artist. One of his most famous posters was a promotion for a 1971 heavyweight boxing match between Muhammed Ali and Joe Frazier. The illustration is a clever combination of a boxing glove and a portrait of Ali.

After seeing over 40 years worth of poster designs, it’s clear that Piatti was a truly special designer of many talents.

As the title implies, the book features posters from members of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) from 1960 to 1985.
The AGI boasts some of the greatest designers in the world, including Paul Rand, Saul Bass, and Milton Glaser, just to name a few.

One great aspect of the book is how the pieces are sorted. Rather than sorting posters by their designers, it’s sorted by country. By doing this the work is not only presented as individual samples, but as part of the graphic culture of the nation it comes from. It’s interesting to see not only posters from interesting places like Australia, Israel and Sweden, but also the diversity of working coming out of bigger countries like the United States, Switzerland and Great Britain. The only drawback is that perhaps because of the Cold War, the USSR and East Germany are omitted.

So if you’re inspired by the artform that is the poster, this book is worth picking up. And the best thing? It’s not hard to find, and relatively inexpensive.

The book is published by Unit Editions, and is the most extensive collection of Lubalin’s work that I know of to date. A lot of care was put into not only the book itself, but the packaging it came in. Upon opening the cardboard box, the book is beautifully surrounded by arguably Lubalin’s most well-known piece, the masthead for “Avant Garde” magazine.

Inside is a biography about the man, littered with quotes from various interviews and collaborators during his career. It’s amazing to read about some of the things Lubalin was capable of, such as working with both hands at the same time.

All in all, this is a must-own for any fan of Lubalin. It’s wonderfully printed, includes a ton of inspiration, and is a great way to learn about the man behind the work.

1. Signalnoise Posters

I didn’t realize I had so many prints by this guy! But being local and subsequently badass, he’s definitely worth supporting. If this continues, I fear that I may instinctively throw money at him whenever we cross paths.

2. Brand Nu Posters

I met Radim Malinic at Montreal Meets. He’s a super nice guy, down-to-earth, and immensely talented. My favourite part of his work is how tastefully he mixes typographical form with digital effects. To put it analogically, it’s like a cake with just the right amount of icing.

3. Aoiro Studio

I met this legend of a man on Twitter, then at Montreal Meets… which he organized. Yes, this one-man wrecking crew (with some help) organized not one, but two design conferences! I can’t wrap my mind around that. He’s an insanely nice guy who deserves heaps of praise for all that he does.

So that’s about half the posters I wanted to share, so stay tuned for some more pieces later.

One pleasant (and recent) surprise was the release of Flipboard for Android. For those that don’t know, Flipboard is a magazine-style app that puts multiple social networks in one place. Think of it like a newspaper but instead of Business, local, and comics, replace them with Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. Flipboard has been out since 2010 on iPad, but has just been released on the Android platform.

My first impression of Flipboard is that it’s great for observing all of my feeds. It’s a nice, minimalistic style that does a very good job of displays tweets or posts very handsomely. I love flipping through and seeing images take up the whole screen, especially if it’s Paul Pants sharing Unicorn trading cards.

It does hiccup when selecting the size of posts sometimes, though. One example is the whole screen was occupied by a Facebook update that simply read “Sore.” I’m all about giving typography space to breathe, but sometimes that can be overkill.

I also find that Flipboard falls a little short in terms of engaging the full twitter experience. Because twitter works as a steady stream of content, custom notification settings for individual panels would be a neat feature. Having twitter push notifications every few minutes and facebook pushing updates hourly, that would really help make Flipboard a complete experience.

So to put all that concisely, Flipboard is a great way to observe all of your social networks in a beautifully simple way.

One aspect I love about them is they were built to last. Not your run-of-the-mill paper and plastic pins, these are all metal. The other thing about this collection that is so compelling is the sheer variety of them.

The range of subjects is far and wide, from sports (including a few from the boycotted 1980 Moscow olympics) to the space program. They all share that beautifully simple design that I adore.

Here’s a few of my favourites, but there’s a lot more here.

This weekend I had the immense pleasure of attending Montreal Meets Two. It’s a design conference planned and organized by the amazing François Hoang (Aoiro Studio), featuring five extremely talented graphic designers and artists from around the world. Now I’m sure that there will be articles and posts outlining the event speaker by speaker. So instead, I will outline the event from experience to experience.

1. Picked up at the airport by none other than Stephen Didonato, the force behind the ‘Beyond Earth’ poster series.

2. Discovered that my hotel was not only a music venue, but is decorated with all sorts of letterpressed gig posters from shows in the past. Some really amazing pieces all over.

3. Hung out at an Irish Bar (very Nova Scotian) with some great people, including James White, Rik OostenBroek and newfound friend Nick Hess. Design related madness and bedlam ensued.

4. Met a ton of Twitter friends in real life, including hilariously awkward introductions with Paul Morel and Steve Schiavello.

5.Fabio Sasso opened up the conference, shared all about Abduzeedo, his beginnings in design and some of his experiences at Google.

6. The next speaker was Radim Malinic (Brand Nu) sharing his work and some of his design philosophies. I had a chance to talk to him the next day, and he truly is a fantastic person who does compelling work. If you haven’t seen it, take a look.

7. Q & A session with all five speakers. Many one word responses from James.

8. Went to a after-party with the MMTWO speakers and some attendees. Met even more great people from all over the world. Met more design superstars (Marcell Naumann and Marie-Michelle Daigle). Overheard something about weiner guns.

9. James was next premiering his Design Renegade talk. Brace yourselves Toronto and Cleveland. As Doc Brown once said, ‘You’re gonna see some serious shit.’

10. Shelby White (the man behind Designspiration) was next. I was really excited for his talk, because I absolutely love his work on the Wanken blog and Designspiration. The elegance in his designs are something I really aspire to achieve.

11. The final speaker was Rik Oostenbroek, a Dutch whizkid of a designer. I really appreciated that there was a speaker close to my age (he’s 22). It was his first talk, and he did great. An awesome mix of design work and humour.

12. Probably the nuttiest after-party of them all at a place called Steak and Frites. Wanken/Signalnoise collaborations on the table, an insane amount of pants jokes at the expense of Paul Pants, and some really messed up karaoke ( I didn’t go to karaoke, I have my limits.)

13. Driving around with the legendary Paul Pants of Swivelarms. A super nice guy, and lover of all things 80s. After meeting him in person, it’s obvious why he contributes to the Signalnoise blog. Making fun of Scott Gomez and giving +Klout in rubber manufacturing ensued.

After all is said and done, Montreal Meets made for a phenomenal weekend. Meeting Twitter friends in person, meeting new people from all over the world, and just being in the presence of so many people that share a love for design. To call it inspiring would be a vast understatement, and it’s something that I would go to again in a heartbeat.

The biggest challenge of polymer printing is making sure everything is ‘Type-height’. Everything should be the same height as the lead type I printed with earlier. Luckily, Boxcar Press makes a base, which guarantees that the polymer will always be type height.

This also makes setting everything up in the chase really simple. The base takes up most of the chase, so all that’s required is putting in some quoins to ensure it doesn’t move.

The polymers themselves are adhesive on the back, so it’s just a matter of sticking it somewhere on the base. One really nice feature of the base is the grid, so for times when multiple colours need to be printed, registration is made much easier.

But the best part of this method is that it all started on the computer. Letterpress printing is no longer limited to which typefaces you own and which metal cuts you have. All that’s needed is a black and white PDF.

So if you ever get a chance to try out letterpress printing, I strongly recommend it. It’s exciting, a lot of fun, and very rewarding.