Notes on what inspires meGood design rarely appears out of nowhere. It grows from the people, books, and ideas that shaped it. Here I collect what I learn along the way and what inspires me.
Before choosing a typeface or a grid, I ask what a brand has to say and who needs to hear it. Strategy gives the work a spine, and craft makes it feel inevitable.
Gerald Cinamon is an American designer, typographer, and author known for restrained, quietly bold work shaped by Swiss modernism. He was chief designer at Penguin Books through the 1960s and 70s, and also produced work for Monotype and the BBC.
Gerald Cinamon is an American designer, typographer, and author known for restrained, quietly bold work shaped by Swiss modernism. He was chief designer at Penguin Books through the 1960s and 70s, and also produced work for Monotype and the BBC.
Born in Boston in 1930, Cinamon studied at the Massachusetts School of Art, then earned a master’s at Yale’s Department of Graphic Arts. His teachers there included Alvin Eisenman, Herbert Matter, and Paul Rand.
His final-year project, Darwin, Wallace and the Theory of Natural Selection, was chosen by AIGA as one of its Fifty Books of the Year in 1957. The following year, a Fulbright scholarship took him to Basel to study under the Swiss master Armin Hofmann.
Born in Boston in 1930, Cinamon studied at the Massachusetts School of Art, then earned a master’s at Yale’s Department of Graphic Arts. His teachers there included Alvin Eisenman, Herbert Matter, and Paul Rand.
His final-year project, Darwin, Wallace and the Theory of Natural Selection, was chosen by AIGA as one of its Fifty Books of the Year in 1957. The following year, a Fulbright scholarship took him to Basel to study under the Swiss master Armin Hofmann.
