A few months ago he produced a series of posters for the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA) campaign. Here’s a selection along with Simon’s commentary.

“I thought that designing some posters would be a good way to promote me and the [IYA] event. I was lucky enough to have the IYA contact me after seeing my designs. They wanted to use them for the campaign.”

“This one is based heavily on the sixth and biggest planet in our solar system—Saturn. Saturn has a prominent system of rings which consists mostly of ice particles, recreated using a number of equally-spaced ellipses. I have chosen a perspective that gives a feeling of approaching the planet from below.”

“This design incorporates planets half in shade and half in the sun. Rather than create a standard illustration I attempted to make something more geometric and eye catching whilst retaining the retro space feel.”

“The circular lines are indicative of gravitational forces around a planet. The thickness of the circles show the strength of the gravitational force and decrease in thickness as you move away from the centre. I find myself getting lost when I look at it. There is something quite intriguing about this design which I never intentionally added.”

“This was the original design I created. Some awesome feedback encouraged me to design a series. I’m not sure what really inspired me to create this piece in the beginning. I think I can credit some of it to Tron and the grid that the light cycles race on.

One aim was to recreate some sort of infinite effect using lines appearing to go back to the horizon indefinitely.”

Simon shared the designers and websites he finds inspirational:

Websites

• FFFFOUND!
• Smashing Magazine
• Flickr
• Abduzeedo

Graphic designers

• Alex Trochut (type illustrator)
• James White (colour spectrum poster designer)
• Joshua Davis (programming based designer)

The full series of International Year of Astronomy 2009 posters are available for purchase via: Graphic design by Simon Page.

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There are just two days left to enter 2009’s FAB Awards (Food and Beverage Creative Excellence Awards). Now in its 11th year, the FAB Awards has taken entries from clients and agencies in over 60 countries around the world. Here are some of my favourites from 2008.

“The only international Food and Beverage Awards, recognizing creative excellence in the Media: Integrated Campaign, Digital Media, Print, Packaging Design, Press, Poster, Radio, TV / Cinema, Radio, Direct Marketing, Sales Promotion.”

Lactofree (health foods and dairy products)

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Entrant: Arla Foods, Spilt Milk Snout
Client: Lactofree

Kneady’s Sweet Bread (baking and sweet foods)

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Entrant: McCann Erickson India, Sweet Bread
Client: Kneady’s Bakery

Heinz Ketchup (savoury foods)

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Entrant: McCann Erickson London, Sliced Bottle
Client: HJ Heinz

Pepsi (non-alcoholic drinks)

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Entrant: BBDO Duesseldorf, Dare For More
Client: Pepsi

Food Market, Harvey Nichols (the retailers)

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Entrant: DDB London, Food Market
Client: Harvey Nichols

Iams (pet foods)

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Entrant: Saatchi & Saatchi France, Iams
Client: Iams Pet Food

Guinness (alcoholic drinks)

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Entrant: BBDO New York, City
Client: Guinness

This Water (non-alcoholic drinks)

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Entrant: Pearlfisher London, Innocent Drinks
Client: This Water

Extra (confectionery and snacks)

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Entrant: BBDO Duesseldorf, Toothbrush
Client: Wrigley

Waitrose Honey (baking and sweet foods)

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Entrant: Turner Duckworth, Honey Bee
Client: Waitrose Ltd

Pepsi (non-alcoholic drinks)

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Entrant: BBDO New York, Pepsi
Client: Pepsi

Coca Cola (non-alcoholic drinks)

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Entrant: Turner Duckworth, Coca-Cola Classic Packaging
Client: The Coca-Cola Company

Some great ideas, don’t you think?

All of the 2008 winners and nominees are featured in this FAB Awards PDF (have patience — it’s 47MB in size).

If you’re a designer, or know of someone who should enter, you can check eligibility for the 2009 FAB Awards here.

More creative advertising shown previously from The Chip Shop Awards.

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To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Helvetica™ typeface, Linotype™ invited designers worldwide to take part in the Helvetica NOW poster design contest.

More than 1,000 posters were submitted to the contest, and they’re on the ballot for the first round of voting. With your help, the 200 posters with the most votes will advance to the second round. Then there’s a final round of voting to declare a winner. The winning entries will be announced in the January 2008 LinoLetter.

Whether you’re a fan of Helvetica or not, it’s worth a visit for a little poster design inspiration.

More design inspiration in my poster design category.

Image credit: David Barath

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A public voting initiative is taking place, for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Here’s a snippet from BizCommunity.com:

South African residents are being invited make their voices heard from today (yesterday), Tuesday, 11 September 2007, by voting for one of three designs to become the official poster of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Whilst only people living in South Africa can take part in the ballot, you can see the three poster designs above, chosen from 16 entries. Alternatively, go to the official FIFA website for more info.

My personal favourite is the centre option. For me, it certainly has the strongest idea. The poster on the right actually reminds me of a pregnant woman. Anyone else see that? I do love the colour and contrast though. The design on the left is probably the weakest of the three. Still, if the London 2012 Olympic Committee opened up their logo design process to the British public, I don’t think we would’ve been left with the Olympic logo design we’re currently seeing a lot of.

What’s your opinion?

Do you think it’s a good idea to open the design process up to the public? Which of the three poster designs would you choose for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa?

Thanks to Nic for flagging up the World Cup poster story.

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With over 2,000 Russian poster designs, this website has plenty to get you inspired.

Thanks to David the designer for pointing me in the direction of these poster designs.

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Click on each image to view the flat artwork.

MC Soom T flyer design

Call to Mind flyer design

Opal Sky flyer design

Streetlife flyer design

Call to Mind flyer design

Photos courtesy of Factor 1 Studios

If you’d like to discuss a promotional design project, feel free to get in touch.

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I was recently directed to an online catalogue of poster designs (thanks Blair) and have picked out some of the ones I enjoy.

GigPosters.com is a site devoted to showcasing poster designs for the music industry. There’s a lot of underwhelming design in there (to be expected with the vast amount of posters on the site), but if you take a little time to browse you can find some gems.

You can search the site for either the band / DJ that the poster is designed for or by the designer who composed each layout.

I’m sure you can find better examples than the ones above. I simply searched for some of the bands / DJs I like and chose a poster design from their categories.

Where do you look for poster inspiration?

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If you have an interest in posters I recommend taking a tour of this Swiss poster design collection. The one above was designed by Ralph Schraivogel, Zürich, in 1994.

This poster (above) was designed by Kunstgewerbeschule, Zürich, in 1974.

Design by Bruno Monguzzi, 1995.

Design by Cornel Windlin, Zürich, 1997.

The website navigation through each design does become tiresome. I’d much rather see a group of thumbnails to select from. It’s definitely worth a visit however.

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One of the sharpest poster design executions I’ve seen. It’s from Lippa Pearce who are now Pentagram partners. Excellent typography mixed with engaging photography.

Found via Ben’s Noisy Decent Graphics. According to Ben, the poster is the work of Harry Pearce (half of the Lippa Pearce team).

What do you think? If you know anything more about it, do let me know.

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Here are a couple of posters designed to advertise Screamfest – Los Angeles’ independent horror film festival.

Well pieced together, using an original idea. It’s a shame the organisers couldn’t create a website that also gets the thumbs up. View the Screamfest website here.

I found the posters through Ads of the World, which is a nice resource.

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