Thirst’s work for Wright Auction House and the MCA are featured in the new book Impressive, Printmaking, Letterpress, & Graphic Design by Gestalten Books.

Impressive is a topical exploration of the interplay between current trends in graphic design and traditional handiwork such as letterpress printing, hand-cut linotype, chiselled woodblocks, and embossing.

The work in this book is really… Impressive. Purchase Impressive for $69 at gestalten.com

The full graphic is below, but if you want to learn what these numbers really add up to, run to your closest newsstand and pickup a copy. Who knows, maybe you’ll even catch a few red-hot sex secrets!

Armin Vit has given our poster for the Damnation of Faust a great review on FPO. Saying:

The poster features Valicenti’s trademark thin, mono-weight ligature-heavy lettering which, in itself, is cool enough, but set against a background of ravishing fire and two menacing, Tolkien-worthy horses, you have a darn cool poster that you would never expect from an opera institution. Let it burn, devil, let it burn!

Our client, who has provided us with so many opportunities since 1989, has this to say after reading the review:

tres tres cool.

We are in the process of curating a micro-site devoted to showcasing our poster work. Check out our work in progress at posters.3st.com.

View this poster on 3st.com.
Read Armin’s review on FPO.

The Thirst office will be featured in the forthcoming book Studio Culture: The Secret Life of the Graphic Design Studio from Unit Editions. It shows off images of Thirst office space, a sampling of our work, and an interview with Rick Valicenti. Below is a sample of the interview.

At what stage in your career did the urge to have a studio hit you? Was it there from the start?

Twenty years ago Thirst was founded on the desire to pursue ‘art with function’. When I went on my own in 1981, I was a relatively fresh designer, president of the STA (Society of Typographic Arts) and a new father with a desire to be certain that a paycheck was regular. It took roughly six years for me to discover and come to understand that there is a thin line and a big difference between being a designer who is a preferred vendor and a designer who has a consultant’s seat at the table. In 1988 I no longer wanted to be the preferred vendor. It was this motivation and clear image of the creative life I wanted to design that Thirst came to be.

Pre-order Studio Culture for more insights into the world of Thirst and other fantastic design firms.

Unit Editions is the new publishing company formed by Tony Brook and Adrian Shaughnessy, dedicated to producing high quality books on design and visual culture.

Studio Culture is the first book to be published by the new company. It lays bare the inner workings of 28 studios from around the works, plus contains essays, rare photographs and commentaries.

Pentagram’s Rebrand of Guitar Hero get reviewed by Armin Vit on Brand New.

As a black-and-white work, this is strong enough, but where the solid and smart structure of the logos really shines is in their proficiency to take on a multitude of hard rockin’ effects and Pentagram worked with some of the best in the business — Rick Valicenti, Adam Larson and Steve Wilson — to bring the identity to life and show how it can be implemented in a variety of ways while using the same backbone.

See more of the variations Thirst contributed and Read the full post on Brand New.

The playground has recently been featured on The Experts Agree.
Take a minute and explore The Playground.

The Indonesian design magazine Concept featured an interview with Rick V and dedicates 6 pages to our work. It’s a great interview, made better if you can read Indonesian.

Work featured prominently includes: last year’s LOEB Poster, Our posters for AIGA events, the NeoCon branding, and Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill’s new website.

More images after the jump.

Massimo Vignelli

Ahn Sang-Soo

David Hillman

Markus Dressen

Neville Brody

Irma Boom

R.O. Blechmann

We took some new shots of the Thirst office for Adrian Shaughnessy’s forthcoming book Studio Culture.

“Sketchbooks are such an integral part of the creative process, that they are often more interesting and inspirational than the final work. We are celebrating this unfiltered expression and hope to include roughs, prelims, doodles, and musings.”

Eight of Rick’s iphone photos are featured in Stefan G. Bucher’s new book, The Graphic Eye – Photographs by International Graphic Designers published by RotoVision (UK) and Chronicle Books (US) Fall 2009.

The book is curated by Juland Barcelonavienna and will be published and distributed worldwide by our partner Indexbook Barcelona.