Rick Valicenti appears in this month’s edition of WIRED, commenting on the huge influence of Steve Jobs on the design of letterforms. He falls right after Penn Jillette, but before Bruce Sterling… somewhere between magic and the future.

: )

3st is proud to be featured in Liz Farrelly’s recent book Designers’ Identities from UK publisher Laurence King. The book features personal work from many renown firms worldwide.

We were also thrilled to see a mention of 3st in this publication on AdamsMorioka’s blog Burning Settlers Cabin.

Designers’ Identities is available from Amazon.

We are proud to be featured in International designers’ Network (Hong Kong). IdN is an international publication for creative people on a mission to amplify and unify the design community. It is devoted to bringing designers from around the globe together to communicate with, learn from and inspire one another. It has truly become what the initials of its title proclaim it to be — an international designers’ network.

Our work with our clients Jeanne Gang, Arik Levy, IIT College of Architecture, and Lyric Opera is featured, as well as some personal research that we constantly initiate as a vital component of our art/design practice.

When it rains it pours! Three fantastic new publications just released feature Thirst work. All three are great compendiums of work you may not see anywhere else. Lust and Graphic are available for purchase on amazon.com.

Lust: A Traveling Art Journal of Graphic Designers
by James Victore

What would you do or make if you had an unlimited budget, a visionary client, and complete control? We all dream of high-paying, high-profile jobs and crave for more creativity in our work. Lust is a peek into what is possible when designers are allowed to pursue this dream.

Lust is a documentary of unrealized projects and a traveling report of creativity from around the world; a handmade sketchbook zig-zagging across six continents, gathering steam and collecting documents. In it are designers, dreams, and a peek into their processes.

AGI: Process is the Project

An exhibition catalog from the Mapping the Process show, Process is the Project, catalogs individual AGI member’s process maps.

Graphic: Inside the Sketchbooks of the World’s Great Graphic Designers
by Steven Heller & Lita Talarico

In this new book from one of the great authorities on graphic design, some 100 of the worlds leading graphic designers open up their private sketchbooks, giving the reader an unparalleled insight into their creative development, design philosophies and visual influences. Samples range from typographical explorations to fully fledged illustration ideas, from scrappy scribbles and eccentric handwriting to photographic collages. Contributors include such world-recognized names as Stefan Sagmeister, Christoph Niemann, Sara Fanelli, Christoph Abbrederis, Shogo Ota, Art Spiegelman, Uwe Loesch, Milton Glaser, Michael Bierut, Bruce Mau, Francois Chastanet and Jordi Duro. “Graphic” is a treasure trove of design inspiration for professionals, students or anyone engaged in the visual industries.

Thirst recently finished an editorial illustration for this week’s The New York Times Week in Review feature on Wikileaks, written by Scott Shane. Text from four released documents posted on the Wikileaks’ website is blasted from the keyhole of American Government, and is frozen in a violent ricochet. Conceived, designed, and digitally generated by Rick Valicenti and John Pobojewski.

Beginning with RV’s sketch shown here in the lower right, the text itself was typeset in Courier (as it is online) and rendered in Processing using a simple particle engine. Several studies led us to chose the study where the violent aftermath seems just about to break…

Thanks to NYT’s Art Director Kelly Doe.

On March 17, 2010 Matthew Jacobson wrote this letter to Rick Valicenti:

2010 marks the seventeenth anniversary of Number 17 and in honor of that I am putting together a book as a surprise gift for Emily Oberman and Bonnie Siegler, the two founders (so if you run into them, don’t breath a word!).

I’ve already emailed their friends, family, current and former employees, clients, etc. And I received a good deal of submissions, including from luminaries Paul Sahre, Stefan Sagmeister, Maira Kalman, Marian Bantjes, and Kurt Andersen. That said, I want to include “SEVENTEEN STRANGERS” (or at least people who are strangers to them, but whose work I really admire and know they do/or would as well).

Here’s the assignment, if you’re up for it …

You are invited to participate by providing your unique perspective on the actual number 17 (not the company). Do something unexpected, beautiful, smart, cool, quick, fun, serious, or any combination thereof!

Rick’s Response:
While his entry purposely has nothing to do with the number 17 it has everything to do with 17 years ago and another iconic partnership.

All memories of days gone by somehow seem to fade from clarity.

ps: here’s a glimpse at Marian Bantjes’ contribution

…the work of studio Moiré (Zurich/CH), the photographic essays “Images from the Dark Side” by Martin Miller (Baltimore/USA) and “A Crude World” by Paolo Woods (Paris/FR) as well as contemporary typefaces, illustrations and projects related to monospace and typewriters. Type essays by Alexander Negrelli (Berlin/DE), Rieke Harmsen (Munich/DE) and Horst Wöhrle (Esslingen/DE) examine the aesthetics, history and connotations of typewriter fonts, interviews with Yves Peters (Sint-Denijs-Westrem/BE), Richard Kegler (Buffalo/USA), Georg Seifert (Berlin/DE) as well as a Tokyo report by Ian Lynam (Tokyo/JP) and a musical travelogue by DJ Frank Wiedemann (âme / INNERVISIONS, Berlin/DE) round up the stuff to read.

Subscribe to Slanted on slanted.de

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.

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.