Wild Abundance

Farida Zaman is a Toronto-based illustrator and designer. Trained in fine art and illustration, she has found a wide versatility of applications of her style, which has been used in: posters, book covers, children’s book illustrations, clothing, packaging, and giftware.

For her Zócalo Sketchbook, Zaman invites us into a series of five phantasmagoric greenhouses that are bursting with flowers, infusing some much-needed floral energy into our world. Notice how the wild abundance of lines and colors that make up her flowers play with the minimal depiction of the orangeries themselves. The flowers …

February 24, 2022

Journalist Frances Anderton

I Think I Detest the Beverly Center

October 29, 2021

Frances Anderton, the longtime host of the weekly public radio show DnA: Design and Architecture on KCRW, currently covers Los Angeles design and architecture for print and radio. She is …

Nostalgia’s Ingenious Potential

Often Associated With People Who Are Angry About a Lost Past, These Feelings of Longing Can Help Inspire an Inclusive Future

by Will Kurlinkus | January 22, 2020

When 19-year-old Swiss medical student Johannes Hofer first coined the term “nostalgia” in 1688, he had wanderers on his mind.

With this neologism, Hofer was describing the deep melancholy—a “wasting …

The Charming French Product Designer Who Made Mid-Century America Look Clean and Stylish

From Refrigerators to Coca-Cola to Air Force One, Raymond Loewy’s Distinctive Curves Sold Products—and Himself

by John Wall | May 21, 2019

Raymond Loewy, the legendary American product designer and businessman, isn’t familiar to consumers today, but in the latter half of the 20th century he was a household name for his …

Inspired by Luxury Yachts, Station Wagons Were Once the Height of Mid-20th-Century Design

Before the Minivan and SUV, American Families Rode in a Vehicle Fashioned for Comfort and Room for All

April 11, 2019

Today SUVs clog American roads, but in the middle of the 20th century, the station wagon ruled supreme. Built for growing postwar families—with a distinctive nod toward style and luxury—the …

The Postcards That Captured America’s Love for the Open Road

From Mid-Century Until Today, “Greetings From” Postcards Have Combined a ‘Fantastical View’ of the Country With Car Culture Obsession

by Anne Peck-Davis and Diane Lapis | November 20, 2018

The most prolific producer of the iconic 20th-century American travel postcard was a German-born printer, a man named Curt Teich, who immigrated to America in 1895. In 1931, Teich’s printing …

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