(Roughly) Daily

Allister Lee, proprietor of Toronto design house Studio B.I.B. (Black is Beautiful), has committed himself to building the most extensive collection of black markers in the world– and to drawing each one… to scale.  He’s acquired 523 unique black markers.  So far.

click the image above, or here, to enlarge

More photos, and an interview with Lee, at Design Milk.

As we try to recall ‘what’s black and white, and red all over,” we might recall that it was on this date in 1961, that industrial designer Raymond Loewy made a dozen sketches of a futuristic sports car at the request of Sherwood Egbert, the recently appointed president of the ailing Studebaker Corporation.  Egbert hoped that Loewy, who had a long relationship with the company, could design a new car bold enough to capture the popular imagination and boost the company’s sagging fortunes. Loewy and his team produced a prototype automobile in record time; the Avanti—Italian for “forward”— debuted in April 1962 to rave reviews.  The four-passenger car was indeed forward-looking, for it had a steamlined fiberglass body with almost no chrome, and was the first American car to incorporate a disc brake system along with other safety features.  A series of problems stalled production of the car, however; and the Studebaker Corporation abruptly discontinued its U.S. manufacture late in 1963.

preliminary study for the Avanti (more here– source: Library of Congress)