I was perusing the latest issue of Creative Review on the train to work this morning, as I'm sure many of you are prone to do, when I came across a spread of posters that had been commissioned for the London Design Festival. I had been singing the praises of the festivals presence in East London on this here blog just a couple of weeks ago, so I took particular notice of the article.

Twenty of the country's big name designers were asked to take part. The brief was very open, with the idea to make a personal statement about London, the only real stipulation being the colour palette; the designs could on include red and black.

I really like these kind of limitations. On one hand it could be seen as a hugely wide open brief; London in black and red, but that gives the brief an important focus with huge scope, something I'm sure many designers would love all of their projects to have. The result is a really diverse set of posters, that work together on an individual basis, but when viewed together work as a set because of the use of colour, which really emphasises its level of importance when it comes to graphic design. Another good example of colour bonding a series together this is Penguin's great ideas.

The posters I'm showing above were my favourite from the twenty commissioned. Starting with the 'Taxi!' poster the designers responsible are Alan Kitching, Mike Dempsey, Morag Myerscough, Bibliotheque, Tony Brook, Tom Hingston Studio, Studio Frith, Damon Murray & Stephen Sorrell of Fuel, Angus Hyland, Henrik Kubel and Quentin Newark.