The designer as Crystal Goblet
In her most famous text, Beatrice Warde (1900 – 1969) wrote that typography should be like a crystal goblet: in order to enjoy the wine, the glass must be neutral and transparent. Warde published…
Alda Rosa, Designer
Alda Rosa was one of the great typographic designers of the heroic era of Portuguese design. Perhaps Sebastião Rodrigues is her only peer. By this, I mean that they made a design where typography…
George Lois (1931 – 2022)
George Lois died two days ago. He was one of the most iconic art directors of the 20th century. His trademark was the elaborate photographic stagings he designed for the covers of Esquire. They…
Mr. Daciano’s new design
I am no longer the only design writer published by Orfeu Negro. Here, and only here, I came before Daciano Da Costa. I resisted the old Daciano da Costa books because I didn’t appreciate…
Forget design?
«Forget Photography» has a clever cover for a book that is a great read.1 Andrew Dewdney believes that the paradigm of photography can no longer explain what he calls the networked image. Photography can’t…
The missing centennial.
W.A. Dwiggins first used the term graphic design in the text “New Kind of Printing Calls for New Design,” published in August 1922 in a special section of the Boston Evening Transcript devoted to…
What about Ukraine?
It has been challenging for me to think about the implications of Ukraine’s war on graphic design. I haven’t read any texts or interventions on the subject. Before writing this post, I took a…
War pastimes
When the war in Ukraine began, I was playing Wordle every day. The violence of Russia’s unprovoked invasion threw me off that daily pastime. It was impossible to carry on as usual. I regularly…
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Unseen by Design 