Category: Blog post
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Positive Space
This is one of my favorite 80s book covers. Designed by the incomparable Vaughan Oliver and illustrated by Russell Mills. Both are best known for their work on record jackets, especially for 4AD. I love Oliver’s typography, combining very different fonts in a tight geometric composition eased by the swash of the ‘m’ and the…
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Graphic Design Tropes: Water on Flat Image
I love Oliver Munday’s cover for The Water Statues. It risks a literal interpretation of the title but pulls it off with an understated suggestion of tears. The use of drops of water over a flat surface, a drawing, or a photo of a statue hints at layers of distance and emotional unavailability. The subdued…
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Paul Rand, the Culture Wars and Feminism
Today, I read another raving article about Paul Rand. I like his designs, but I cannot enjoy the hagiographical little stories that people tell about him. His text, Good Design is Goodwill, is still passed around by teachers to students without much commentary as if Rand had written it yesterday. In this essay, Rand explains what it takes…
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Design Over the Phone
In Bob Gill’s New York Times obituary, Michael Beirut talked about the so-called Big Idea style of graphic design: “Bob was not alone in his generation in thinking that you should be able to sell the idea over the phone,” he added, “that it didn’t depend on your color sense or your ability to do…
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Arts & Crafts and the Non-human
I’m increasingly interested in non-human-centered design, and one of the places to find its traces may be in pre-modern design. In part, that is why I’m going back to the Arts & Crafts movement, and in particular to the writings of Walter Crane. He was an illustrator and a painter who worked closely with William…
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Arts & Crafts and the Paris Commune
I’m going through Walter Crane’s autobiography. Crane was a painter and illustrator, one of the central figures of the Arts & Crafts movement. Crane’s memoirs are full of fascinating insights. For instance, he crosses paths with several famous exiles from the Paris Commune, such as Louise Michel. A remarkable passage describes the events of the…
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The Gutter and non-typographical design
This is my favorite spread from Es kommt der neue Fotograf! (Here comes the new photographer!), Werner Graff’s inventory of modernist photographic composition. The spread is a masterful example of using the book’s architecture — in this case, the gutter — to build the meaning of an image. It’s a prime example of non-typographic design,…
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Children’s photobooks
I found Amadou Alpiniste at a used bookshop half a decade ago. It’s such an uncanny object, a story about a little boy that climbs a mountain alone carrying a metal cross to honor his truck driver friend who died struck by a thunderbolt while mountain-climbing. It’s part of a series by photographer Suzi Pilet…
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Walter Crane
Illustration for Louise Michel’s International School by Walter Crane. At the time, he was one of the foremost graphic artists, wrote books about design, directed two of the oldest design courses at the Manchester Municipal School and Royal College of Art. He collaborated with William Morris, who converted him to socialism. I’m reading his biography…
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The end of The Believer
Like a bar that you used to love but haven’t been to in ages, Believer Magazine is going to close. A decade and a half ago, when I started writing in blogs, it was one of my favorite magazines. It was the early 2000s. Perhaps out of a need to contrast with the bright colors…
Unseen by Design 