Feature: Design history
Leftovers with a bad taste
In the past century the use of ‘trade characters’ built brand loyalty while reinforcing stereotypes
Tightly packed
Owen Jones’s trademark design for biscuit tins has stayed the same for generations
Tony Brook on collecting
Spin’s founder, the subject of Reputations in Eye 86, talks about his passion for poster collecting
Rub-down revolution
A generation before home computers, Letraset’s dry transfer lettering made desktop typography possible –…
A tradition with breaks
Stencil typefaces – late arrivals on the typographic scene – are going in new directions and…
Puffins on the plate
How the Russian revolution – plus new technology – led to a colourful and radical change in children’s…
A Monotype timeline
A selected, chronological list of notable events in the long, complex history of Monotype
South Bank show
The Royal Festival hall has regained the thoroughly English lettering of its origins in the Festival of…
Machine head
Fritz Kahn commissioned illustrators to realise his surreal pedagogical vision – mechanical metaphors…
Marked by time
Two catalogues reveal much about stencil-making in Germany and the US in the mid-twentieth century, while…