John O'Reilly

Recent articles by John O'Reilly

Citizens’ Babel

Issue 95, Winter 2017

Review

Eyeball Cards: The Art of British CB Radio Culture (William Hogan, Four Corners Irregulars, £14)…

The floating signifier

Issue 53, Autumn 2004

Feature

Branding a nation may be just a matter of saying everything there is to say about nothing

Straight to no. 1

Issue 69, Autumn 2008

Feature

A great commercial stock image is like a three-minute pop song: the best have a simple repetitive emotional intelligence.

More pricks and clicks

Issue 68, Summer 2008

Review

Back before we networked on Facebook by sending each other vampires, zombies and werewolves, back…

7 types of design inquiry

Issue 82, Winter 2011

Feature

From folklore theory, via shamanism and the ‘magpie instinct’ for shiny things, graphic design’s quest to understand itself takes many different forms.

One for the nihilistas

Issue 43, Spring 2002

Review

Throw up once at a party and it’s rude, ignorant and a bit pathetic. Make…

‘Folk art’ without the quote marks

Issue 57, Autumn 2005

Review

When I first met Jeremy Deller eleven years ago it was a match made in…

Ocado

Issue 64, Summer 2007

Feature

‘Appealing to middle class virtues, prudent, reserved’

Magnum Photos

Issue 64, Summer 2007

Feature

‘A purposeful marriage of design and content’

Monocle

Issue 64, Summer 2007

Feature

‘From kings to cupcakes’

The New York Times

Issue 64, Summer 2007

Feature

‘The NYT scores in storytelling charisma’

The Saatchi Gallery

Issue 64, Summer 2007

Feature

‘Porn site aesthetics applied to art’

Conclave Obscurum

Issue 64, Summer 2007

Feature

‘You wouldn’t want to have to book a train ticket from here’

KesselsKramer

Issue 64, Summer 2007

Feature

‘The online shrine to crap design’

Reading Habits

Issue 61, Autumn 2006

Feature

‘Good’ editorial design has no place in The Guardian’s print-your-own A4 G24, but readers love its ‘robotic’ vernacular

Space to think, however untidy

Issue 76, Summer 2010

Review

The catalogue entry for this book shows the cover with a subtitle – ‘Emblem and…

Common Knowledge

Issue 50, Winter 2003

Feature

Cyberspace's souvenir aesthetics

Pop music art

Issue 33, Autumn 1999

Feature

Whether technology threatens the death of the album sleeve or signals a new era, there is no lack of spectacle as music design goes supernova

The Press Release

Issue 38, Winter 2000

Feature

The press release is one of the principal methods through which design companies, art directors and ad agencies speak to the media and the world outside. What does the press release say to the journalist during its brief journey from mailbox to wastebasket?

Self-propelled, self-made

Issue 38, Winter 2000

Feature

Big books give KesselsKramer and Fuel an instant air of authority.

Self 2: Self-navigating

Issue 39, Spring 2001

Feature

Ask a search engine for graphic design and you end up with branding. A trawl that throws up Future Farmers, Interbrand, Landor, Pittard Sullivan, R/GA, 72 Hour Logo Design, etc

Visual journalism: magazines and technology

Issue 36, Summer 2000

Feature

New technology has transformed the medium of magazines, and social diversity and fragmentation mean that a magazine’s appeal rarely crosses taste and lifestyle boundaries. So what is actually being sold in the stuff that surrounds the advertisements?

Self-explanatory

Issue 38, Winter 2000

Feature

Postcards from Sans + Baum; Müller + Hess’s Xmas horror …

Self-control. self-raising

Issue 38, Winter 2000

Feature

Pentagram are ‘time-rich’. Browns are the young establishment.

Self-aggrandising, self-satisfied

Issue 38, Winter 2000

Feature

Brochures: Frost, Push, Elliott Peter Earls, the Office of CC …

Self-evident, self-motivated, self-perpetuating

Issue 38, Winter 2000

Feature

Creative work by Experimental Jetset, Mother, Struktur and others

Recent blog posts about John O'Reilly

Not at your service

13 May 2019
Critical path, Graphic design, Reviews, Technology

Anne-Marie Willis has assembled a compelling collection of essays that address the ways design and philosophy can change our lives. Review by John O’Reilly
Bloomsbury’s new reader on the crossovers of design and philosophy asks us to question the…

Winding up with Mills and Beckett

19 April 2017

John O’Reilly reflects on Samuel Beckett’s Murphy and Russell Mills’s artwork for Picador’s Beckett series published in the late 1970s and early 80s
‘The sun shone having no alternative on the nothing new.’ That was Dublin in 198…

String theory

13 December 2016
Book design, Design education, Graphic design, Reviews

Experience is both a book about design and a design experience – with bits of string and a heat-sensitive cover. Review by John O’Reilly
The word ‘Experience’ runs diagonally across a heat sensitive cover, writes John O’Reilly. Cut in…

Talking about the A-Word

13 May 2013

John O’Reilly reports from day one of the inaugural Point Conference in London, where the designated theme was ‘authenticity’.
There was a little thought-bubble that imagined Erik Spiekermann carving out his lecture, live, on…