Feature: Graphic design
Reputations: Bob Gill
‘I’ve never had a problem with a dumb client. There’s no such thing as a bad client. Part of our job is to do good work and get the client to accept it.’ Interview by Patrick Baglee
Willem Sandberg: Warm printing
The Dutch pioneer’s catalogues for the Stedelijk show a tactile use of sensual materials and experimental typography
Reputations: George Lois
‘You can’t research a big idea. The only ideas that truly research well are mediocre ideas. In research, great ideas are always suspect.’
Reputations: Richard Hollis
‘The ideal situation is where you sit with the client and design with them. If anything is emphasised, it’s what they want to emphasise. I prefer collaborative effort to doing what I want. It’s diametrically opposite to being an artist.’
The producer as author
For Bruce Mau, graphic design is a way of investigating ethical, cultural and philisophical issues
We hardly knew you
Street-corner merchandising tries to remember the twin towers
Penguin crime
Romek Marber’s 1960s paperback identity is a landmark of independent British design
Reputations: Jean Widmer
‘Signage reflects both the complexity of space and the way a place is organised. And it is very satisfying’
General Idea: Infiltrate, infect and mutate
Ignoring the boundaries between art and design, this Canadian trio worked in both fields with an eclectic mix of language, humour and commercialism
Seize the sans serif
Raw, vigorous, experimental and often funny, Ark magazine helped to transform British graphics