Eye Magazine

The career of Germano Facetti is exceptional in its range. As art director of Penguin Book covers in the 1960s and as a designer, he was a powerful influence on book and information design, throwing a special light on Modern Movement aspirations and on attitudes to illustration. Facetti has maintained the concept of “documentary” and diagrammatic illustration to induce understanding, to express emotion, or to accumulate information in a more memorable way.

‘The South’, Seymour Chwast’s special civil rights issue of Push Pin Graphic, was a virtuoso display of graphic design authorship

‘I was out walking the dear dog and I saw 500 things that made me want to make art.’

or: how graphic designer Pablo Ferro learned to split the screen, cut the crap and tell the story (in the time it took to run the titles)

“A revolutionary graphic language must seek to expose the meaning by presenting a chain of ideas, images, structures in as much of their complexity as is economically feasible.” Robin Fior in The Designer, journal of the society of industrial artists and designers, London, May 1972.

Lawrence Weiner’s art is a kind of sculpture made of language, free from excess or embellishment and strangely familiar from its far-reaching influence on graphic designers

In the last ten years a substantial body of critical writing on graphic design has amassed. In this transatlantic dialogue, Rick Poynor and American design critic Michael Rock explore the state of design criticism now and put the arguments for different approaches

The design of The New Yorker has nearly always taken the approach that ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, with a familiar layout and masthead. Does a face-lift jeopardise its relationship with its readers? Time to call in the Type Police

‘It’s to do with keeping things simple and having the confidence to present an idea where everything can be understood. You don’t have to be in the know to unravel it.’ Interview by Nick Bell and John L. Walters