Feature
Reputations: Fred Smeijers
‘My father was a mechanic. Respect – for tools and for the material with which you work – is one thing I got from him. When the chisel is not sharp enough to do a certain job, even if it is just one cut, do not think you can get away with it. Sharpen the chisel properly and only then use it for what you wanted to do.’
Crowd-sourced wisdom?
As Hershey and Airbnb have discovered, the internet has spawned a vast, powerful audience of opinionated design critics. If resistance is futile, how can designers adapt?
The first couple of American billboards
Otis and Dorothy Shepard, the ‘Scott and Zelda’ of mid-century advertising graphics, were neglected when design history was written. A new book brings their colourful legacy into vivid focus
We made this: Dorothy and Otis
In 2009, Norman Hathaway and Dan Nadel arrived at an archive in Arizona to rediscover a legacy of graphic design left by Dorothy and Otis Shepard.
Dance on the spot
Abbott Miller’s iPad contemporary dance apps for the 2wice Arts Foundation – a dynamic coming together of code, choreography, music and design – bring playful, digital interaction to loops and layers of physical performance
Critical heat on the Aegean coast
Gülizar Çepoğlu, Ayşegül İzer, Sarah Snaith
A workshop in a remote Turkish village gave international students a chance to explore what design can do when technology is scarce
Pay close attention
Adam Michaels and Prem Krishnamurthy of Project Projects bring deep cultural engagement to every aspect of their practice, both in their client work and in their personal ventures
Reputations: Mucho
John L. Walters, Simon Esterson
‘We were interested in working internationally, to learn from different cultures and to know how design behaves globally. We had international clients. But you really need people in those places to stay active. So the answer is sharing.’
Chasing perfection
From Penguin bestsellers to Royal Mail stamps; from elaborate playing cards to the covers of Radio Times; the illustrator and designer Tony Meeuwissen has always taken a dedicated and detailed approach to his exquisitely hand-crafted artwork. Mike Dempsey reflects on a career that has spanned more than 50 years
Truth to photographic materials
Platon specialises in arresting portraits of the world’s movers and shakers; now, with his People’s Portfolio, he’s aiming to tell another side of the story