David Heathcote
Recent articles by David Heathcote
Designers with a life to match
Issue 30, Winter 1998
I was cautious about the Eames show at the Design Museum – it seemed to…
Wordy rappinghood
This book is part of a series that sets itself the task of ‘annotating art’s histories’…
Snaps of Stereotypes on the Road
‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars’ Some…
Do lots of pictures create meaning?
The ‘Visual Power’ series from Amsterdam is based around some really daft and dated ideas, namely…
No kicks on Route 66
Issue 49, Autumn 2003
Route 66, from Chicago to LA, epitomises that element of the American dream that is ‘on…
A gap between screen and page
Issue 43, Spring 2002
This is the book of the well received British TV series ‘Bridge’. The book is…
You may not want to hear
Issue 29, Autumn 1998
Bruce Nauman’s work famously defies easy categorisation. So writers who attempt to interpret his oeuvre…
The myth-maker of LA
Issue 53, Autumn 2004
The first time I visited Los Angeles I bought a book called Twentysix Abandoned Gasoline…
Another look at British identity
Issue 41, Autumn 2001
The Bus is part a then-and-now portrait portfolio, part autobiography, part essay on documentary photography…
In every home an architect
Issue 31, Spring 1999
Two government booklets, Space in the Home and Metric House Shells, endorse Modernist concepts of good design for the public wellbeing
Big book, little buildings
Issue 34, Winter 1999
In its first edition, this seminal book was a groundbreaking collision between architecture and graphic design, emphasising 'image' over 'form'
Out of town shopping
Issue 34, Winter 1999
Though its public lettering reassures customers with poetry and fiction this shimmering mall is, at heart, a three dimensional shopping catalogue
Reduced Eden: gardens and flowers
Issue 39, Spring 2001
Scopophilic horticulture is back with a vengeance. Photographers and designers strive to represent raw nature in the form of outdoor chill-out spaces: sublimated eroticism for the consuming classes, or a canonic celebration of the persistence and transience of beauty?
Predicting a natural look
Issue 43, Spring 2002
Ideas and insights do not always come from the places you might expect them to. Anna…
Picture books: luxury and meaning
Issue 36, Summer 2000
The design of lavish illustrated tomes often shows a lack of confidence, or perhaps a confident lack of understanding, in the marriage of words and images. Yet the best books are poetic: a minimum of means produces a maximum of meaning
Growing up in public
Issue 34, Winter 1999
To tackle bigger projects and take more responsibility, graphic designers will have to get together and…