Winter 2026
Object lesson
Disorder: Swiss Grit Vol. II
By Chris Ashworth. Thames & Hudson, £60. Reviewed by Jeremy Leslie
Chris Ashworth’s Disorder (Thames & Hudson, £60) arrives in an almost absurd format: 490 pages deep, hardback, weighing in at 2.5kg, and subtitled Vol. II (to be followed by volumes I and III apparently). It tells the story of British designer Ashworth’s love for analogue type and 1990s rock music, primarily through his designs for Blah Blah Blah and Ray Gun magazines, the latter weighted with legendary status.
Ashworth is a keen archivist – he mentions shifting 36 boxes of material back and forth across the Atlantic multiple times over his 30-year career – and the book reproduces numerous work-in-progress sketches, flatplan diagrams and Cromalin proofs, alongside finished magazine layouts, adding to the prevailing sense of a belief in design as analogue object. The many images are captioned by Ashworth in a chatty, open style that is immediately engaging, sometimes repetitive, but will make fascinating reading to designers who have only worked with computers.
Older designers fetishising scalpels, Letraset and rOtring pens (his spelling) is a familiar trope, but Ashworth has a winning passion for the self-expression these analogue processes bring him. He also expounds on his love of music, and understands the context in which he was working / listening to music in the 1990s, approvingly quoting Rick Poynor on the era’s record sleeves (from Peter Saville’s Designed): ‘There has never been a form of graphic communication so densely charged … so personal and intimate.’ (See Critique, pp.14-15.) This work was clearly also an essential outlet for Ashworth alongside his corporate day jobs for the likes of Microsoft (coming up in the next volume?).
This first book demonstrates that his editorial design had little concern for the journalism it presented: the spreads and covers shown here work in the service of design, not journalism. But from a graphic design point of view, Disorder: Swiss Grit Vol. II provides a detailed record of a particular time and aesthetic, and one person’s (continued) contribution to it.
Jeremy Leslie editorial designer, writer, curator, London
First published in Eye no. 109 vol. 28, 2025
Eye is the world’s most beautiful and collectable graphic design journal, published for professional designers, students and anyone interested in critical, informed writing about graphic design and visual culture. It is available from all good design bookshops and online at the Eye shop, where you can buy subscriptions and single issues.