Review: Graphic design
Art without its bitter history
I have a problem with Stalin’s face. He looked exactly like my cat. Exactly. This…
Glaser’s genial self-portrait
I know I’m not alone when I say that Milton Glaser was the first graphic…
New languages and noisy texts
Increasingly sophisticated methods of communication mean that the appropriateness of conventional forms of reading and…
The boy’s book of Pentagram
Pentagram are masters of self-promotion. ‘Books win friends,’ says Theo Crosby, ‘and buying friendship is…
Is anybody out there reading?
One of the features of Octavo magazine that made it so appealing to anyone who encountered the first issue … was the finite nature of the enterprise.
Baffling recollections
The pieces overlap, bleed off the edges, and generally defy comprehension … future historians may have the skill to decode it, but I did not.
Hands-on design and digital angst at the AIGA
This year’s AIGA conference had no theme other than ‘Design’, set in capitals against a twinkling sea of words.
The cultured sensibility of Cipe Pineles
Say it Sea-pea Pin-ell-ess. Cipe Pineles is credited with being America’s first influential female art director, and many stories could be woven around her multifarious names alone.
Political imagery re-examined
One challenge of design and art historians today is how to analyse familiar material, like…
Peak practice: beautiful Swiss books
As I write these words in my Zurich hotel room, fireworks are exploding outside to…