Feature: Graphic design
This signifier is loaded
Zurich designer Cornel Windlin is a fluent graphic stylist and a playful manipulator of communication codes
23 Envelope: ambience and inner space
Operating undercover, using the enigmatic title of 23 Envelope, Nigel Grierson and his partner Vaughan Oliver created designs of exceptional power. Their work inspired the next generation of image-makers. By Rick Poynor
Reputations: Alexander Liberman
‘I think the term “art director” is the greatest misnomer. There’s no art in magazines unless you are reproducing works of art.’
Day-Glo mind blow
Psychedelia hit late 1960s London in an explosion of silk-screen colour
Up close and tight
The legendary Herb Lubalin brought humour, sensuality and a contemporary flourish to complex typographic arrangements.
Do they know it’s communication?
A decade after signing First Things First 2000, Bob Wilkinson tested his design principles by volunteering for a two-year placement in Nigeria.
Quiet spirit of joy
By championing pattern-making, art and ephemera, the Curwen Press brought a new ‘Comfy Modernism’ to commercial printing
Read me! Part 2. Literacy in graphic design education
‘Relativist’ debates within the profession have extended to the way design and typography are taught. If there are no agreed standards – no absolutes within design – how can one teach? Are we heading towards a state of ‘institutional ignorance’ as tutors have less knowledge to pass on to their students?
Read me! Part 1. Literacy in graphic design
Graphic designers are responsible for the communication of ideas through words, signs and pictures. Yet experimentation and new aesthetics cannot emerge without a thorough understanding of reading and writing: if we accept that language is important, we must be prepared to protect it
Controlled passion: the art of Fernando Gutiérrez
In post-Franco Spain, a cool Catalan breeze blows through the often humid, overheated world of professional magazine design and art direction