Graphic Design

Rick Poynor|Reviews

Barney Bubbles: Optics and Semantics

“Get Happy!!” poster for Elvis Costello and the Attractions, 1980Barney Bubbles has a unique place in British graphic design. Even more than Robert Brownjohn, who also died much too soon, Bubbles feels both known and unknown. If only …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Ten Things That Need to be Redesigned

Everyone has a list of things that need to be fixed. There are small things, like styrofoam containers that leak last night’s leftovers all over your desk, and then there are bigger things — the American health care system, for …

Steven Heller|Essays

My Dada

Steven Heller, as a student at SVARobert Hughes once described the weekly paste-up night at the East Village Other as "a Dada experience." The year was 1970 and while none of us who were toiling into the wee hours of the morning at one of …

Steven Heller|Essays

History of Aggressive Design Magazines

Neue Grafik, September 1958  Graphic design evolved during the late nineteenth century from a sideline of the printing industry into an autonomous field with its own lore, icons and personalities. The missing link in this evolutionary …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Graphic Design Spam

Advertisement for graphic design school, November 2008. This (as well as the ads that follow) was rescued from my spam filter over the course of the last six months.Those of us who choose, for whatever reason, to enter the profession …

Andrew Blauvelt|Essays

Towards Relational Design

Bionic Hamster, using the iRobot Create kit, c. 2006 Is there an overarching philosophy that can connect projects from such diverse fields as architecture, graphic and product design? Or are we beyond such pronouncements? Should we even …

Michael Bierut|Essays

The Four Lessons of Lou Dorfsman

For over 40 years, Lou Dorfsman designed everything at CBS from its advertising to the paper cups in its cafeteria. Getting great work done in giant institution is supposed to be hard. How did he make it look easy?

Michael Bierut|Essays

26 Years, 85 Notebooks

Since 1982, I have never been without a marble-covered composition book. I am now in the middle of Notebook #85. Together, these notebooks create a history of my working life that spans three decades.

The Editors|Slideshows

Winners of the Chicago Poster Biennial

Chicago International Poster Biennial, poster design by Yann Legendre, 2008In the face of relentless competition from the even more ephemeral world of new media, posters continue to obsess us. And that obsession has a new home in the …

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

A Layperson's Guide to Graphic Design

This is an edited transcript of a radio broadcast by Adrian Shaughnessy aired as part of the London-based radio station Resonance FM’s Free University of the Airwaves. Shaughnessy had 30 minutes to introduce graphic design to a …

Steven Heller|Essays

Clipping Art, One Engraving At a Time

Clip Art: Old Engravings and Illustrations, edited by Dick Sutphen While thinning out my hayloft of a design library recently, I came across a dusty collection of books that had not been opened in many, many years. Yet, as I began turning …

Alice Twemlow|Essays

Graphic Design at the Museum

The work of Graphic Thought Facility, a London-based graphic design consultancy, is on exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago until August 17. It’s the first time the Art Institute has staged a show solely on contemporary …