Eye Magazine

The 200-plus page book is separated into sections that highlight varying classifications of type (including ‘Classification-Defying’). There are essays by six renowned graphic designers, type designers and authors: John Boardley, Ellen Lupton, Erik Spiekermann (see Eye 74), Veronika Burian (see Eye 109), Laura Meseguer (see Eye 102) and Min-Young Kim, a Korean artist based in London, who contributes an essay entitled ‘Under the Same Roof’ that discusses functionality across languages and multiscript type development, along with the unique cultural nuances of each language and script.

Featuring a range of international type specimens, the publication's contemporary examples include Bowery Lane by Hoodzpah, a type foundry studio based in Southern California, and Dash, by Peter Biľak’s Typotheque (see Eye 75).

Spicy Bitter—A Dialogue Between Color, Texture, and Obsession. Self-published by Anna-Sophia John and Riccardo Carrara. £30

Spicy Bitter is an unusual self-published book by London photographer Anna-Sophia John and graphic designer Riccardo Carrara. The slim volume visually investigates the colourful leaf vegetable radicchio through a series of still life images.

A softback with 60 pages and a sewn binding, the publication features vibrant spreads with pages of varying sizes offering captivating juxtapositions of images that lean into the abstract nature of the vegetable.

Described as ‘a dialogue between colour, texture, and obsession’, the publication begins with an essay called 'Astrid' by Logan Brown, written from the perspective of a radicchio that is being put into a compost bin.

Design History Reader: an emerging vision for a new narrative (Onomatopee). Edited by Kristen Coogan, €26.

The Design History Reader, created by students of the History of Graphic Design course from Boston University and edited by Associate Professor Kristen Coogan, offers a variety of perspectives into design history. In the introduction, ‘An Emerging Vision for Graphic Design History’, Coogan writes that the book challenges the Western design history canon with a ‘pluralistic approach’.

With 30 contributors who represent student voices, the 324-page softcover features research that highlights ‘under-known designers and design movements who deserve representation’, with global case studies including: ‘The Rise and Fall of Post-War Japanese Feminist Art’; ‘The Impact of Colonization on Taiwanese Graphic Design’; ‘Fairy Tales as Souvenirs of British Colonization’; ‘The Overlooked Impact of Afrofuturism’; and more.

The publication has chapters such as 'Herstory’, highlighting areas of feminist struggle and defiance; and ‘Heroic Craft’, which investigates the history of textiles and resistance through craft as a political force.

Breakout #2–100 Posters (Slanted Publishers). By Cihan Tamti. €26.

With a terracotta red cover and hot-foiled silver embossed letters, Breakout #2—100 Posters shows 100 selected works by graphic designer and creative director Cihan Tamti. The contents span the years 2022-25. Based in Bochum, Germany, Tamti presents a wide range of works, including international commissions with cultural institutions, companies, initiatives and musicians (Lauryn Hill), along with local support projects, personal experiments and collaborations with fellow designers.

Breakout #2 builds from of Tamti’s first publication Breakout—100 Posters, published by Slanted (see Eye blog) in 2021. It began as a personal experiment, using Instagram as a ‘graphic design gym’, designing a poster every day, which grew a large social following, garnering awards and client interest. The first issue largely featured experimental personal work; this second version shows many real-world projects.

With more than 125 pages, this thread-stitched softcover book showcases a spectrum of design techniques and approaches, such as custom lettering, engaging layouts and dynamic fonts, with small descriptions accompanying the work, along with the client’s city and the year the work was commissioned.

Eye editors, London

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.