Feature: Graphic design
Reputations: Maira Kalman
‘I was out walking the dear dog and I saw 500 things that made me want to make art.’
Mr Roughcut
or: how graphic designer Pablo Ferro learned to split the screen, cut the crap and tell the story (in the time it took to run the titles)
Revolutionary language
“A revolutionary graphic language must seek to expose the meaning by presenting a chain of ideas, images, structures in as much of their complexity as is economically feasible.” Robin Fior in The Designer, journal of the society of industrial artists and designers, London, May 1972.
The work must be read
Lawrence Weiner’s art is a kind of sculpture made of language, free from excess or embellishment and strangely familiar from its far-reaching influence on graphic designers
What is this thing called graphic design criticism?
In the last ten years a substantial body of critical writing on graphic design has amassed. In this transatlantic dialogue, Rick Poynor and American design critic Michael Rock explore the state of design criticism now and put the arguments for different approaches
A New York state of mind
The design of The New Yorker has nearly always taken the approach that ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, with a familiar layout and masthead. Does a face-lift jeopardise its relationship with its readers? Time to call in the Type Police
Reputations: Malcolm Garrett
‘I figure it’s my job to be this kind of blinkered believer. You know: I am the new futurist, I will live in the technological world.’
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.’