Feature

The impossibility of neutrality

Muller+Hess

Seclusion is not an option in a global culture where information, money and images move mountains and ignore boundaries.

Dismantling the Basel principle

Emily King

The freewheeling global agenda of Müller+Hess both destroys and revives the typographic traditions of their home town.

E pluribus unum

Paul Elliman

An inquiry into myriad associations originating from this most abundantly occurring symbol in our writing: that fifth sign of our Roman ABC.

Typographica

Rick Poynor

Herbert Spencer’s magazine, a fusion of Modernism and eclecticism, was one of the most remarkable journals to emerge from British cultural publishing

A grammar of ornament

Graphic Thought Facility

Introducing the ultimate design award: GTF’s Paul Neale and Andy Stevens display the Owen Jones Memorial Trophy, photographed by Angela Moore

Lessons in printing trade journalism

Steven Heller

For one issue, under Jan Tschichold’s stewardship, a monthly trade journal, Typographische Mitteilungen, became a beacon for radical typography.

What you see is how you think

Max Bruinsma

A graduate student competition resulted in hybrids of browser and search engine that redraw and re-invent the fundamentals of “surfing the Web”

Travellers’ Tales

Chris Vermaas

A global Esperanto of icons, warning signs on cardboard boxes speak a visual language that leaves no room for misunderstanding

Stories unfolding in time and space

Steven Heller

With a revival of journalistic visual essays in US magazines, illustrators are once again becoming integral contributors to the editorial mix

In every home an architect

David Heathcote

Two government booklets, Space in the Home and Metric House Shells, endorse Modernist concepts of good design for the public wellbeing