Feature

 

Play

Tomato

Tomato didn’t want to make an essay that could be readily ‘got’. For them, play is a kind of freedom, an activity inherently resistant to rules
 

Gothic horror

Steven Heller

The Nazi party’s obsession with cultural dominance extended far into calligraphy, lettering and type
 

Comic books come back with a cautious bang

Roger Sabin

After a 1990s bubble that went splatt, the comics industry has begun to renew itself through new formats, from glossy hardbacks to cheap pulp
 

The Press Release

John O'Reilly

The press release is one of the principal methods through which design companies, art directors and ad agencies speak to the media and the world outside. What does the press release say to the journalist during its brief journey from mailbox to wastebasket?
 

The endless library at the end of print

Teal Triggs

Does the current avalanche of glossy books constitute a genuine design history – or mere graphic ephemera? By Teal Triggs
 

Sound, code, image

John L. Walters

Postwar composers, such as Cage, Cardew and Crumb, have left an exuberant legacy of seductive graphic scores that still puzzle and fascinate the artists and musicians of today.
 

Reputations: Fabien Baron

Abbott Miller

‘Putting too much interpretation into design is not good … For me, the reasons behind it are more primitive than philosophical or sociological’
 

Language unleashed

Richard Hollis

Massin’s pioneering book designs of the 1960s used graphic devices to make the spoken word visible and enhance the text’s meaning
 

The chair man dances

Victor Margolin

This little red book is a capitalist keepsake – a testament to the corporate culture of a chair company with exotic picture research.
 

Reputations: Dan Friedman

Peter Rea

‘Radical modernism is my reaffirmation of the idealistic roots of our modernity, adjusted to include more of our diverse cultures’