Winter 2014
Editorial Eye 89
Photography and illustration may be separate disciplines, but they are interwoven with design. The photo portraits of Platon, who studied design, have a graphic sensibility that makes his work especially powerful on the page, and his People’s Portfolio has become a way to give a voice to those once excluded from the news. The culturally engaged practice of Project Projects, based, like Platon, in New York, shows how personal enthusiasms can mix fruitfully with client work.
Tony Meeuwissen’s illustrations speak of patience and craft, yet they are still designed, with internal logic and graphic structures that support a world of his own making. The long-neglected work of Dorothy and Otis Shepard, and based upon hand-made marks, required a systematic organisation of elements – image, symbol, letters and line – to implement what we now call ‘branding’.
Abbott Miller’s dance apps for the 2wice Arts Foundation show the benefits of applying original thinking to emerging media. His playful fusion of art and technology has created an app genre that is in a league of its own. The Mucho partners use contemporary tech to run a global agency based on something more timeless: friendship.
John L. Walters, Eye editor, London
First published in Eye no. 89 vol. 23 2014
Eye is the world’s most beautiful and collectable graphic design journal, published quarterly 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, back issues and single copies of the latest issue. You can see what Eye 89 looks like at Eye before You Buy on Vimeo.