Eye Magazine | Author

Rick Poynor

Recent articles by Rick Poynor

Groop dynamicsIssue 109, Winter 2026
Opinion

                                            Stereolab’s reliably wayward approach to music graphics is back for the cover of the Anglo-French band’s latest album. Critique by Rick Poynor            
Modernism in the slow laneIssue 108, Spring 2025
Review

                                                In the years before the Second World War, Britain was slow to embrace the most…                        
Pocket polymathIssue 108, Spring 2025
Review

                                                Decades before it became almost de rigueur to present yourself as a practitioner – and…                        
Going off the gridIssue 108, Spring 2025
Opinion

                                            Plastikcomb magazine looks back to 1990s graphics with stylish aplomb … and a focus on contemporary collage-makers.            
Gentleman’s relish [EXTRACT]Issue 107, Winter 2025
Review
Gert Dumbar was always a social animal. He possessed an impish sense of humour, a twinkle in his eye, bags of charm, and he knew how to use them …
Ambiguity bluesIssue 107, Winter 2025
Opinion

                                            A graphically illustrated art project reflects our uneasy relationship with the truth. Critique by Rick Poynor            
Art of darknessIssue 106, Summer 2024
Opinion

                                            Indie magazine Hellebore channels folk horror and the occult with an alchemical sense of graphic style. Critique by Rick Poynor            
Images do the talkingIssue 106, Summer 2024
Review
Seeing ↔ Making: Room for Thought is an inventive and challenging new project from the always interesting publisher Inventory Press
Banquet for a dudeIssue 105, Autumn 2023
Review

                                                The late Milton Glaser occupies a unique position at the pinnacle of Anglo-American graphic design. While…                        
Going off brandIssue 105, Autumn 2023
Review

                                                Jason Grant and Oliver Vodeb’s uncompromising handbook of theory and action ends slyly with a…                        
Overloading the pageIssue 105, Autumn 2023
Opinion

                                            A big survey of Dutch photobooks raises issues about visual editing and layout. Critique by Rick Poynor            
The creative anarchistIssue 105, Autumn 2023
Feature

                                            Printer, poet, designer and publisher Dennis Gould interweaves the personal with the political in his clamorous, intuitive letterpress work. By Rick Poynor.            
This is a columnIssue 104, Spring 2023
Opinion

                                            Design that tells the story of its own making harks back to conceptual art of the 1960s. By Rick Poynor            
Waiting at the intersectionIssue 103, Summer 2022
Review
Designers are often fascinated by a visual practice in which the maker enjoys an enviable autonomy usually unavailable to themselves. 
Unfinished businessIssue 103, Summer 2022
Opinion

                                            Scott King’s rallying call for creative freedom takes a satirical swipe at cultural gatekeepers. By Rick Poynor            
Experiments in destabilisationIssue 102, Autumn 2021
Opinion

                                            A CalArts book celebrates decades of purposeful graphic weirdness. Critique by Rick Poynor            
Los Angeles’ lost palace of treasuresIssue 101, Summer 2021
Opinion

                                            
	Using photographic evidence, designer Mark Nelson has reconstructed one of the great twentieth-century art collections. Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
Heroes of wealth and powerOpinion

                                            
	An essay published in Mack’s new ‘Discourse’ series accuses three prominent photographers of creating propaganda for global capitalism.
	Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
Godard becomes ‘Godard’Opinion

                                            In 1961, the new wave director posed for a German fashion photographer. The publicity pictures that followed are as self-reflexive as his films. Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
Palaces of petroleumOpinion

                                            The adventurous design of a 1960 book promoting Australia’s fossil fuel industry offers a poignant glimpse of an optimistic, unquestioning age.Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
The haunted shoreOpinion

                                            
	Images of spectral sea-bathers haunt the light-filled pages of Nigel Grierson’s self-published photobook.
	Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
Netherworld of crimeOpinion

                                            
	A new book expands upon an impressionistic photo-essay about crime by Gordon Parks, including images not published at the time.
	By Rick Poynor            
Eye’s early yearsIssue 100, Summer 2020
Feature

                                            
	Founding editor Rick Poynor recalls the aims and ideas behind the launch of an independent design magazine             
Recolouring the pastOpinion

                                            
	At a time when image falsification is a source of concern, the digital colourisation of documentary photographs is a retreat from the truth.
	Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
Instant object of desireOpinion

                                            
	A Polaroid photo’s aura of ephemeral uniqueness lies in its small white frame and supercharged surface. Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
Whiteness made strangeOpinion

                                            
	A brave, if flawed book of artists’ photographs addresses racism through the lens of white privilege. Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
Scalpel sharpOpinion

                                            
	A UK retrospective examines the explosive photomontages of feminist artist Linder, from the shock of her punk collages to pictures that juxtapose provocation with flowers and dance            
Among the spiritsOpinion

                                            
	Nadav Kander’s poetic and mysterious portraits of celebrities steal the limelight in his new book The Meeting. Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
Four-wheeled dreamsOpinion

                                            A new book of photographs of cars fails to acknowledge the bigger picture. Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
Traces of longingIssue 99, Autumn 2019
Opinion

                                            For Belgian collagist Katrien De Blauwer, making work is both an obsession and an act of therapy. By Rick Poynor            
Defiance and revelationOpinion

                                            
	A new book of Peter Kennard’s work adds context and background detail to his angry, radical photomontages. Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
Banquet of imagesOpinion

                                            
	For its 50th anniversary, the Arles festival stages a
	generous array of contemporary and historical
	exhibitions. Photo Critique by Rick Poynor.            
Nature in captivityOpinion

                                            
	Luigi Ghirri’s rigorously composed pictures of  plants outside people’s homes exercise a banal fascination. Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
A confederacy of lunchesOpinion

                                            
	A text-only book argues that ‘social’ photography is more about self-documentation than aesthetics. By Rick Poynor            
Posters for the peopleIssue 98, Spring 2019
Opinion

                                            
	Photographs by the Polish designer Wojciech Zamecznik investigate the use of posters as public communication By Rick Poynor            
Two cheers for publishingIssue 98, Spring 2019
Feature

                                            
	A two-volume book packed with graphic design history is a visual blockbuster, but does little for scholarship. By Rick Poynor            
Catalogue of thingsOpinion

                                            
	A close relative’s colour slides show a densely layered record of everyday life. Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
From out of the blueOpinion

                                            
	Volume one of Anna Atkins’ beautiful study of British algae, issued in 1843, was the first ever publication to be printed using photography.
	Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
Awkward objectsOpinion

                                            
	The tradition of the painted still life has been reinvented by contemporary photographers with pictures that pose a puzzle and slow the viewer down. Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
Streets without peopleOpinion

                                            
	Emigre’s Rudy VanderLans explores the clotted terrain of Tokyo’s Shibuya and Shinjuku districts with the eye of a graphic designer            
Hole in the headOpinion

                                            
	An artful book of deliberately torn, anonymous photographs from the Cold War era leaves many questions unanswered.
	Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
Hardcore historyIssue 97, Autumn 2018
Review

                                                More than 40 years after punk happened, the phenomenon is still being fêted as a…                        
Cinematic viewIssue 97, Autumn 2018
Opinion

                                            A recent edition of Aperture examines the enduring affinity between two art forms. Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
Twisting the alienOpinion

                                            
	Set to minimalist techno, Arthur Jafa’s APEX is a cycle of images that illuminate the condition of black people within white-dominated culture. Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
Scenes from an imperfect worldOpinion

                                            
	Even Don McCullin expressed doubts about his photographs of war and suffering. What is their message today? Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
Emotion picturesOpinion

                                            
	Alex Prager’s ravishing tableaux mix glamour and unease. Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
No fixed styleIssue 96, Spring 2018
Review

                                                Among British independent record companies, Mute Records, founded in 1978 by ‘accident’, has never enjoyed…                        
Mining the ruinsIssue 96, Spring 2018
Opinion

                                            
	When petrol replaced coal, the island of Hashima lost its purpose and slowly decayed. Rick Poynor examines a new photobook haunted by the past            
Enigmas of abstractionOpinion

                                            
	Photography records with startling accuracy. Why use it to create non-representational images? Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            
Different kinds of marginalOpinion

                                            
	Diane Arbus’s unsparing images retain their power to discomfit. Photo Critique by Rick Poynor            

Blog posts by Rick Poynor

David King: Books of blood and laughter

25 May 2016
Book design, Critical path, Graphic design, Photography, Visual culture

Rick Poynor meets David King, a genuine designer-author driven by an overriding need to lock horns with meaningful subject matter

Stepping across the threshold of David King’s North London house is like plunging into a…

Mission America

3 March 2015
Design history, Graphic design, Typography

New York was Lella and Massimo Vignelli’s kind of town. They were New York’s kind of designers. A profile from the 1980s by Rick Poynor

Entering the New York offices of Massimo and Lella Vignelli is like crossing the threshold…

Graphic and grotesque

29 June 2012
Book design, Illustration, Information design, Visual culture

Hidden Treasure shows the human body in all its pathos and horror.

Hidden Treasure is a deceptively innocuous title for a book devoted to pictures of skin…

In graphic detail – Critique on Kiki

15 April 2011
Book design, Graphic design, Illustration, Reviews, Visual culture

See Rick Poynor’s latest Critique – about Catel and Bocquet’s graphic biography of Surrealist icon Kiki de Montparnasse

I had some reservations about Kiki de Montparnasse, a new graphic biography of the artists’…

Revelations in style

24 September 2008
Graphic design, Typography, Visual culture

New Critique by Rick Poynor – now published in Eye 69

In the early days of Eye, we ran an article about the New Horizons series…