Sarah Snaith

Recent articles by Sarah Snaith

Reputations: Mario Eskenazi

Issue 101, Summer 2021

Feature

‘Here in Europe everything was more formal, more rigid, and American design was freer, fresher. I tried to be a mix of the two.’ Interview by Sarah Snaith

Elaine Ramos: The book designer

Issue 100, Summer 2020

Feature

‘We overdose on communication, but “beautiful” design circulates only between the culturally literate.’

Yes we can change

Issue 99, Autumn 2019

Review

Sunny Dolat, co-founder of The Nest Collective, at What Design Can Do México City, 2019…

Swiss fresh air

Issue 99, Autumn 2019

Review

This modest book is the first to cover the long career of Swiss graphic designer…

Pay it forward

Issue 98, Spring 2019

Feature

Rubén Fontana devised a system for teaching typography that is grounded in Argentina’s culture and politics

Type now: Independence and originality

Issue 98, Spring 2019

Feature

The business of type design

Issue 98, Spring 2019

Feature

The challenges of earning a living from type design, with honest, thoughtful responses from foundries worldwide

Reputations: Gail Bichler

Issue 96, Spring 2018

Feature

‘Our content is hard to come by. You are designing in real time about world events. The freedom we have in service of these articles is a special opportunity.’

We Made This: Technical challenge

Issue 95, Winter 2017

Feature

Sarah Snaith talks to Briar Levit, director of a new film on the history of graphic design

Stuck in neutral

Issue 94, Summer 2017

Review

The scope of Mapping Graphic Design History in Switzerland is expansive. The editors have set…

Advice from a mentor you may never meet

Issue 94, Summer 2017

Feature

The ethos behind the Hall of Femmes series is to pass down stories, advice and experiences to a new generation of female art directors and designers

Industrialised folk art

Issue 93, Winter 2016

Review

Alexander Girard ‘brought together what the modern had once separated: craftsmanship and industry, folk art…

When the camera nearly always lies

Issue 92, Summer 2016

Review

The Tate Modern’s ‘Performing for the Camera’ began with Yves Klein’s famous Leap into the…

Wit, bad taste and loud type

Issue 91, Spring 2016

Feature

The photos of legendary graphic designer Robert Brownjohn show an outsider’s view of 1960s London

Four seasons

Issue 90, Summer 2015

Feature

Micha Weidmann’s art direction for a cookbook by London chef Ollie Dabbous, with photographs by Joakim Blockstrom

Ring-bound to rule them all

Issue 90, Summer 2015

Review

Manuals 2: Design & Identity Guidelines (Unit Editions, £75) follows Unit Editions’ Manuals 1, 201…

Dance on the spot

Issue 89, Winter 2014

Feature

Abbott Miller’s iPad contemporary dance apps for the 2wice Arts Foundation – a dynamic coming together of code, choreography, music and design – bring playful, digital interaction to loops and layers of physical performance

Critical heat on the Aegean coast

Issue 89, Winter 2014

Feature

A workshop in a remote Turkish village gave international students a chance to explore what design can do when technology is scarce

Raw like sushi

Issue 87, Spring 2014

Feature

Alternative food zines scramble the conventions of magazine design to make a more authentic flavour

Cup challenge

Issue 87, Spring 2014

Feature

David Hillman’s photographic designs for Dragonfly changed the look of tea packaging

Violently opposed to war

Issue 86, Autumn 2013

Review

Looking for images of ‘peace’ on the internet yields predictable and clichéd results, as Signs…

Recent blog posts about Sarah Snaith

Ideas to the fore

6 May 2020
Design education, Graphic design, Illustration, Typography, Visual culture

A recent Spanish-language book champions South American designers in a typographic format that foregrounds their thoughts about practice
Books about Argentinian design are rare, as are books that more broadly consider and contextualise…

Spirit of the Paraná

2 July 2019
Graphic design, Illustration, Visual culture

Graphic artist Alan Berry Rhys brings the ‘river monsters’ and creation myths of Argentina’s Paraná River to London
Last week Argentinian graphic designer and illustrator Alan Berry Rhys brought a vision of the…

ModMag17: Part two

20 November 2017
Graphic design, Illustration, Information design, Magazines, Typography, Visual culture

The second instalment of Sarah Snaith’s report from the fifth annual Modern Magazine conference in London
Writer and podcaster Liv Siddall kicked off the afternoon of the ModMag17 conference with a…

ModMag17: Part one

10 November 2017
Graphic design, Illustration, Magazines, Photography, Typography, Visual culture

Sarah Snaith reports from the fifth annual Modern Magazine conference
The fifth annual Modern Magazine conference, initiated and curated by magCulture founder Jeremy Leslie, took…

Faithful dress

1 January 2017
Book design, Graphic design, Illustration, Information design, Reviews

The latest publication from GraphicDesign& is an illustrated spotters’ guide to nuns’ habits. Review by Sarah Snaith
Looking Good: A visual guide to a nun’s habit is full of interesting facts for…

Dancing glyphs

9 October 2015
Illustration, New media, Typography, Visual culture

Franchise Animated – a collaborative project from Dutch foundry Animography – uses the skills of 110 motion designers. By Sarah Snaith
Kinetic typography is not new — it is used in advertising, for film and television…

Ghosts of the ghetto

8 June 2015
Photography, Visual culture

Photographer Henryk Ross risked his life to bear witness to the Holocaust. By Sarah Snaith
The Art Gallery of Ontario is showing a selection of salvaged photographs taken by Jewish…

Mounted, not sprayed

5 February 2015
Illustration, Information design, Reviews, Visual culture

International street artists ‘map their spaces’ on the walls of London’s Somerset House
‘Mapping the City’, featuring 50 artists, occupies the New Wing of Somerset House, a space…

Plus is more

7 December 2014
Graphic design, Posters, Reviews, Typography

The cover of Unit Editions’ Type Plus highlights the book’s arguments, writes Sarah Snaith. Designers…

Of monumental proportions

30 May 2014
Graphic design, Reviews, Typography, Visual culture

Lettering Large is a graphic designer’s coffee table book, easily read in one sitting but…

Reading in reverse

30 April 2014
Reviews, Typography, Visual culture

The Art Gallery of Ontario is showing works on paper, and other media, by American sculptor Bruce Nauman
The Art Gallery of Ontario’s glass and titanium ribcage (which spans 600 feet) breathes out…

Type traces in Granary Square

5 April 2014
Book design, Design education, Graphic design, Reviews, Typography

‘Lettering: Objects, Examples, Practice’ is the first exhibition of its kind at Central Saint Martins’ Kings’s Cross premises
The ‘Lettering: Objects, Examples, Practice’ exhibition, at Central Saint Martins’ Lethaby Gallery, displays traces of…

Type on the tongue

20 December 2013
Food design, Typography, Visual culture

Eye’s panel checks out the taste of Helvetica, Impact and Comic Sans (as cooked up by Sarah Hyndman)
Designer Sarah Hyndman is known for her Type Tasting workshops – popular events at Pick…

Out of the shadows

19 December 2013
Book design, Photography, Reviews, Typography, Visual culture

The Gentle Author delivers an album of London past and present in time for Christmas
The long hours of darkness that signify the encroaching winter can cast an unfavourable light…

On the water, off the wall

6 December 2013
Graphic design, Reviews, Typography, Visual culture

Lawrence Weiner’s typographic and gestural drawings fill the lower gallery of Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum
‘Written on the Wind’ (Op de Wind Geschreven) is an exhibition at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum…

The power of type

22 November 2013
Reviews, Typography

Unit Editions’ book Type Only documents graphic design – from the late 1990s to the…

Tactile tendrils and funhouse therapy

2 September 2013
Graphic design, New media, Reviews, Technology

‘Touch and Tweet!’ at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk encourages visitors to interact and leave their inhibitions behind
The Stedelijk Museum’s ‘Touch and tweet!’ exhibition in Amsterdam, featuring works by Daan Roosegaarde and…

Dance, light and architecture

14 August 2013
Music design, New media, Reviews, Visual culture

New Movement Collective inhabits a disused space with dance, architecture, light and sound
The prospect of combining contemporary dance with architecture, light installation and sound is an enticing…

Private fears of public speaking

3 June 2013
Design history, Graphic design, Illustration, Photography, Reviews

A report from day two of the inaugural Point conference in London
Conference themes are often loosely interpreted by speakers and the themes themselves leave space for…

Museum of lights

15 May 2013
Graphic design, Photography, Reviews, Visual culture

Thomas E. Rinaldi’s New York Neon documents a cityscape sprawling with the remnants of illuminated…

A graphics hoopla

20 April 2013
Graphic design, Illustration

Pick Me Up festival: one part exhibition, one part fun fair
Pick Me Up, the annual graphic arts festival at Somerset House, showcases a mixture of…

Tween zine

28 March 2013
Graphic design, Illustration, Magazines, Visual culture

The Loop is a newsprint magazine that brings the news to life for children aged eight to thirteen
Children’s magazine The Loop has a deceptive strapline: ‘The magazine that thinks it’s a newspaper’…

Node weaving

4 March 2013
Graphic design, Illustration, Visual culture

The Design Museum highlights a fair trade collaboration between Western illustrators, designers and craftspeople from Nepal
On 5 March 2013, the Design Museum shop will launch a collection of illustrated rugs…

Neighbourhood watch

7 February 2013
Graphic design, Illustration, Visual culture

Jean Jullien’s ‘Allo?’ opens tonight at Kemistry Gallery with a sideways look at the here and now
French graphic designer Jean Jullien opens his first solo exhibition at Kemistry Gallery in Shoreditch…

The stars stare back in Scotland

19 January 2013
Graphic design, Illustration, Reviews, Visual culture

The Edinburgh exhibition ‘From Death to Death’ looks at mortality, the body, dolls, guilt and other shadows of the mind.
The exhibition ‘From Death to Death and Other Small Tales’ hangs contemporary and historically significant…

Sticky fingers

5 December 2012
Book design, Illustration, Information design, Reviews

A new book by Marion Deuchars inspires children to get stuck in and make marks that are truly digital
Marion Deuchars’ Let’s make some great fingerprint art is the latest in her series of…

Broadway the art way

19 November 2012
Graphic design, Photography, Reviews, Visual culture

Tate Modern’s two-part retrospective juxtaposes two artist-photographers: William Klein and Daido Moriyama.
The Tate Modern’s exhibition ‘William Klein + Daido Moriyama’ is introduced with projections of primary…

The Bloomsbury set

24 October 2012
Book design, Graphic design, Reviews, Typography

De Bondt, Boom, Burrill, Butterick, Garland, Kubel, Scher and many more make Typo London 2012 a highly ‘Social’ affair. No question about it.
Typo London commenced with graphic designer Sara De Bondt’s fittingly understated introduction, writes Sarah Snaith…

The view from Here

5 October 2012
Graphic design, Illustration, Photography, Typography, Visual culture

Typography, generosity, jelly and body architecture (with a side order of unexplained nudity) at It’s Nice That’s ‘creative symposium’
In mid-September, It’s Nice That (see Eye 82) held their first creative symposium at The…

Stripes and teasers

24 September 2012
Graphic design, Illustration, Visual culture

In ‘Hide and Seek’ at London’s Kemistry Gallery, illustrator Malika Favre delights in playing with our optical expectations.
Illustrator Malika Favre’s first solo exhibition ‘Hide and Seek’ at London's Kemistry Gallery hinges on…

Newsprint appetiser

4 September 2012
Food design, Magazines, Photography

Current food trends meet photography and art direction in Ico’s giveaway foodie mag
Last month, London agency Ico Design published the first edition of Taste, a newsprint publication…

At first bite

22 August 2012
Graphic design, Magazines, Visual culture

A new food and culture journal, The Gourmand, gives design-conscious readers something to get their teeth into …
The Gourmand, a new food and culture journal, hinges on the way food brings people…

Is the museum as dead as print?

13 August 2012
Reviews, Visual culture

‘Inside / outside’ – a symposium about the future of exhibition spaces at the new Tate Tanks – questioned the future of art institutions
The Tate Modern’s symposium ‘Inside / Outside: Materialising the Social’ marked the first weekend of…

Thought for food

16 July 2012
Graphic design, Reviews, Technology, Visual culture

Do graphic designers have an appetite for the challenges of food design?
The ‘International Conference on Designing Food and Designing for Food’ was a two-day event, held…

Every which way

9 July 2012
Music design, New media, Photography, Technology, Visual culture

Abbott Miller’s iPad app gives a new framework to contemporary dance
Fifth Wall, an iPad app designed by Abbott Miller for 2wice Arts Foundation, presents an…

Untitled tiles

27 June 2012
Graphic design, Illustration, Posters, Reviews, Visual culture

There’s a pattern to Rob Lowe’s ‘Details’ exhibition at Kemistry Gallery
Rob Lowe has covered the walls of London’s tiny Kemistry Gallery with an array of…