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Simon Esterson

Recent articles by Simon Esterson

Putting the stories togetherIssue 106, Summer 2024
Review

                                                Please don’t be misled by the title of David Jury’s book Mid-Century Type. It is…                        
Peace, love and double-page spreadsIssue 106, Summer 2024
Review
Between the essays, Ricco has assembled an archive of Twen covers and spreads (including those shown here) that demonstrate Fleckhaus’s genius.
Reputations: Sharp Type, Chantra Malee and Lucas SharpIssue 106, Summer 2024
Feature

                                            Lucas Sharp: ‘The
only thing keeping me excited about being in this industry, and doing this
work, is the stuff I have yet to draw.’
Chantra
Malee: ‘We could have
sold the entire foundry but ... what are we
supposed to do for the rest of our lives?’ 
[EXTRACT]            
Fontstand 2022Issue 104, Spring 2023
Review

                                                It was a Dutch train strike, rather than Covid-19, that threatened to disrupt Fontstand’s in-real-life event…                        
John Randle and his 26 soldiers of leadIssue 104, Spring 2023
Feature

                                            As Matrix comes to a full stop, its doughty founder talks to Eye. Photographs by Philip Sayer [EXTRACT]            
Magic and logicIssue 103, Summer 2022
Review

                                                How do you tell the story of the way graphic design actually gets done? Two books…                        
Bound for modernityIssue 103, Summer 2022
Opinion

                                            Spiral and comb binding have been rehabilitated for aesthetics and practicality. By Simon Esterson [EXTRACT]            
Ten projects by Jim SutherlandIssue 101, Summer 2021
Feature

                                            
	A graphic designer downsizes to spend more time thinking, studying and designing without commercial studio pressures. What could possibly go right? By Simon Esterson. Portrait by Philip Sayer            
Fritz Gottschalk and the Swiss-Canadian connectionIssue 99, Autumn 2019
Feature

                                            
	Gottschalk + Ash International spans more than five decades, a Swiss design studio with Modernist roots in Northern Europe and North America. Eye went to Zürich to meet the people behind the practice            
Liberté, égalité, typographyIssue 97, Autumn 2018
Feature

                                            
	Serge Ricco, creative director of l’Obs, has shown this word-driven, left-wing French weekly the power of expressive type and images            
A note on the typeIssue 95, Winter 2017
Review

                                                The Eye reviews desk bends under the weight of new books on type, from the…                        
Notes from the American North-WestIssue 93, Winter 2016
Review

                                                With a notebook and pencil poking out of the top pocket of his denim work…                        
Book of the mag of the momentIssue 93, Winter 2016
Review

                                                IL is the monthly supplement of the Italian business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. Since…                        
The book of MichaelIssue 92, Summer 2016
Review

                                                It is a pleasure to read a book that is honest, accessible and direct about…                        
Reputations: MuchoIssue 89, Winter 2014
Feature

                                            
	‘We were interested in working internationally, to learn from different cultures and to know how design behaves globally. We had international clients. But you really need people in those places to stay active. So the answer is sharing.’            
All the news in theory and in actionIssue 88, Summer 2014
Review

                                                Everybody is publishing books about small independent magazines these days (or planning to, from what…                        
An Atlas of TypeformsIssue 86, Autumn 2013
Feature

                                            
	As a sidebar to ‘Quiet man of letters’, Simon Esterson talks about his early encounters with this celebrated book by Alan Bartram and James Sutton            
Sans serifs in suburbiaIssue 87, Spring 2014
Feature

                                            
	Sainsbury’s brought 1960s Modernism to the kitchen cupboard            
Well fed in the West EndIssue 87, Spring 2014
Feature

                                            
	Ardizzone’s menus evoked a mid-century world of food-loving Londoners            
Pictures on a pageIssue 84, Autumn 2012
Review

                                                This Eye special issue about Monotype focuses on the technology of putting words on the…                        
Robin NicholasIssue 84, Autumn 2012
Feature

                                            
	‘I don’t see myself as a typeface designer. Hermann Zapf is a typeface designer. What I have done is to develop typefaces: pulling component parts of various typefaces that seem to work well and amalgamate those into a new design.’            
Dan Rhatigan: All about workflowIssue 84, Autumn 2012
Feature

                                            
	Monotype’s UK type director talks about the way the company’s 125-year history informs its approach to twenty-first century challenges.            
Editorial Eye 84Issue 84, Autumn 2012
Opinion

                                                                            The original Monotype was an ingenious piece of highly disruptive technology that caused the biggest…            
A tale of two diagramsIssue 83, Summer 2012
Review

                                                Frank Pick, the London Underground system’s legendary manager, believed good design was good for business.He…                        
Reputations: Commercial TypeIssue 82, Winter 2011
Feature

                                            
	‘There has been typography on the Web for its entire existence, because there are words, and where there are words there is typography … Some people believe that there is going to be a radical change in the process of reading because of webfonts. Actually, no.’             
Off the shelfIssue 82, Winter 2011
Review

                                                Jonny Trunk is obsessed by the childhood memory of a cornflake box seen on family…                        
Drink meIssue 76, Summer 2010
Review

                                                From its cork-finished covers to its wine-bottle proportions, Eduardo del Fraile’s Wine Labels looks and…                        
World of designer interiorsFeature

                                    
Print, but not as we know itFeature

                                    
Beauty and processFeature

                                    
Big book of booksIssue 73, Autumn 2009
Review

                                                Bibliographic is a book about books. British designer Jason Godfrey has selected 100 books about…                        
Passion for printFeature

                                    
Ragbag of magazine designFeature

                                    
You can judge by the coverIssue 70, Winter 2008
Review

                                                Designer Andrew Howard’s catalogue of his exhibition Gateways: An International Exhibition of Book Covers, Portugal…                        
Soft-edged memoirIssue 81, Autumn 2011
Review

                                                Duncan Fallowell’s ‘memoir for misfits’ How to disappear (Ditto Press, £14.99) is possibly as interesting…                        
Head TripIssue 78, Winter 2010
Feature

                                            Simon Esterson applauds the vivid drama of a pharmaceutical brochure            
Manual transmissionsIssue 68, Summer 2008
Review

                                                Will Burtin was one of the pioneers of twentieth-century American graphic design, but he strode…                        
Union of Soviet socialist imagesIssue 71, Spring 2009
Review

                                                Cover design for Red Star Over Russia (Tate). In 1970 David King was in Moscow…                        
The ranged left yearsIssue 74, Winter 2009
Review

                                                As we leave the certainties of the last few decades behind (stable social and economic…                        
Putting the graph in graphicIssue 70, Winter 2008
Review

                                                Data Flow: Visualising Information in Graphic Design (Die Gestalten Verlag, £40, $78, €49.90) is publisher…                        
Printing.comIssue 66, Winter 2007
Feature

                                            Where digital tools changed design, global communications and green issues are redefining the world of print            
The font now arriving at Platform 1Issue 75, Spring 2010
Review

                                                Stories in the glossier design books usually have neat endings: the project is completed successfully…                        
Penguin in picturesIssue 73, Autumn 2009
Review

                                                The Penguin Collectors’ Society is an owners club for people who worship at the shrine…                        
The elegant simplicity of torn paperIssue 69, Autumn 2008
Review

                                                There is an elegant simplicity about this combined book and DVD on the Dutch designer…                        
Glimpses of a graphic realityIssue 33, Autumn 1999
Review

                                                Admit it. What graphic designers really want is to see work by other graphic designers…                        
Taking care of businessIssue 80, Summer 2011
Feature

                                            The pages of Bloomberg Businessweek explode with infographics, illustration and design experiment. Interview with creative director Richard Turley            
That’s art directionIssue 61, Autumn 2006
Feature

                                            Words and pictures – and the way they are used to tell a story – lie at the heart of every magazine, big or small            
In few words / Manplan 1Issue 54, Winter 2004
Feature

                                            The AR’s Manplan is a tactile reminder of a time when magazines lived dangerously            
Brodovitch’s encoreIssue 80, Summer 2011
Review

                                                In 1945, the small New York publisher J. J. Augustin published, in an edition of…                        
When the pen was mightyIssue 78, Winter 2010
Review

                                                These two volumes (Custom Lettering of the 40s &amp; 50s, Custom Lettering of the 60s…                        
Kit of partsIssue 44, Summer 2002
Feature

                                            A newspaper is a giant kit of parts that gets assembled in different ways each day. Contemporary newspaper design is about trying to define how the kit should look and work. Drawing on examples from throughout the world, Simon Esterson examines the process             
First Things First Manifesto 2000Issue 33, Autumn 1999
Feature

                                            Thirty-three visual communicators renew the 1964 call for a change of priorities            
The Vignellis: a thoroughly Modernist marriageIssue 60, Summer 2006
Opinion

                                            Lella and Massimo Vignelli talk to Eye’sJohn L. Walters and Simon Esterson            
InspirationIssue 58, Winter 2005
Opinion

                                            
	Designer Simon Esterson finds inspiration in Ken Briggs’s National Theatre programmes from the 1960s            
Could this be the death of the dot?Issue 14, Autumn 1994
Review

                                                How can you make a picture look its best on the printed page? In recent…                        

Recent blog posts about Simon Esterson

They showed backbone

26 July 2024
Reviews

Spinorama is an exhibition of book spines in East London. Simon Esterson takes a sideways look

Letterpress celebration

13 October 2020
Design history, Graphic design, Posters, Type Tuesday, Typography

Italy’s Tipoteca museum commemorates its quarter century with 25 specially commissioned posters. By Simon Esterson and James Clough

Based in Cornuda in the northeast of Italy, Tipoteca is one of the finest printing…

Every Eye ever

26 June 2020
Brand madness, Graphic design, Magazines, Photography, Typography, Events and exhibitions

A display of every edition of Eye from 1 to 100 turned magCulture into a surreal cross between gallery and newsagent, complete with masked customers. Art director Simon Esterson reports

On Thursday 18 June 2020, Jeremy Leslie was keen to celebrate customers being able to…

Reportage lives

12 August 2016
Magazines, Photography, Typography

Long reads, big pictures. Newspaper magazines rise to the challenge of telling real stories

This weekend two newspaper magazines step out of their usual structures and remind us what…

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…

Type Tuesday: Reputations

3 July 2012
Graphic design, Magazines, Technology, Typography

Commercial Type’s Christian Schwartz & Paul Barnes – interviewed in Eye 82

‘There has been typography on the Web for its entire existence, because there are words…

Beatrice Warde lecture

27 October 2010
Design history, Graphic design, Typography

Sébastien Morlighem’s gripping tale of Excoffon and the Fonderie Olive.

Tuesday night: to Bridewell Hall at the St Bride Library for the annual Beatrice Warde…

Early adopter: Desmond Jeffery

4 November 2009
Design history, Graphic design, Posters, Reviews, Typography, Visual culture

St Bride hails the ‘non-designer’ who’s an unsung hero of British Modernism

The most exciting graphic design exhibition I’ve seen in London recently is at the St Bride…

Jan van Toorn at the Mermaid

29 March 2009
Design education, Design history, Graphic design, Visual culture

‘Collecting images is not enough. How democratic is it?’

In a very polite, and very Dutch way, writes Simon Esterson, Jan van Toorn used…

Founding father of infodesign

28 July 2008
Design history, Graphic design, Magazines, Reviews

How Will Burtin used design for science in exhibitions and magazines

Above: the walk-in Cell exhibition, a million times larger than life, designed by Will Burtin…