I always had mixed feelings as student when I leafed through U&lc. The covers and size promised so much but often it didn’t deliver (at least for the style/idea hungry design student I was back then). Probably because it was ultimately a trade rag (back…
I picked up a few editions of U&lc from Matt Lamont and he also had this 1957 Penrose Annual - Volume 51. It may be a little dog eared but I could not resist it. The cover was enough but then Matt shared some of…
I’ve had this a while and finally gotten around to posting it. Mostly because there’s so much of it! AZTDR or A-Z of The Designers Republic is a vast body of work from the Sheffield duo. Chocked full of commercial, personal, political, cultural and random…
I was digging through my library and found four issues of Baseline. I’d forgotten how good it was! The issues are from 1999, 2004 and 2 from 2005 (# 27, 44, 46, 48) and all have ‘poster’ cover wraps which make them feel oh-so-special. Looking…
Before you pounce on me for the title, I know he wasn't the first ever person to practice the various crafts that make up graphic design. But William Addison Dwiggins was exceptionally talented in all things graphic design - illustration, typography, book design, calligraphy, layout, advertising,…
I'm often visiting the Letterform Archive just after they've put on a visit for this or that design team or artist or historian. So I get to see the 'table' that's been put together for them. Sometimes these reflect specific themes or ideas the visitor…
As you'd expect, the Letterform Archive has a lot of identity and brand guidelines. Many of these are not very glamorous, often simply presented in ring binders, but they are graphic design gold. On a recent visit I spent some time cataloguing them. Here are…
Octothorpe Interrobang A few weeks back I saw a tweet featuring a pic of the octothorpe or hash symbol, from Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols and Other Typographic Marks by Keith Houston. It looked exquisite and I couldn't resist grabbing a copy of the…
Since the early 2000s there's been an explosion in high quality independent magazines. These are often lovingly crafted, hugely indulgent, hyper focussed niche offerings. Not aimed at mass distribution or high ROI and usually not the most successful business models. One of these magazines that appeared…
Recently I was given this bumper bundle of the amazing Science of the Secondary, an atlas of things not yet discovered from Atelier HOKO and I've just spent a very rainy Sunday in SF devouring each of them. I have the first six issues and each one…
A great treat arrived today. It's an in depth look at the work of FHK Henrion, one of the most influential graphic designers in British design history. It's from Unit Editions and it's absolutely gorgeous. Not only is does it have a beautiful cloth bound,…
Just received my copy of the spectacular In Loving Memory of Work: A visual record of the UK miners' strike 1984-85 curated by Craig Oldham. It's wonderfully designed by Craig Oldham and Aaron Skipper, and published by A Unified Theory of Everything. The wrap around…
I have a few loose issues of Emigré so when the bound volumes were released I had to grab them. These are from the more theoretically engaged period, epitomized by the mouthpiece series. Great to look back on and see the issues that raged and in…
This is one of the later issues (No. 26 Spring 1993) of Emigré that was published in the large format. Fairly soon after this it went to a smaller journal like publication. Interestingly this coincided with a shift in graphic design writing. A move away from pure design expressions…
This is Dot Dot Dot or ... or maybe even ellipsis. It's the first issue of a graphic design journal started in 2000 that ran until January 2011. It was the brainchild of Peter Biľak and Stuart Bailey and as Peter puts it, it was an "after-hours…