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graphic design in theory and practice

Complete Guide to Digital Design

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This is a beautifully designed and an elegantly produced book. It’s an excellent counterpart to Bob Gordon’s other recent publication – Making Digital Type Look Good. First he offers a brief introduction which illustrates contemporary digital design in a variety of media – print, packaging, signage, exhibitions, Internet, and Multimedia. The rest of the book is in four sections. The first deals with basic design principles. That is, issues such as shape, line, colour, type, layout, images, and the dynamics of emphasis, contrast, and shade.

Complete Guide to Digital DesignThe next sections look in detail at the latest developments in design for print publications, public signage, exhibitions, for the computer screen, and for multimedia. If any of this sounds rather abstract, it has to be said that these principles are illustrated in a wonderful series of double-page spreads, orchestrated in a beautifully rhythmic series of variations on a five column grid. The book itself lives up to the high design values it is presenting.

The supposition is that many designers will be migrating from the world of print to that of the digital interface – and I think that is reasonable – since the Web gets some of its most efficient and elegant designs from the influences of print design.

There’s an account of the best software programs [QuarkXPress and PageMaker] and how they are used in print preparation. This is followed by a series of illustrated case histories and interesting details of what is now called ‘surface design’ used in instances as varied as cardboard engineering and multimedia exhibitions.

On designing for the screen, there are useful tips on coping with the frustrations of Web page composition – such as browser download times and display uncertainties. There’s an introduction to Flash, Web editors, and graphics packages such as Fireworks.

The section on multimedia concentrates on designing for CD-ROM and DVD using software such as Macromedia Director and Adobe After Effects – all of which are now within budget price range. The big advantage of this increasingly popular form of delivery is that the author can control the appearance of the finished design on screen.

This is a very elegant production which is worth owning as a stunning example of graphic design in its own right. But it will also form an excellent overview of what is current in the field of digital graphics.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Bob Gordon and Maggie Gordon, The Complete Guide to Digital Graphic Design, London: Thames and Hudson, 2002, pp.224, ISBN: 050028315X

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David Gentleman Design

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portfolio of illustrations, engravings, posters, and designs

David Gentleman is a very English artist and designer. He studied with Edward Bawden and John Nash at the Royal College of Art, London, and has established an international reputation from his work in engraving, lithographs, book illustration, posters, and a number of high-profile public design commissions. This monograph comes from a new series on individual designers published by the Antique Collectors Club. David Gentleman Design is a beautifully designed and well illustrated portfolio of his work from the 1950s to the present, with an introductory biographical and critical essay that outlines the wide range of his work. The rest of the book is devoted to showing examples which range from small private designs to large scale public commissions.

David GentlemanHe was just too young to make a major contribution to the Festival of Britain in 1951, but well-enough connected with its major graphic designers to help him launch a successful career.

His work for the covers of Penguin Classics in the 1950s and 1960s will be very recognisable to anyone who remembers the originals or who has haunted second-hand bookshops since. He is particularly good at capturing the texture and details of buildings, even in small scale watercolour drawings – from humble rural cottages to grand country houses.

The engravings and woodcuts cling somewhat unappetizingly to a sort of late-Victorian attitude to design, whereas his watercolour drawings (executed at the same time) all seem modern and fresh. There is usually more blank space left in the design, which lets the object breathe, and there is more contrast between fine lines and washes of colour.

David Gentleman - book cover designThere’s an overall feeling of softness and a deep feeling for English traditions. But this isn’t to say that his work is feeble or nostalgic. Indeed, some of his most striking graphics are the posters designed to support radical social causes, such as his opposition to the war in Iraq.

It’s interesting to note that as a young artist he set himself the twin goals of ‘never to teach and never to commute’ – and to his credit that he managed both. Instead, he seems to have accepted commissions from all and sundry. These range from designs for coins and postage stamps, book illustrations, lithographs, designs for fabrics and crockery, book dust-jacket covers, illustrated travel books from France, Italy, and India, commercial logos, colophons, and even the covers of company reports,

It might be a matter of personal taste, but it seems to me that his finest works are the architectural studies and the coloured landscape drawings. Certainly this attractive little selection generates the taste for seeing more.

The series of design monographs of which this volume is part feature very high design and production values. They are slim but beautifully stylish productions, each with an introductory essay, and all the illustrative material is fully referenced.

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© Roy Johnson 2010

Brian Webb and Peyton Skipwith, David Gentleman: Design, Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club, 2009, pp.96, ISBN: 1851495959

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Design Since 1900

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encyclopedia of modern design and designers

This is a comprehensive guide to all aspects of modern design. It covers graphics, consumer products, interior decor, furniture, print, advertising, plus industrial and architectural design. Entries run from the Finnish designer Alvar Aalto (who for obvious reasons always comes first in such listings) through Rene Lalique (glassware) and the multi-talented Hungarian Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, to typographist Hermann Zapf and Piet Zwart (who for the same reason always comes last).

Design Since 1900Most entries are illustrated by thumbnail graphics. It’s a shame they are not in colour, but you can’t expect everything in such a good-value production. The entries are either brief biographical sketches of individual designers (Saul Bass, Charles Eames, Raymond Loewy, Alexandr Rodchenko) with notes on why they have been so influential. There are also short histories of companies famous for their emphasis on design (Bauhaus, General Motors, Olivetti, Wiener Werkstatte).

Others include influential artistic movements (art deco, constructivism, neo-plasticism, and post-modernism) and individual products which have become icons of modern design (the Citroen DS19, Dyson vacuum cleaners, Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International).

There are notes on materials of manufacture (aluminium, formica, MDF, polyurethane) movements and schools (Deutsche Werkbund, Omega, and Black Mountain College) and explanations of technical terms such as anthropometrics, bit mapping, deconstruction, and third age design (which isn’t quite what you might think).

He even includes individual shops such as Biba, Habitat, and the Body Shop; typographists such as Neville Brody, Eric Gill, and Jan Tschichold. The only thing missing is Information Technology. There are a couple of mentions of computer games, but curiously enough not a single reference to Web design.

The text incorporates extensive cross-referencing, suggestions for further reading, and a chronological chart of design highlights since 1900.

© Roy Johnson 2004

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Guy Julier, Design Since 1900, London: Thames and Hudson, 2004, pp.224, ISBN: 0500203792

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Design Without Boundaries

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visual communication in transition

Design Without Boundarie is a collection of articles on visual communication produced between the 1980s and the mid-1990s. That was a period that saw an unprecedented development in graphic design in the USA and Europe, but Rick Poyner observes that there was no corresponding critical analysis of what was going on. This is his contribution to rectifying the matter. The pieces are exhibition and book reviews, profiles of designers, essays, and interviews. He is energetic and passionate about his subject, which is the relationship between design, illustration, and art – all of which he treats at both a theoretical and commercial level. And he’s truly international in his reach of vision. He interviews April Greiman in America, reports from Dutch and Swiss design studios, and searches out UK designers in their workshops and even their homes.

Design Without BoundariesHis approach is combative and challenging. He doesn’t give up looking for theoretical rigour and method, and he certainly doesn’t pull any punches with quite well-established figures. Jan Tschichold and Paul Rand both come under fire in the early pages of the book. It’s a pity there aren’t more illustrations (and some colour) because he spends a lot of time describing designers’ work which would come alive better with graphics. However, there is an up side to this. Because of his pursuit of rigour and clear analysis, he’s forced to describe works in a way which (where there are illustrations) turn out to be accurate and objective – certainly not the sloppy, self-oriented impressionism which passes for much of art criticism.

He really comes into his own on the ground of UK-based design. There are not one but two articles on Neville Brody in which he characteristically praises him for his design and challenges his theoretical assumptions. [In my experience, graphic artists are rarely gifted in articulating ideas about their own production. Go to any art school finals show to see the pretentious nonsense they write about their work.]

Peter Saville has interesting revelations to make about surviving early celebrity. It’s amazing how insecure these famous designers can still feel beneath their apparent success. This might be caused by the rapidly changing styles of the businesses that employ them – music, fashion, popular magazines, and the arty end of commercial advertising.

Other designers he discusses include Vaughan Oliver, Why Not Associates, Cartlidge Levene, Tomato, and Jonathan Barnbrook. Then he does the same thing for a group he classifies as illustrators – Russell Mills, Dan Fern, Andrzej Klimowski, and the American Milton Glaser.

There’s a section on magazines covering Nova, Oz, Modern Painters, David Carson’s Ray Gun, and Emigre. These analyses are very impressive indeed. For Poynor not only captures the graphic spirit of these publications; he offers as well their background commercial histories, their successions of editors, changes of policy, and in most cases the reasons for their demise.

I liked the fact that the essays were fairly short – three or four pages at most. Because he gets straight down to business with no padding. And yet it’s a huge book. If you’re looking for a survey of contemporary design issues written by an extremely well-informed insider – this is it.

© Roy Johnson 2002

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Rick Poynor, Design Without Boundaries, London: Booth-Clibborn, 1998, pp.296, ISBN: 186154006X

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Design Writing Research

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illustrated essays on design, graphics, and typography

Design Writing Research is the name given to the combined work of Ellen Lupton and Abbott Miller, who are curator at Cooper-Hewitt design museum and director of a New York design agency. This elegant compilation brings together their writings on a wide variety of design-related topics – from the graphic presentation of numbers; contemporary hieroglyphs; the choice of body text in printed books; advertising; racial presentations in journalism; the seductiveness of commercial advertising; and newspaper layout and design – to a brief history of graphic design in America. This splendid variety in content is also matched by the design of the book itself.

Design Writing ResearchThey start with an essay on Deconstruction in design history – tracing the influence of French critical theory in the US and eventually settling on notions of typographical presentation. There’s also an essay on the history of punctuation and spacing which is wittily illustrated with a visual paraphrase of punctuation styles – from Latin monumental inscriptions to email emoticons in one short essay. This is a perfect use of the print medium, and an excellent fusion of form and content.

Some of the essays are no more than a sketch over a double page spread, but all of them are interesting – even one on the representation of numbers in print which inexplicably comes to an abrupt stop after the abacus.

They ambitiously tackle structuralist typography – an attempt to apply cultural theory to the realm of type design. Whilst this is not altogether convincing, it’s consistently thought-provoking and like all the other essays in the compilation, skillfully illustrated in a manner which is reminiscent of the work of Edward Tufte.

There are some indications of old-fashioned political correctness. They use the term ‘progressive’ as a blanket marker of approval reminiscent of the Old Left. When this is combined with an essay extolling the technical skills of Andy Warhol, the effect seems naive and rather whimsical. And yet the essay itself, a study of the relationship between advertising and graphic design, is essentially quite interesting. It looks at the work of illustrators such as Ben Shan, Paul Glaser, and David Stone Martin – pointing out that many of their works ‘were sold in galleries soon after they were published’.

The essays in the centre of the book are longer, detailed, and well researched, looking at the practice of graphic design in the context of twentieth century art. A study of McLuhan’s The Medium is the Message argues the case for the groundbreaking contribution of his co-author, Quentin Fiore. This is followed by an in-depth study of the relationship between race and advertising; then the use of stock photographic archive materials in journalism; and subliminal messages in advertising.

The book ends with a synoptic account of graphic design in the USA between 1829 and 1993 – which just stops short of the Internet explosion. If they ever get round to analysing Web pages in the way they treat their material here, it will be truly something to look out for.

This is a beautifully designed and exquisitely illustrated book which is a Must for anyone interested in graphics, information design, typography, or media studies – and it’s amazingly cheap. I bought my copy at full price, just in case the bookshop had made a mistake.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Ellen Lupton and Abbott Miller, Design Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design, London: Phaidon, 1996, pp.211, ISBN: 0714838519

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Designing Interfaces

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navigation, interactivity, and graphic design techniques

O’Reilly have recently taken to adding colour to their publications – and it works. The pages are more visually interesting, and the reader gets a more accurate picture of what will appear on screen. This book is attempting to get down to the fundamentals of interface design – How many clicks, how many screens do you need to see before you get to what you want? In fact Jenifer Tidwell starts of with usability issues, showing what real users do and ask of interfaces. Then she starts considering design, starting from the top and most general level – the organisation of content, or information architecture. This also includes consideration of the user interface or screen.

Designing InterfacesThe main strength of her approach is that she is very thorough. Her examples include different types of software and hardware. A design that works on a computer screen will have to be adapted if it’s going to be read on a mobile phone, and if viewed on a TV screen, you won’t have a mouse for navigation. She deals with web pages, installation programs, spreadsheets, and even graphic design packages – but keeps these issues in mind at all times.

Next comes navigation which deals with methods for leading the user through the contents. These include navigation panels, sequence maps, breadcrumb trails, and colour coding.

The next level down in terms of detail is page layout. This introduces elements of graphic design in arranging both content and navigation. This where the going can get rough. The layout part is easy if you’ve got a reasonable eye for design, but after that you need to choose between columns and tabs, and fixed width and liquid pages. She explains all the options, with the advantages and drawbacks of each.

Then comes what she calls the ‘verbs’ of the interface – objects such as buttons, action panels, and menus which make things happen. I was pleased to see that she gave as an example of bad design just how difficult it is to cancel a print job in Windows.

It’s fairly obvious that her principal interest is in information graphics – maps, tables, and graphs plus all their variants. Here she covers the ground which Edward Tufte has made his own – but you’ll find her prose easier to understand. She covers tooltips, expandable views, and what she calls ‘data brushing’ whereby the user can select which part(s) of a collection of information to view on screen.

Then comes a section on the much trickier issue of designing interactive choice lists. There are all sorts of possibilities here – forms, checkboxes, toggle buttons, dropdown lists, and so on – but the important point is that she illustrates them all, pointing to their advantages and weaknesses.

She even covers the design of interfaces for editors – such as text and image editing programs. Not many people outside a technological elite few will need to know these matters, but I found it instructive to see the general principles behind so many of the drag and drop or click and resize functions we come across all the time.

She finishes with a chapter any designer will enjoy – dealing with the graphic design of what appears on screen. This involves colour, spacing, typography, balance, and every other facet of visual rhetoric to make a visitor wish to stay on the site. I picked up some useful tips on hairlines and rounded corners here.

It’s a handsome, well-designed book – as befits its subject – and she includes a generous bibliography. O’Reilly have done her proud.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Jenifer Tidwell, Designing Interfaces, Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2005, pp.331, ISBN: 0596008031

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Device: Art, Commercial

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portfolio of contemporary graphic design

Rian Hughes is a designer who has captured very accurately a retro look of the 50s and 60s – flat colours, comic-book style, cocktail glasses, kidney-shaped ‘contemporary’ coffee tables, abstract design wallpaper. He has also been influenced by Japanese Pokemon design and more than a little by the British typographist Neville Brody. This collection of his work Device: Art, Commercial is from Die Gestalten Verlag – high quality design, print, paper, and production.

Device: Art, CommercialHughes’ designs are for exhibition and travel posters, CD covers, comics, magazines, product advertising, font sets, dingbats, and book jackets. There are strong affinities with the French style of bandes dessinées, and some of the more intriguing examples here are visual narratives – stories told in a series of pictures without words.

There’s an amazing variety of material here – greetings cards, packaging, carrier bags, graphic novels, logos, stationery – though he seems at his strongest to me in his designs for adult comics and font sets. Every page is a treat in terms of colour and composition – and I’m sure this compilation will be a rich source of visual stimulation for graphic designers in all fields.

He also does a nice line in parodies. Dare is a satirically downbeat ‘controversial memoirs’ of Dan Dare from the Eagle comic, and TumTum and the Forged Expenses is a wonderful take-off of Tintin.

As a nice bonus, Device comes with a CD-Rom featuring a mini-Flash presentation, through which you can access free fonts and desktop wallpaper, and watch a selection of animated commercials and presentations, all designed by Hughes.

This is a very handsome production – except the supporting text is set at six points and printed on mid-grey paper. You’ll need a magnifying glass if you want to read any of the details.

© Roy Johnson 2002

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Rian Hughes, Device: Art, Commercial, Berlin: Die Gestalten Verlag, 2002, pp.288, ISBN: 3931126862

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Dictionary of Graphic Design

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illustrated encyclopedia of all matters related to design

This is a comprehensive guide to international developments in graphic design. From pre-industrial printing presses and medieval typography to computer graphics and avant-garde stylistic advances. The Dictionary of Graphic Design provides information about graphic designers, typographers, journals, movements and styles, organisations and schools, printers and private presses, art directors, technological advances, design studios, graphic illustrators, and poster artists. The entries are in alphabetical order ranging from the ABC system of standard paper sizes via Mackintosh and John Maeda to typographists Hermann Zapf and Piet Zwart.

Dictionary of Graphic DesignEntries are cross-referenced, and there’s also a chronological chart which outlines the relationship between movements, technology and designers around the world.This second edition has been completely revised, updated, and completely redesigned by Derek Birdsall. It includes 485 wonderfully varied illustrations which give a stunning visual record. It’s a shame they are mainly in black and white, but in such a bargain-price book I don’t suppose we can have everything.

They cover a wide range of media, including advertising, corporate identity, posters, packaging, magazine and book design, as well as fine art and illustration.

It’s very well informed and clearly based on in-depth knowledge of the subject. The authors cover all aspects of graphic design from 1840 to the present day – from William Morris, inspired by nature, and El Lissitzky’s Constructivist design, to the Designer Republic’s visuals for the music and club scene and John Maeda’s computer graphics.

There’s an illustration of almost every individual designer mentioned, and they are particularly generous towards younger contemporaries such as Mark Farrow and Peter Saville, whose work has been in CD and LP record cover design industry.

I checked out their entries on popular designers such as Neville Brody, David Carson, and Paul Rand, and all of them were spot on. The collection also introduced me to many designers whose work I recognised but who I had never heard of before.

© Roy Johnson 2004

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Alan and Isabella Livingston, Dictionary of Graphic Design and Designers, London: Thames & Hudson, 2003, pp.239, ISBN: 0500203539

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Dictionary of Modern Design

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design, designers, products, movements, influences

This Dictionary of Modern Design is a serious textual resource on design matters, written by somebody who is quite clearly steeped in his subject. Jonathan Woodham is Professor of the History of Design at the University of Brighton, and this compendium has all the hallmarks of being a summation of a lifetime’s work. It’s an A to Z compendium of entries which run from architects and designers Alvar and Aino Aalto, through to typographer and book designer Hermann Zapf. It covers the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth.

Dictionary of Modern Design There are over 2,000 entries on names and movements from the past 150 years of design. The only weakness is that there are hardly any illustrations – something they might rectify in a second edition. Individual entries are a mixture of individual designers – Paul Rand, Milton Glaser, and Jan Tschichold, plus movements such as Bauhaus, Omega workshops, and Wiener Werkstatte, to specific products such as The Dyson vacuum cleaner, Levi Strauss jeans, and the bathroom fittings suppliers Villeroy and Boch.

There are also entries on materials (polypropylene) places (Museum of Modern Art) events (Festival of Britain) institutions (the Design Institute) and even individual products such as Barby, the wonder doll, plus entries on companies (Habitat, IKEA) product strategies (flatpacks) materials (Formica) typographists (Eric Gill) and even shops (Biba and Healds).

Individual entries are punctuated by occasional pull-out boxes which define movements and general terms – such as art deco, constructivism, kitsch, neo-modernism, and streamlining. The entries are presented in a plain and uncluttered prose style, with cross references to related items:

Lissitsky, El (Lazar Markovich Lissitsky 1890—1941) The Russian *Constructivist typographer, graphic designer, architect, painter, photographer and theorist El Lissitsky was influential in the dissemination of *Modernism both through his work and his theoretical writings. He studied architecture and engineering under Joseph Maria *Olbrich and others at the Technical School at Darmstadt between 1909 and 1914, visiting Paris, the hub of avant-garde artistic activity, in 1911. He moved back to Russia to practise architecture in 1914, but also worked in the fine arts and illustration, underlining notions of his concept of the ‘artist-engineer’…
[and so on]

It’s a shame there aren’t more illustrations, but there’s a huge bibliography which reflects the scholarly provenance, a timeline which puts design events from 1840 to the present into a social and political context, and a comprehensive bibliography.

© Roy Johnson 2006

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Jonathan M. Woodham, A Dictionary of Modern Design, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp.544, ISBN: 0192806394

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dot-font: talking about design

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essays on design, typography, and bibliography

John Berry is the former editor and publisher of U&lc (Upper and lower case) the prestigious and influential typographical journal, and he has won awards for his book designs. (Lowercase) dot-font is a collection of short articles on graphic design he wrote for the portal web site Creativepro.com. I first came across this book when it was announced that, in common with many other authors in the digital age, John Berry was giving the book away free of charge as a PDF download. Why not re-cycle your own work and give it away free? This was the new economics

dot-font: talking about design I grabbed a copy, saw it was an attractive production, and immediately ordered a printed version from Amazon. By the time I had finished reading the first few chapters, I also ordered its sister production dot-font: Talking About Fonts. The original articles were basically his responses to exhibitions, lectures, and presentations he had attended. It sometimes feels a little odd to be reading about an event that took place some years ago and cannot be recalled. But his analyses and observations are those of a seasoned practitioner, and they retain their original value. Similarly, the formula of reproducing web essays as a printed book is quite successful. The original pages contained web links: those are missing here, but the structure remains, as well as illustrative graphics in the form of marginal thumbnails.

We get a lively introductions to design theorist Rick Poyner, then French book designer Massin, and a comparison of the signage in the underground rail systems of New York, Paris, and London.

There are a couple of chapters on the design and typography of American government ballot papers. These are offered as examples of bad design which have led to several disputed elections. So design really does have very practical consequences in the real world.

The central section of this collection comprises three chapters on book design and typography – from the shape and layout of the printed page, through the many choices that confront designers for presenting body text, even through to such details as the manner in which titles can appear on the spine of a book.

It’s a beautifully designed and illustrated production in its own right. The text is set in MVB Verdigris, the display in HTF Whitney, and there are generous page margins. Yet it’s not just a glamorous design portfolio: John Berry digs into some fundamental issues of design theory. It’s a book that is pleasing to the eye – but also one that will make you think.

dot-font design   Buy the book at Amazon UK

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© Roy Johnson 2010

John D. Berry, dot-font: talking about design, New York: Mark Batty Publishers, 2006, pp.128, ISBN: 0977282716

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