Many of the characters feature in the studio’s extensive monograph, What is Universal Everything? which we published in 2019 (you can read Communication Arts’ review of the book here).
Various installations at 180 Studios – including the premiere of three new works, Primordial, Maison Autonome and Into the Sun – mirror and change with the public’s interactions, meaning that no visitor will see the same show twice.
UE say that the artworks draw from the history of visual culture and various depictions of the human body in motion, as seen in the work of the Futurists and Eadweard Muybridge’s visionary film experiments.
“We created many of the lifeforms in this exhibition with generative software,” UE explain. “We design the computational systems that grow characters, plants or abstract lifeforms – yet personalities emerge by themselves.”
Lifeforms is at 180 The Strand, London, until 18 December 2022. Open Wednesday–Sunday, 11am–7pm. To book tickets, visit 180thestrand.com. Photography: Jack Hems.
You can order the book, What is Universal Everything? from the Unit shop here.
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What are you reading at the moment? And have you read anything recently you’d recommend?
I currently have a pile of around five books I hope to finish reading in the next two months. I’ve started with One and Many Mirrors: Perspectives on graphic design education published by Occasional Papers.
I’ve always aspired for my archive of printed matter to encourage discourse amongst both students and professionals and this book has provided me with valuable insights into aspects of critical thinking and critical design utilisation in various educational institutions, as well as furthering my design vocabulary and thought process.
I’ve also recently added two publications published by Triest Verlag to my reading pile: Mapping Graphic Design History in Switzerland and Words Form Language: On Concrete Poetry, Typography, and the Work of Eugen Gomringer.
What titles are on your bedside table?
There are three titles currently at the bedside table, for when the little one wakes me up in the early hours. I have the latest Eye magazine, Flexible Visual Systems by the fantastic Martin Lorenz and Josef Albers’ Interaction of Colour, which I am guilty of owning for a few years and still haven’t read.
Where and when do you tend to read? How do books get used in the studio environment?
I struggled over the last two years with taking the time to immerse myself into the printed page, but with a better work/life balance – thanks to our studio team – I tend to read before setting off to the studio and if I have time later in the eventing at around 9pm, with a few biscuits and a pot of tea. I have my notebook on one side and a book on the other, as I tend to write questions or observations that arise during engaging with the content.
The books and printed material in my archive are utilised in numerous ways, depending on the context of the material. Many examples are used for visual research, cues and inspiration, while others are scanned to provide the design history social community with inspiration and topics of discourse – and others for collating content for future publication ideas.
What’s the last visual art/design book you bought?
I’ve recently been collecting/archiving a few design-related books and magazines from Japan, as I have started to document the history of graphic design in the country, from post-war to around the 1980s. I have three of the Ginza Graphic Gallery designer monographs on their way and a couple of issues of the Japanese magazine, Graphic Design (a stunning publication, rich in visual content).
The latest printed material to arrive in the studio is a full set of Typos magazines, issues 1-6, published by Frederick Lambert, when he was teaching at the London College of Printing. I was lucky enough to spot these at a great price and feel my archive lacks a lot of influential printed matter produced in Britain.
Is there a visual art/design book that has had a particular impact on you as a designer more than any other?
There are various books I continually use as both a studio resource, and additional home reading/research. I’m always attracted to books full of visual history, as they can be picked up anytime, opened to a random spread and there is something new.
It’s hard to pick just one, but the three most impactful books would be: The History of Graphic Design Vol 1 (1890-1959) by Jens Müller; Modernism: In Print – Dutch Graphic Design 1917-2017 by Frederike Huygen; and The Visual History of Type: A Visual Survey of 320 Typefaces by Paul McNeil.
Is there a hard-to-find or rare visual art/design title that you’d love to get your hands on?
Max Bill – Form (1952) and Max Huber’s Progetti Grafici 1936-1981 would definitely be on the list. Over the last few years I’ve been slowly ticking off titles I had the desire to find and add to the collection. It’s a list that continues to evolve as my interest outside of graphic design changes, and when reading leads me to new discoveries, designers and curiosities.
Is there a visual art/design book that you would pass on to someone not involved in design?
In terms of ‘book as object’ and a piece of beauty, I am stemmed towards Carouschka’s Tickets by Carouschka Streijffert, a unique artist’s book which contains a collection of sourced travel tickets from around the world. French-folded pages, bound by bolts, it really is a visual treat both from a content perspective and as a tactile piece of design.
What book are you looking forward to reading next?
I have various lectures and workshops booked for this quarter, which I will be delivering alongside agency work. After looking for source materials, I noticed a few gaps in reference and personal knowledge, especially in the areas of ‘counterculture’ and ‘subcultures’.
I'm looking forward to reading Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia and Rick Poynor’s David King: Designer, Activist, Visual Historian.
The Design Reviewed archive website is at designreviewed.com. It contains a range of articles on the print collection, which is searchable by designer, decade and format, and includes spotlight features on several important publications. See also @DesignReviewed on Twitter and the Graphic Design History group on Facebook.
“This book is a work of fiction,” claims Bill Drummond on page one of How To Be An Artist. “You may think you can detect the odd verifiable fact. If you do, so be it, it’s not my concern”. Even the title tries to confound the reader with the back cover stating this is not “a step-by-step guide to being an artist of any kind”.
As a way to pique interest, these are not bad opening salvos. What follows is a tale of a road trip from Southampton to Dounreay, where Drummond attaches ‘For Sale’ notices to railings, fences and sundry posts, advertising that he has an artwork by Richard Long to sell for $20,000. Along the way he gives impromptu talks at various locations, honing his sales pitch, grappling with what owning art means and why he has fallen out of love with Long’s picture.
It is a highly entertaining read with Drummond tying himself up in pseudo art-critic knots, as he pontificates about a range of subjects to anyone who will listen, his viewpoints routinely shot down in flames by those he meets along the way, as well as by himself.
In this, How To Be An Artist presents its author as confused, contradictory, and at times arrogant; all accolades you quickly learn Drummond is happy to perpetuate as part of ‘the art debate’.
Published in 2002 by Penkiln Burn, for me this book preceded a personal interest in psychogeographic writing and photography, one that has gone on to influence some of my own research projects.
In Drummond we get someone who mocks latter-day canons of the genre before they have even been published, and I hold both author and book as important pin-pricks to the pretensions of the art world – lightning conductors grounding me from taking this stuff far too seriously.
Nigel Ball is a graphic designer, design educator and writer. He is head of arts and course leader for graphic design at the University of Suffolk. How To Be An Artist by Bill Drummond is published by Penkiln Burn.
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What titles are on your bedside table?
The Third Plate by Dan Barber, Actual Air by David Berman, and The Swastika and Symbols of Hate by Steven Heller.
Where and when do you tend to read? How do books get used in the studio environment?
I mostly read on the weekend. Since I don’t take the subway as often post-pandemic (or the thing we’re still in), my train-reading time has been cut. But yeah, my Saturday and Sunday routine is waking up and deciding which coffee shop to haunt for a few hours in the morning and/or afternoon. My new favourite nook is the corner table at Choice Market in the Clinton Hill neighbourhood of Brooklyn.
The office is filled mostly with books. We use them for research and inspiration. Again, sadly the pandemic has made this process a bit more difficult for employees, but we're constantly buying and sending our team books as needed for specific projects or general reference. Not to mention our Standards Manual Shop, which is open on Saturday’s for retail sales. The way we purchase books is entirely selfish (but as a group), and we simply carry books that everyone on the team wants themselves!
What’s the last visual art/design book you bought?
Basic Principles of Design by Manfred Maier. A classic, and one I’ve always wanted to own.
Is there a visual art/design book that has had a particular impact on you as a designer more than any other?
Graphic Design Manual by Armin Hofmann was the book that changed my University track from fine arts to graphic design, so I owe my career to being exposed to this particular title. I still reference it on a weekly basis, including this morning (unrelated and before writing these answers).
Is there a hard-to-find or rare visual art/design title that you’d love to get your hands on?
When I was at Pentagram Michael (Bierut) personally brought me into a conference room to show me his newly acquired copy of World Geo-Graphic Atlas by Herbert Bayer. Ever since then I’ve been on the hunt, and remain currently unsuccessful.
Is there a visual art/design book that you would pass on to someone not involved in design?
I promise this isn’t a promoted answer, but there have been multiple ‘non-designers’ who gravitate towards my Herb Lubalin book by Adrian Shaughnessy on my bookshelf. Once they get into it, they’re hooked, even without the background in type-nerd-hypnosis that we ‘designers’ are prone to. A book for the masses.
And what book are you looking forward to reading next?
It’s not technically a book, but its size and stature could pass for one, which is the first issue of INQUE by Dan Crowe and Matt Willey. I’ve skimmed a few short articles, but I’m itching for the long-form stuff. I love the absurdity of showing up to Brooklyn’s tiny cafés with this gigantic oversized ‘magazine’ to read. It leaves just enough room for a cup of coffee on the table, sans saucer.
The New York Subway Map Debate is published by Standards Manual. Edited by Gary Hustwit the book includes never-before-seen photographs by Stan Ries and a foreword by Pentagram’s Paula Scher. Available via standardsmanual.com.
First up, Ana Bettencourt tells us about one of her favourite publications – a 2015 facsimile edition of Ladislav Sutnar: Visual Design in Action, originally published in 1961:
The world is now more digitally connected than ever and the global pandemic has accelerated this tendency, writes Bettencourt. As a result we spend many hours in front of the screen and our lives are filled with user-centred experiences (delivered via digital and non-digital means).
As new technologies emerge as real-world systems – with information design playing an important role in how we perceive data – there is still a need for visual communication based upon precision, clarity and accessibility.
Sometimes we need to look beyond our screens and at what came before us, asking what worked and why it worked. With regard to information design, Visual Design in Action by Ladislav Sutnar remains a highly significant book.
Sutnar wrote and designed the book and published it as a limited edition in 1961. The volume didn’t sell very well at the time, but it has since become a classic of modern graphic design, as inspiring as it was when first published.
In the early 1960s, high-quality book production was a craftsman’s art (if a book was made with letterpress technology, things could get very expensive). Sutnar insisted on the importance of design planning as well as having a respect for the materials and tools used for production.
His book is made up of three main sections: principles and attributes; US information design progress; and early modern design concepts.
Throughout the book, we can see and feel an entire designed experience in a non-digital way. The design of the publication is a joy of visual simplicity, visual interest and continuity made with precision and unity.
Sutnar also took advantage of the visual and tactile qualities of the selected paper types; their weight, texture, colour, and reaction to the ink.
The unconventional use of the italic type for the entire body text of the book is notable – and from page to page, the interplay of individual coloured sheets ensures subtle pacing against those in black and white. This gives the volume a lucidity and clarity of structure (and offers a visual pause when needed).
Visual Design in Action is the manifestation of Sutnar’s futuristic vision of information design and his writing is annotated with symbols, insights and annotations throughout.
I’d like to end by sharing two of Sutnar’s insights that grabbed my attention: “Good design cannot be obtained by prescription” and “Divergence from the conventional can make the common exciting”.
Ana Bettencourt is a UI / Visual designer and research assistant at the Interactive Technologies Institute – LARSyS. Ladislav Sutnar: Visual Design in Action, edited by Reto Caduff and Steven Heller, is published by Lars Müller.
Here, we talk to the studio’s Valerio Di Lucente about his approach to designing the book, from structure and typeface choices, to the influence of ‘archiving’ and ‘cataloguing’, all the while ensuring the emphasis was on the “workshop rather than the work”.
Can you outline what the brief for the project was and describe the direction you then took?
The brief was fairly open — in short, to design the follow-up to Studio Culture, first published in 2009. On the back of that edition, the main request was to take particular care as regards to the reading experience.
For everything else, I had complete carte-blanche. My considerations drew upon the experience as a reader of the previous volume. The nature of the content leads to an ‘irregular’ reading experience; jumping from one interview to another, sometimes reading two or three at a time, or just reading key passages.
Visually, there’s a recurrent presence in most studios, a ubiquitous palette of objects: manilla archival boxes; grey-board; paper and colour swatches. All of this constitutes a kind of ‘material landscape’ — a common language of the ‘studio culture’.
Similarly, the questions and answers of the book share a similar register: direct, honest, matter-of-fact, personal, raw. It’s about the ‘workshop’ rather than the ‘work’. My design strategy was to adopt and abstract all of these ever-present forms, to influence the editorial structure and visual atmosphere.
As the reading is irregular, the design should emphasise this aspect and enhance it. I imagined content and moments that would act as ‘reading prompts’ suggesting the reader new connections.
How did you start work on this approach?
Adopting the archive as an analogy, a first gesture was to separate studio imagery and work from the interviews, as if they were separate ‘folders’, where these visual essays would become a prompt for the interview and vice-versa.
It also creates an interesting collective overview — it’s fascinating to see the differences and similarities in the working spaces.
This analogy permeates the book, with an emphasis on indexing and content listing, typography and the colours are raw and direct.
Typographically, there is an obsessive use of indexing, with mini content lists punctuating the book, and a hierarchical page numbering system, increasing in size at the beginning of each interview or chapter, marking the start.
Materially, the studio spaces and work sections are wrapped around manilla or grey paper, as they would be separate folders.
How did your approach affect the structure and layout of the book?
I would argue that the two go hand in hand, in that the archiving analogy helped me to devise a logic for reading, structuring the content and, ultimately, some design decisions.
Since 2009 the dissemination of graphic design work has changed dramatically, and I considered what would be the use of imagery within the book as the work of most studios is so well documented online. It almost seemed unnecessary, yet is essential to characterise and contextualise the diverse work carried out by the studios.
It was a matter of balance, so following my approach, I devised a more evocative way to illustrate the interviews by placing an image as it would be in 1:1 size at ‘studio dimensions’ and then separating the work in a dedicated section titled ‘Files’.
In complete opposition, here the work is presented analytically, somewhere between a contact sheet, archive file and an ever-familiar social media grid.
This allowed us to include many images and give an instant sense of the work, again as per the studio spaces, it’s interesting to see the work together and I feel that this book represents a ‘collective moment’ for a particular model of graphic design practice.
Oracle by Dinamo, the typeface used throughout the book, was an interesting choice. Why did you use it and what do you think it brings to the book?
By instinct I felt a sans would be more appropriate, firstly because I didn’t want any romance, I just wanted the words to feel as they are, direct and honest. Secondly, I needed something that would hold to lengthier reading, but that wouldn’t be too neutral and keep a certain rawness.
Oracle offered that balance. It’s functional, utilitarian but somewhat friendly; there is a casual-seriousness to it. The most visual of the cuts is a Triple-Spaced version, which is almost brutal in its appearance and counter-balances the type used for reading the longer texts.
To quote Johannes Breyer of Dinamo:
“This version can easily be recognised by how unconventionally some letterforms sit next to each other. What looks like pure insanity at first is actually a result of strictly playing by the rules of the game-of-thirds: every character is assigned one of only three possible widths.
“Uppercase characters are allowed to only occupy three-thirds of the total width, Lowercase characters occupy two-thirds and punctuation just one-third.
“Characters have to be stacked upon each other in order to fit (like the quotes, or trademark symbol), large and non-optimised gaps between characters are not closed but embraced as part of the logic’s beauty. We believe it makes for a typeface that neither feels entirely human or machine-drawn.”
This last statement is what I found interesting and I felt well-represented the spirit I had in mind for the book.
Could you tell me a bit about the approach to the cover and in particular the punched holes that go right through the pages?
The cover acts as a letter of intention evoking what’s within. Archiving, indexing and cataloguing was the logic to organise much of the book, so it felt natural to appropriate something from this universe.
Punch-holing 500 pages turns a functional feature into a sculptural gesture. In some ways it’s an obvious reference, but reframing the obvious is what I’m interested in.
Studio Culture Now is available from the Unit shop. You can see more of Julia’s work at julia.studio. Dinamo’s website is at abcdinamo.com.
]]>You can download the book from our WeTransfer page (9.6mb).
Long sold-out, the book covers everything from Ken’s student exercises at the Central School of Arts and early work on Design magazine, to the many client projects completed with Ken Garland & Associates from 1962 onwards (such as Galt Toys and CND), and his self-published books of photography.
Adrian Shaughnessy’s extensive biographical text situates Ken’s work within the development of graphic design in mid 20th-century Britain, while Spin’s sympathetic book design spotlights KGA’s work for Galt Toys, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Keniston Housing Association, among others.
As a prolific writer and educator, Ken also produced five books on design and, as Garland fans will know, published many influential articles including the First Things First manifesto in 1964.
“I am delighted to be chosen as the recipient of one of the London Design Medals,” says Ken of his award. “At my age (91) I had thought I was a forgotten person — but no, someone still remembers me! As to achievement: all my associates and I did for 50-odd years was to have a lot of fun at other people’s expense. We were so lucky!”
Sara De Bondt Studio, Ghent
Unit Editions: Did you have a vision of what you wanted the studio be, or an idea of the kind of work you wanted to produce? Did any designers or studios provide inspiration for structure or a way of working?
Sara De Bondt: The studio side of it just kind of crept up on me, because I had too much work and couldn’t get through it all alone. I was never interested in the infrastructure or business side of it, and have always preferred working together with people to being their boss. When I was starting out, I submitted a text for an Australian symposium about what kind of designer someone should employ — and I wrote that it should be someone who can take time to doodle or sit in the park.
I did have ideas about the kind of work I wanted to produce: honest, open, appropriate, careful, and aware of its environmental impact. Above all, I tried not to take it too seriously: even though I still spend almost all of my time thinking about it, it is only graphic design.
James [Goggin] was part of a network of recent Royal College graduates, that included Kajsa Stahl and Patrick Lacey from Åbäke, Lizzie Finn, Jonathan Hares, Laurent Benner, Frauke Stegmann, and many others…. When James and I moved to Shacklewell Lane in Dalston, we ended up in a building full of other creatives. We’d hang out for lunch and tell our visitors to see the others, too. I felt supported by that group of people.
Occasional Papers bookshelves
UE: Can you describe the process you went through to get started?
SDB: One of the first jobs that James and I did together was a pitch for Camden Arts Centre, to design their File Notes — small exhibition booklets which you can buy individually or collect in a binder. It’s something we still work on today, 15 years later. We live in different continents now but we take turns producing them. There are details by which you can tell who designed which one.
We had an inkjet and a second-hand black-and-white laser printer. James had invented a template to produce these inkjet-printed portfolio booklets, bound together with metal clips, which I copied. I had a lo-fi website that I had cobbled together in Dreamweaver and printed a business card on the side of another job. You could still get free illegal copies of design software back then instead of the overpriced subscription models of today.
UE: Did you turn to anyone, or use any resources, for advice and help? Did you have to borrow any money, or work out a business plan?
SDB: I was already working for clients on the side during my studies and at Foundation 33, which meant that I had a few jobs to get me started. When I left the studio, Dan and Sam also passed on a project they no longer wanted to be involved in. My father used to be self-employed, so I was not unfamiliar with the constant fear of having no clients. I had saved up some money beforehand, which meant that I didn’t need to borrow any from a bank — and there was no need for a business plan.
My then-boyfriend and I lived in a tiny two-bedroom flat with another couple so that we could keep the rent down. I was terrified of running out of money, but also knew that if things didn’t work out, I could go back to Belgium to live with my parents, which is a privilege for which I’m very grateful.
File Notes, printed matter, Camden Art Centre, on-going since 2004 with James Goggin / Practise. Photo: Edward Park
UE: Can you describe where you’re based now and what considerations you took in choosing where to establish the studio?
SDB: Right now, the studio is on the top level of our home in the centre of Ghent, Belgium. We have moved around a lot; from Bethnal Green to several studios in Dalston, then two in Clerkenwell, Liverpool, Hackney Wick, back to Dalston, and then Antwerp. Rent in London just kept going up; we were always being chased out by property developers.
Nowadays, people seem to care much less about where you’re based. I have clients all over the world, some of them I have never even met in real life. Since the climate emergency became so pressing, I have been trying to reduce plane travel, and Covid-19 has helped to make people feel at ease about meeting online.
Graphic Design: History in the Writing, co-edited by Sara De Bondt and Catherine de Smet, Occasional Papers, 2011
UE: Do you see a link between your environment and creativity? How important is the studio’s physical space?
SDB: Yes, I think it’s essential to have a good screen and a comfortable chair so you don’t get neck or back pain. It should be a warm space where you can concentrate, but also be relaxed enough to do silly things or make a mess.
UE: Can you shed some light on your working process and how you work on projects as a collaborator or a small team?
SDB: It matters to me that there is no set working process. I try to keep my practice open and moving. I didn’t realise this when I was starting out, but you can completely invent the type of studio you want to run — and it can be as weird or unconventional as you are yourself. You don’t need to conform to existing models. You don’t need to be answering the phone nine-to-five or have a flashy office in a capital city.
Right now, my practice is designing, but also teaching, doing a PhD and running a publishing company. Sometimes I will be in the playground with my kids when a client phones. It is one giant melting pot, where everything feeds of each other, and I no longer feel the need to apologise for it or pretend it isn’t.
I enjoy collaborating, so I often invite people to share projects, because it inspires me. They can be graphic designers, but just as well architects, programmers, furniture designers, typeface designers, animators or photographers. I like to brainstorm together from the beginning; I don’t believe in the mythical lone genius designer at the top.
At a certain point in London, the studio had grown to five people, but it didn’t make me happy; I spent my time organising people instead of designing. These days I try to keep it light. Sometimes I hire an assistant for production when a project requires it. In that case, the roles are clear, and I don’t feel guilty about not giving an employee enough exciting projects.
Tree of Codes, book design, Visual Editions, 2010. Photo: Edward Park
UE: How much focus do you put on administration, financial management and forward planning? Do you have outside help, an accountant, for example?
SDB: Yes, there is an accountant, but they just fill in the tax and VAT returns. I often wish I had a business partner who could just take care of that side of things for me because I hate spending time on it. It’s hard enough juggling all the other balls in my life.
I have always just rolled from one project into the next. Perhaps I should try to take matters more in hand, get a proper website, take time to think about where to go next, but there always seem to be other priorities with more fun.
UE: Is there a studio manager role? What about project management?
SDB: In London we used to have a part-time studio manager, artist Kate Morrell. At that point, there were several of us in the studio — Kate would keep the books in order and make sure we had enough studio supplies. She was also the distribution manager of [our publishing company] Occasional Papers one day a week.
It works best when designers are managing their projects themselves. Organising the schedule is part of the process: if you have a well-designed timeline and have agreed with the clients on what the steps will be, the designing itself becomes a lot easier, too. You lose information if someone else sits in between that line of communication.
INTERIEUR 2010, press pack, Interieur Foundation, 2010 Photo: Edward Park
UE: Can you define how you balance creativity with profitability?
SDB: I’m not a hard-nosed businessperson and I think I often charge too little. We have had share agreements; it seems only fair when you’re employing people and making a profit thanks to their labour. I’ve had very talented people working for me, who have influenced the core of my practice. I’m thankful to them: Gregory Ambos, Sam Baldwin, Helios Capdevila, Mark El-khatib, Apsara Flury, Luke Gould, Piper Haywood, Sarah Horn, Thomas Humeau, Jelle Kopers, Jasmine Raznahan, Chris Svensson, Sueh Li Tan, Merel van den Berg, and many others.
At the moment, I’m doing a PhD at KASK School of Arts at Ghent University. I teach and get paid for my research time, which is enough for me to live off. That ends next year, at which point the studio will need to make more money.
UE: What about self-initiated projects — if you do them, how do they fit in with the studio’s practice? What purpose do they serve?
SDB: Making things for the sake of making them is not my cup of tea, I could never be an artist. Instead, I create structures to force myself to work outside of the traditional service-based client model; Occasional Papers, curating, teaching, the PhD research, etc.
In general, I feel that the difference between client and self-initiated work is slowly eroding, also under the influence of social media. When you see the type of projects that Nina Paim and Corinne Gisel of common-interest or Julie Peeters and Bill magazine are working on, they are all just part of one umbrella called graphic design, but clients are no longer the core of the story.
A Needle Walks into a Haystack, printed matter, Liverpool Biennial, 2014. Photo: Edward Park
UE: I’d like to ask you what the best part of running a design studio is — but first, what’s the part you like the least?
SDB: Sometimes there are days when all you get is negative feedback. Being a designer can be hardcore. You’re always putting yourself out there: asking people to give their two cents on things you’ve made for them.
UE: And the best?
SDB: Design is one of the few professions that enables you to never to stop learning: about an artist you are making a book about; a topic you are designing an exhibition for; or a furniture maker you are collaborating with. Running your studio means you are free to live how and where you want to.
UE: Finally, what advice would you give to anyone setting up a studio? What do you wish you’d known when you started out, or what would you do differently?
SDB: To go and work in several differently-sized studios to discover how they do things: how to organise files, set up a server, document work, make back-ups, organise typefaces, do invoicing, follow-up accounting, communicate with clients etc.
When I started, I had no clue about a lot of these things and wasted a lot of time and energy. Especially when the studio grew to include several people, it would have been useful to know how to work on projects as a group. Learning from others in this way would have been helpful to me.
Studio Culture Now is available to pre-order from the Unit Editions shop.
There are in fact 15 covers of Typographics ti: included in Impact 2.0, such is the quality of the design of the Japanese magazine, which also marks its 40th year in print in 2020.
First published in May 1980, Typographics ti: is the quarterly magazine of the Japan Typography Association. The JTA emerged out of the Japan Lettering Designers Association in 1971 with a membership made up largely of typeface designers, researchers and educators.
The aim of the JTA, it says, is to further the development of typography alongside “better communication through the creation and research of visual languages such as letters, symbol marks and pictograms [and how they are used]”. Its Typographics ti: magazine also reflects these aims in its wide-ranging content.
The covers of Typographics ti: shown here are from its earliest years, 1980-83 — a period where it clearly wasn’t afraid to experiment with bold design.
A total of 15 Typographics ti: covers are featured in Impact 2.0: Design magazines, journals and periodicals [1974–2016], which is available now from the Unit shop as a single edition, or as part of a two-volume set with Impact 1.0 [1922–73].
]]>The book also includes a few examples of the advertising and promotional literature that Letraset also made to sell its product, most of which are intriguing examples of print design in their own right.
So, here, we feature some of the ads that were created specifically for the Japanese market in the 1970s.
In general, Letraset advertising was usually designed to show the versatility and range of the lettering sheets and mostly appeared in various international design publications. In Japan that would have included both Graphic Design and IDEA.
Print ads were also produced to show Letraset’s non-typographic products such as Letraline tapes, Letrasign, various aerosol products, protective vinyl folders, clip art sheets, textured film and customised logo sheets.
The ads themselves rarely followed a standardised design and, aside from the inclusion of the Letaset logotype, it appears that their designers were largely free to design them how they liked for their particular market.
The result was a wide variety of approaches, often reflective of national characteristics and design styles, and a vibrant body of communications that outshone most of the promotional literature produced by typesetting houses at the time.
A ’76 New Fashion spread, for example, shows 30 Letraset typefaces and three sheets of patterns (detail shown), while another (above) employs a (photo)graphic composition of tools across the page.
Letraset: The DIY Typography Revolution is available to purchase from the Unit Editions shop, here.
]]>We had a great response to the call-out and our highlights from the suggested titles are below. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to our lockdown reading list so far — details of how you can add your book to the ongoing list are at the bottom of the post.
The latest additions to the post will appear here at the top.
Rosmarie Tissi: Graphic Design by Rosmarie Tissi, 2019
Nominated by Ana Bettencourt F., Visual + Graphic Designer & Assistant Researcher at ITI
Rosmarie Tissi’s oeuvre over 60 years of professional experience as a graphic designer is so vast that one book is not enough to show you all of her works, but this one gives you a broad sense of her way of interacting with the grid, her playfulness, her imagination and her expressivity. Tissi is one of a very few of her time to earn a name for herself in graphic design from early on — and this book is her first solo monograph.
West-Berlin Grafik-Design. Graphic Design behind the Iron Curtain by Jens Müller, 2019
Nominated by Ana Bettencourt F., Visual + Graphic Designer & Assistant Researcher at ITI
I would like to recommend this book; it is a bit small (A5 size) for my taste, but nevertheless is a beauty. It is especially peculiar since it relates somehow to the current situation of self-isolation we are facing worldwide. Despite all the obstacles we are encountering now — as with the ones the people faced in West-Berlin behind the Iron Curtain — one thing is certain, sometimes self-isolation can bring about the most unique and revolutionary results, exceeding our initial expectations.
Munich ’72 – The Visual Output of Otl Aicher’s Dept. XI by Mark Holt
Nominated by Ana Bettencourt F., Visual + Graphic Designer & Assistant Researcher at ITI
One of my favourites in terms of content and 100% recommended. Beautifully designed and with a huge amount of research, this book is the first to shed light on the visual output of Otl Aicher’s Dept. XI and their contribution to the Olympic Games design. It is visually inspiring and contains insights into the design team’s efforts and their unique way of thinking.
Diseño Gráfico en Venezuela by Alfredo Armas Alfonzo, 1985.
Nominated by Ana Bettencourt F., Visual + Graphic Designer & Assistant Researcher at ITI
Growing up [one is] surrounded by colours and visual stimulation, just like the cover of this book. It is mesmerising. I have been searching for this book for some time since only a few copies were printed at the time of its publication and it was difficult to find one in good condition. This collection is about the golden age of graphic design in Venezuela, compiled and packaged in a single edition with considerable dimensions. It is like a gem of timeless design.
LogoArchive zines by Richard Baird, 2018-2020
Nominated by Ana Bettencourt F., Visual + Graphic Designer & Assistant Researcher at ITI
This recommendation is not a book, but a compilation of zines initiated by Richard Baird in collaboration with several designers in the field. If you love timeless logo design, then these editions are a delight for your eyes. Each upcoming issue is an evolution of the previous one. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the read!
The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore (Penguin 1967)
Nominated by Graham Wood
The Making of Kubrick's 2001 by Jerome Agel and Quentin Fiore was my introduction to Fiore’s work, when I was about 11. I don’t remember how I got hold of it, and I hadn’t seen 2001, but the type/photo/layout of the thing fascinated me. It felt like I was falling into another world — which I suppose was the point.
Much later, I discovered Fiore’s wider body of work, and The Medium is the Massage is the iconic exemplar of his approach to the book as an expressive, kinetic object. I Seem To Be A Verb, with Buckminster Fuller, is probably more gloriously vivid, but Medium has a power and a visceral nature which is pretty much definitive.
These books were also an inspiration for my own books, Tycho’s Nova and (more pertinently!) Memory Is The Medium. There’s a great book on Fiore’s work, The Electric Information Age Book, by Jefferey T. Schnapp and Adam Michaels which is definitely worth picking up.
25 Publicity Campaigns by Erberto Carboni
Nominated by Randall Ross, Modernism 101 Rare Design Books
Consistency can either be a blessing or a curse, depending on ideology and execution. Erberto Carboni’s collection of 25 Publicity Campaigns (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1961) remains one of my go-to volumes for inspiration and contemplation on the virtues of consistency.
Reasons To be Cheerful: The Life and Work of Barney Bubbles By Paul Gorman
Nominated by John Rooney, Practice+Research
The book explores the work of the enigmatic designer/typographer/painter/furniture-maker and light show operator for Hawkwind, Colin Fulcher AKA Barney Bubbles.
Before I got this book, I knew of his work but not him. He never signed his work, but in his hidden identity, Bubbles’ work resonates with a constant intensity to this day. This book captures his style of visual collusion with type and image and presents ‘Graphic Design’ as a spectacular connective window into a wider world of arts and crafts practice. Essential.
Various book and catalogue covers by Sebastião Rodrigues
Nominated by José Mendes, Graphic Designer
It is a delight to find and devour graphic objects designed by the Portuguese designer Sebastião Rodrigues. Even though most of them are from the 1960s and 70s, or have appeared in countless publications, the moment I meet one is always a novelty.
There is a beautiful seduction in the visual compositions, in the plastic simplicity between the relation of shapes, typography and colour — and often by humour in the representation of an idea.
All in Line by Saul Steinberg (Penguin Books 1945)
Nominated by Julian Roberts, founder and designer at Irving & Co.
In these strange times I often find myself reaching for this book. It was Steinberg’s first book comprising of 200 drawings with a few words thrown in. It was published in the aftermath of WWII, where he was stationed with the armed forces in North Africa, Italy, China and India.
I find his succinct humour and observations of those challenging times both comforting and moving. A tribute to the best in human spirit.
Soviet Space Graphics — Cosmic Visions from the USSR
Nominated by Nathan Adams, With Lasers
It’s a very new addition to my library (in fact a post-isolation addition), but has been something very different to inspire me, and I can sense future me wanting to come back to this in years to come on a regular basis.
I’ve always been an avid space fan, and the iconography of especially the US space program in many ways was part of the attraction (it’s good to see the NASA worm returning in 2020!). It’s only the last few years though that I’ve started to explore what the Russians were doing, and it’s so different in its nature — and as a result completely mesmerising.
A couple of pages picked at random (above), showing some of the beautiful work inside, from the magazine Technology for the Youth — for me just capture this very different attempt at capturing this new and brave world, as the space race proceeded.
Apollo in the Democracy by Walter Gropius
Nominated by Giovanna Lanzilotta, Senior Graphic Designer at Design Team in Pendragon PLC
This book is not only about architecture but above all about how the love for beauty can generate ethic values in people, and how this makes us happy in a community. It seems to me that we need to remember this now. Gropius is one of the most amazing minds of the previous century and I think this book can remind us how to re-think new paradigms about society.
Alexey Brodovitch by Kerry William Purcell
Nominated by Greg Dodds, Creative Director, La Fabrica Design Studio
It has to be Alexey Brodovitch by Kerry William Purcell (Phaidon). I do quite a bit of editorial design (among other things) and have found the work of Brodovitch hugely inspirational — Purcell’s book is a few years old now but the writing and design is superb.
It’s always a pleasure to look back over the fruits of Brodovitch’s thinking and execution; he was obviously a hard taskmaster, for students and work colleagues, but that’s because he knew what he was doing was right!
Landscapes of Communism by Owen Hatherley
Nominated by Nigel Ball, Senior Lecturer/BA (Hons) Graphic Design Course Leader, University of Suffolk
I’m currently reading Landscapes of Communism by Owen Hatherley, a title I’ve been meaning to get around to tackling for some time. Having fleetingly visited Romania for the first time in 2018 (my first visit to Eastern Europe), and teaching on a design course with many students from Eastern Bloc countries, I was eager to find out more about where they come from and this part of the world.
I am accompanying reading Landscapes of Communism with Google Street View visits to Moscow, Poland, Czechia and Romania. As a result I feel like I am escaping my immediate environment by getting a virtual sense of Eastern Europe through its architecture, Hatherley’s exceptional contextual knowledge and personal experience, and his biting critique and acerbic wit.
Kirei — Posters from Japan (1978-1993)
Nominated by Tom Muller, helloMuller Ltd
I bought this book in 1993 as a design student from a book discount warehouse (I bought most of my books from places like that back then). It’s a treasure trove of amazing work, chronicling decades of timeless design that is never too far away from me.
Dutch PTT catalogues designed by Irma Boom / Visual Thinking by Henry Wolf
Nominated by Simon Case, Director, Chromatic Brands
Three very different ‘go-tos’ from our library. The first two, Dutch PTT catalogues by Irma Boom (above), are so beautiful they never fail to provide inspiration.
The third book, Visual Thinking by Henry Wolf, is probably not too widely known, but is a brilliant reference book of techniques to use when we’re ‘stuck’. Stylistically, it hasn’t dated well, but the ideas are all still well worth having!
User Friendly by Cliff Kuang with Robert Fabricant
Nominated by Laurel Wilson
The product of natural storytellers who dive deep, User Friendly digs into technology and empathy, and the contribution that designers can make to build a conscious society. It’s wonderfully engaging.
Gerrit Rietveld — Wealth of Sobriety by Arjan Bronkhorst
Nominated by Marga Scholma, Beukers Scholma Grafisch Ontwerpers
We would like to recommend one of our dearest books: Gerrit Rietveld — Wealth of Sobriety. Apart from the beautiful photos by Arjan Bronkhorst of Rietveld’s ingenious lesser-known houses and the very personal stories of the residents who live with full commitment in these houses, it is especially the simplicity that speaks from his designs.
So clear, so minimal. And at the same time just enough. Especially in this bizarre time, it is so refreshing to read and see. We heartily recommend it! More information about the book is at lecturacultura.com.
Cultural Amnesia by Clive James
Nominated by Daniel Green, Lead Graphic Designer, Foth & Van Dyke
I’m rereading Cultural Amnesia by Clive James. Though I was originally drawn to it by Louise Fili’s dustcover homage to Peter Behrens, the author’s dexterity in connecting ideas quickly pulled me into the content. As I write this from the US and my home state of Wisconsin, I find his words to be both a dire warning and a hopeful medicine.
Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar 1919—1923 (original layout by László Moholy-Nagy, cover design by Herbert Bayer, reprint edition)
Nominated by Leonardo Sonnoli
All my books are in the office that I closed one month ago. The last night I left it — with the idea that I had to stay home only few days — I brought just the books my backpack contained. The books are related to some of the principles of design: the knowledge of the avant-garde and the contemporary re-use of it, women in design, the ethic vs. the aesthetic.
2nd sight by David Carson
Nominated by Giuliano Garonzi, Graphic Designer, Studio Garonzi
This book has been with me for many years now as [David] Carson was a strong influence in the beginning of my career (and in a way he still is). Never for his style, but I would say for the absolute need to research something new in design. I studied graphic design in Verona, Italy and of course my studies have been influenced by the Italian school (and a bit by the Swiss school). So that means grids, Helvetica, Garamond and so on.
When I was 23 I opened my first studio and while freelancing for McCann I found out a copy of Ray Gun lying around in their Rome office. I would say that from that moment on my approach to design and the discipline changed drastically. The pioneering spirit that Carson ‘taught’ me lives on in my studio today.
How To Be An Illustrator by Darrel Rees
Nominated by Bruno Miguel de Melo Dias
I am dedicating more time to this book in particular because I’m in the process of trying to do illustration for living; to become an illustrator. And, even though I already do a bit of illustration work, I find this book super well organised and straight to the point. It’s very well written and edited; I deeply recommend it, especially for people who are or want to become illustrators.
Cover by Peter Mendelsund
Nominated by Scott Saslow, freelance graphic designer
One of the books I always turn to for inspiration is Peter Mendelsund’s monograph, simply titled Cover. Mendelsund is a book cover designer (and currently creative director at The Atlantic) and he has a wonderfully minimalist style, though there are certainly exceptions.
As someone who often works on theatrical key art and home video releases, I’m naturally drawn to anyone who can sum up a narrative in one image. And Mendelsund is an inspiration for me in particular ... we both started in completely different fields. My dreams of being a filmmaker sailed a long time ago; and before becoming a book cover designer, Mendelsund was a concert pianist!
Vaughan Oliver: Archive / Photography — Adapted from the Life Library of Photography / Peepholism — Into the Art of Morrissey
Raymon Alfonso Ruiz, Extinction Burst record label
As we’re learning about different design and printing techniques, the VO:A book has really helped us push our desire to want to learn more and one day develop our identity. We’ve always loved old family photos from the mid-century era — and, growing up, The Smiths were a huge influence on us, not just musically but aesthetically as well.
Design: The Invention of Desire by Jessica Helfand
Nominated by Eric Heiman, Principal, Volume Inc.
I’m rereading Jessica Helfand’s Design: The Invention of Desire because these times warrant a deeper dive into both asking the necessary whys of what we design and the ramifications, ethical or otherwise, once we’ve designed it.
This book bowled me over the first time I read it and I’m looking forward to rethinking its lessons in this much different context we’re living in.
Cotta & Los Libros del Mirasol by Leandro Castelao and Francisco Roca
Nominated by Lucas López
A graphic masterpiece. An edition of historical and visual value that rescues the 103 covers designed by Cotta for Los Libros del Mirasol, between 1959 and 1962.
‘Cotta's graphic work is one of the missing links between South American publications and European modernist traditions,’ says Steven Heller about Argentinean illustrator Juan Ángel Cotta. With design and research by Leandro Castelao and Francisco Roca, and published by Flecha Books, Cotta & Los Libros del Mirasol stands out as one of the best publications of 2019.
If you would like to contribute to our lockdown reading list, please email Mark with a few lines on your chosen book and a photograph of the cover (1000 pixels wide).
Each link takes you to our WeTransfer page where you can download a specific interview as a PDF.
Stay safe everyone.
Erik Spiekermann, Edenspiekermann
Kirsty Carter, A Practice for Everyday Life
Michael C Place and Nicky Place, Build
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Professor Michael Burke is a design scholar and expert on information graphics, and has enjoyed a career spanning England, the United States and Germany. Burke studied graphic design and later taught at Ravensbourne (formerly Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication) in London, at Ohio State University, Rochester Institute of Technology and the Dessau Department of Design, Anhalt University of Applied Sciences.
He is a professor at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Schwäbish Gmünd, one of Germany’s leading design schools, where he has been on the faculty for 20 years. As a design professional Burke worked with Otl Aicher on the graphics for the 1972 Olympics in Munich. He was a member of 8vo, the UK design team that produced the groundbreaking typography journal Octavo between 1986 and 1992 (see Octavo Redux). In 1998 he produced, with Peter Wildbur, the seminal volume Information Graphics. For the London Design Museum he curated a major exhibit on information design.
R. Roger Remington: What has been your experience with standards manuals?
Michael Burke: Primarily I have worked in Britain designing standards manuals for prominent architectural practices such as Building Design Partnership (BDP) and Yorke, Rosenberg and Mardall (YRM). The issues are usually the same, whether the manual is for a corporation, business, organisation – namely, establishing basic graphic elements such as the symbol or logo, typography, colour, grids, format policies, etc. so that the look will be consistent.
In Germany I was also involved in the team that designed, under the supervision of Otl Aicher, the graphic identity for the 1972 Olympics in Munich. In this case there was no traditional manual, but standards were established within the group and applied as we went along.
We did have a set of subsidiary guides that were used for specific applications, such as signage. It is amazing how well the graphics were unified even though there was no formal guide or manual. More recently in Germany, with my colleague Jürgen Hoffmann, I designed a manual for Haus Lindenhof/Caritas which has since been migrated to a digital format.
RRR: In Germany with Aicher, you were under the influence of the Ulm School?
MB: At the Ulm School of Design (Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm) between 1953 and 1968 there were a number of designers who made significant contributions to standards manuals in Europe. Most likely influenced by the work at Braun, this group at Ulm had previously been involved in developing the graphics standards for Lufthansa.
A detailed standards manual exists for this airline, and I suspect that a copy is in the archive of the Ulm School. Teachers there, such as Herbert W. Kapitzki, designed a sign manual for airports and Martin Krampen contributed a manual for airport pictographs.
This kind of systematic methodology was natural for the faculty and students at the Ulm School because they all believed in a tight, rational approach to design.
RRR: Do you feel that traditional manuals limit the designer?
MB: Not really, if they are designed properly. They set up a structure and then the designer has a great deal of freedom within that structure.
RRR: How do you compare manuals in Europe with those in America?
MB: They both carry the same basic information in terms of graphic standards. It has been my observation that manuals produced, for example, in Germany have a tendency to be much more detailed.
RRR: In a historical sense, what are your views on the standards manual?
MB: Manuals have existed for a long time. My favourites from history are the standards set up for heraldry. This was the practice of devising, granting, displaying, describing and recording coats of arms and heraldic badges. It was a very tight system.
My sense is that the origins of heraldry stretch back into ancient times. Warriors often decorated their shields with patterns and
mythological motifs. Army units of the Roman Empire were identified by the distinctive markings on their shields.
Truly heraldic devices seem to have been first used in Carolingian times. Seals and banners confirm that they were being used in the Flemish area of Europe during the reign of Charlemagne (768–814 AD). Manuals have existed in many fields, such as in the military for badges, vehicles, airplanes and even camouflage. Typographers and printers developed type specimen books, which were nothing more than specifications and showings of available type fonts.
RRR: How can one see copies of corporate identity manuals?
MB: Historically, manuals are kept secret and are not for public consumption; they are for internal reference and for use with vendors and others who provide services for the organisation. As a professor I have often tried to obtain standards manuals for classroom reference but they’re just not available.
Part of the problem is that they were not produced in great quantities. However, as an annual Visiting Design Critic at the Vignelli Center for Design Studies in the US, I am aware that the Cary Graphic Design Archive at Rochester Institute of Technology has an extensive collection of corporate identity manuals.
RRR: In the design world today a common title is ‘information design’. Do you think that standards manuals come under this category?
MB: Definitely. Making standards and instructions clear and coherent to the user, explaining graphic relationships – all this is really the same thing.
RRR: Is there a difference between a style guide and a manual?
They both share the same purpose of establishing graphic standards for the organisation, however the manual is much more detailed and specific than the style guide.
A favourite style guide in my personal collection is the one for ADDO-X, the Swedish business machine company, designed by Ladislav Sutnar in the 1940s.
Thanks to our Kickstarter backers, Manuals 2: Design & Identity Guidelines is now available again to pre-order in a second edition from the Unit shop (shipping later this month).
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AZTDR™ is now available to order from the Unit shop.
Mark Sinclair: Can we talk about the format of AZTDR™ and why you wanted to organise the studio’s work alphabetically, rather than chronologically or by sector? What does an A—Z enable you to do?
Ian Anderson: Although TDR™’s work exists in time there’s no intentional chronological development to it, just a series of obsessions punctuated by low boredom thresholds and fuelled by the clients we work with and the projects we work with them on. To show our work in the context of evolution negates the notion of a body of work showing what ideas look like. Time isn't a connection here.
It could be more accurate to group the work in terms of the themes we bounce back and forth from, but physical books work better as analogue experiences; there is a beginning and an end (and usually a middle) — the reader can flick forward and backward, and an author can direct that to a degree, but the way TDR™’s work references and self-references other work and themes makes it impossible for any thematic grouping to work in any constructive way.
No TDR™ design is an island, everything exists in the context of everything else and the random connections the reader makes helps to amplify this. But there has to be an order of content for practical reasons in a book and an A—Z creates an order that allows navigation based on an abstract idea not related to the work itself, either in terms of chronology or concept. It also allows for some interesting unintentional connections. It also makes sense to offer the work for consumption alphabetically because it connects with the AZTDR™ talks I’ve been doing around the world over the last four to five years.
MS: In addition to telling the story behind the majority of the 170+ featured projects in AZTDR™, you’ve also focused on the core ‘idea’ in each of them. Why take this route and show, as you say in the book’s introduction, “what ideas look like”?
IA: I’m only interested in (graphic) design as a conduit for communicating ideas and solutions. The better the design, the better the communication and the more effective (and interesting) the dialogue it provokes. You can look at the book as a compendium of great design, but that’s not what I see, or at least not all I see.
MS: In terms of looking back at the studio’s earliest work — and to some of its most well-known projects, particularly from the 1990s — did this process make you think differently about the TDR™ story, or the studio’s evolution?
IA: Not really. It’s been an interesting process, like reading an old diary, getting to know the person I was, or the people we were when a given design was created. Primarily, it’s made me hungry for new projects, new opportunities, new conversations, new collaborators and new clients. The past is a nice place to visit, if you have a reason to, but it’s not somewhere to stay.
MS: There’s a balance of well-known TDR™ projects in AZTDR™ as well as much lesser-known work in the book, but did you have a selection criteria for including work? Are some projects special to you for reasons that TDR™ fans might not be aware of?
IA: We work for other people primarily because it’s interesting to us. Because we immerse ourselves in the process we give more than service (sometimes too much). What we see in a project isn’t necessarily what other people see … so maybe this is a book about what we see filtered through what Unit Editions perceived to be what people would like to see. It’s a snapshot really. Nothing is written in stone.
MS: There are some 28 different PWEI projects included in the book and ten Autechre collaborations. What’s the key to the longevity of these relationships, do you think?
IA: Trust.
MS: Many TDR™ fans came to the studio’s work through music or its self-initiated projects, but is there a particular area of TDR™’s work that you’re keen for more people to know about — and that the book enables you to share?
IA: I would happily do an entire book about the work, the ideas, the themes, the problems and the solutions, both specific and universal, that we immersed ourselves in with Manchester School of Art. We also did a great body of work for Manchester School of Architecture which got shelved primarily down to inter-Uni politics. There was so much creative which never got used, so many plans cut short, so many opportunities missed.
MS: Can you tell me about some of the more recent projects you were keen to include in AZTDR™? Is the older work somehow easier to decide upon in that it has, in your eyes, either stood the test of time, or not?
IA: It’s definitely easier to identify older work to include — the benefit of hindsight or maybe how the work has grown a life of its own. Its always interesting to see the real world populated by ideas that have previously lived in your head or on your monitor. But, there’s a hierarchy of ideas which help to inform the choices, the selection.
If anything, I think we went with more music work than I initially intended — most of the ideas I find more interesting inhabit bigger, more corporate projects, because they are bigger problems to solve. But, as with Coca Cola, Audi, Manchester School of Art etc, the solution doesn’t always reside in picture book graphics, maybe it’s out there in a strategy somewhere. We decided against including a raft of Pinterest work, for example, because its output was a feed for other ideas, answers as more questions.
AZTDR™ is now available to order from the Unit shop.
Satoshi Tomiie — Full Lick (SMEJ Associated Records, 1999)
It feels like the perfect storm of everything TDR™ had been working on for a time up to that point — deconstructing and rebuilding 3D in 2D, arrows, fluorescent pink and yellow, minimal type, information graphics, physical form as a playground, all distilled into one visual and conceptual feast. Printed in Japan.
Autechre — Oversteps (Warp Records, 2010)
If I had to have a favourite, this would be it. Seventy-two attempts to draw a perfect circle as an analogous morality tale of the human condition in the context of the digital world we've created — like parents trying to understand the children who've risen up against them.
Age of Chance — Kiss (FON, 1987)
We can never unlove our first love. Rotring-rendered on graph board BC (Before Computers), this remains the foundation for most of the work that followed. Post-punk political ‘zine, Burroughs cut-up, cycle-chic glam, Never Mind the Bollocks fluoro, Letraset soap-box and smack in the face of right-thinking people everywhere…. To Hell With Purity.
Aphex Twin — Syro (Warp Records, 2014)
Everything that Ian (TDR™), Richard (Aphex Twin) and Warp (a record company) had ever done deconstructed, reduced down to the ones and zeros of the product expressed in the context of consumerism not art.
Moloko — I Am Not A Doctor (Echo, 1998)
Róisín Murphy as Ingrid Bergman as a Hollywood Joan of Arc up close and personal with the (not—) 'Milka' cow shot in the Alps with Elaine Constantine. Love on a mountain top, shiny armour, cow-shit cable car, Alpine diet and near death experiences.
Autechre — Chiastic Slide (Warp Records, 1997)
First expression of 3D>2D idea inspired by my first NYC trip — swapped perspective skyscrapers reduced to barcodes and random shapes, NASA control centre reduced to grids, white goods graveyard extruded and compressed as distant (post-Amber) mountains, metallics, spot-UVs and a Photoshop-built and demolished font. Vectors and pixels and hidden prints.
Plaid — The Digging Remedy (Warp Records, 2016)
Digging deeper, worn on the sleeve, the idea that no matter how deep we dig, we just find different iterations of what we already know.
Supercharger — Punk Skunk Funk (Indochina, 1998)
Metallics, fluoros, vectors like a techno remix of pre-computer PWEI-styling. The revolution is on the way and it’s looking GOOD — for the people buy TDR™.
Pop Will Eat Itself — This is the Hour... This is the Day... This is This (RCA, 1999)
As it was in the beginning pre-digital computer love affair, watch this space is the place Watchmen-influenced kharma collision kolour palettes ... first Mac hypercard output meshed with Claris (spanners in the) Works. Hand-drawn, hand-rendered, hand-Letrasetted and hand-photocopied.
Sun Electric — Aaah! (R&S Records, 1994)
The most blissful of all TDR™ concentric circles ... eagle-eyes will realise just how much TDR™ work is based on ideas emanating and splash-rippling out from central target ideas echoing and memory fading.
The stories behind the design of all of the sleeves featured in here are included in AZTDR™, which is available to pre-order now from the Unit shop.
Paula Scher, Pentagram
My favourite Letraset typeface was Helvetica Medium, which seemed to be the only one they had at the Tyler School of Art art supply store, where I sometimes worked.
Since I could never rub down the type without it cracking, I used to draw little serifs on it and decorate it in other ways by adding dots and curlicues with a Rapidograph pen. My life long hatred of Helvetica began with Letraset.
Lucienne Roberts, LucienneRoberts+ / GraphicDesign&
My typographer Pop died at the end of 2017. He was a ‘might need that later’ kind of chap, so inevitably there was a lot of Letraset to be found – in his studio, in the attic. Univers, Clarendon, Arnold Böcklin, they were all there.
But I was most taken by the ‘line rules’, the blocks of ‘shading tints’ and those architectural figures in their drainpipes and their flares. They spoke volumes about process and the period to me.
Erik Spiekermann
When I was doing the layout for our school magazine in Berlin in 1965, a friend told me about this amazing new stuff which was supposed to make setting headlines easy. I used to set headlines in hot metal type (in Akzidenz Grotesk, of course) at the press where I did my apprenticeship and paste them into the layout.
My friend sent me a sheet of Letraset. It was Clarendon (version by Edouard Hoffmann and Hermann Eidenbenz at Haas), probably 48 point. So, I learnt to rub down headlines in Clarendon and for the next two years I kept buying sheets of that same face. Haven’t used Clarendon since.
Catherine Dixon
There are many Letraset typefaces I admire but I will always have a great affection for faces such as Sunshine (1971, designed by Mike Daines).
When I was small my Dad was what was known then as a ‘commercial artist’. On those days when school was closed, or if I had to go to work at the weekend with my Dad, I would be given the Letraset catalogue to keep me amused. It was always those sunny display faces of the seventies that I would seek out. And some 40 years or so on they still make me smile.
Chris Ashworth
My favourite Letraset font is Frankfurter (1970, designed by Bob Newman). Why? As I often use Letraset to build type illustrations its broad and uniquely-shaped letter forms have given me great elements to build from. And besides, it’s called Frankfurter. I used Frankfurter on a Ray Gun spread for Jesus & Mary Chain in 1998.
Morag Myerscough
For a favourite typeface, I’ve looked through my 1980s Letraset book and cast my mind back to when I used the book all the time and saved my money to buy sheets from the London Graphic Centre – they weren’t cheap!
I’m going to go with what I would choose today – Stack (1969, designed by Les Lawrence, image via Mike Yanega’s Lined Font Guide). I like it! Looks like a hard one to rub-down perfectly.
Tony Brook, Spin
Superstar (1970, designed by Colin Brignall) Straight and Shadow, was always one of my favourites. It’s kind of tough and sharp; it was really easy to manipulate – to make more compressed or expanded. All those hard straight edges were a gift.
Erik Brandt
Microgramma (1952, designed by Alessandro Butti and Aldo Novarese) is my favourite Letraset typeface without question, because it formed the cornerstone of my later work in both teaching and practice, but also because of the uppercase ‘K’ — a striking beauty.
Claudia Klat, Spin
My choice is Sinaloa (1972, designed by Rosmarie Tissi). I like it because although it has Swiss heritage (Tissi is Swiss), it doesn’t look like Helvetica or any of the other typefaces we think of when we think of Swiss typography. And I also like it because it is by a female designer – and a very good one, too.
Michael C Place, Build
Beans (1973, designed by Dieter Zembsch). Sourced from my 1974 catalogue, wire-o-bound with a red cover. Why? Because it’s completely bonkers and a really fresh way of looking at how letterforms can be constructed.
Adrian Shaughnessy, Unit Editions
If Barney Bubbles designed a typeface for Letraset (he didn’t) it might look like this. Block Up (1974, designed by Sally-Ann Grover) is not the most elegant face, but it has a funky 3D geometric quality that makes it irresistible (although, back when I used Letraset typefaces regularly, I never used this one).
Domenic Lippa, Pentagram
Shatter (1973, designed by Vic Carless) is an onomatopoeia typeface that delights in its fun and playfulness.
Malcolm Garrett
In truth, I detested all of those Letragraphica fonts designed especially for Letraset in the 1970s as a dubious attempt at being ‘contemporary’. In my view they appeared amateur, appealing to designers with little interest in serious typography. Consequently I equated in-house type design at Letraset not with playful irreverence as intended, but with a certain lack of authority.
For me, Letraset had been simply a convenient and accessible way to produce headlines or logos that looked professional, and retained an unquestionable sophistication.
It was with genuine surprise then that I discovered only a couple of years ago that Compacta (1963, designed by Fred Lambert), the font I had used prominently in my first work with Buzzcocks (and which I still return to), was itself designed specifically for Letraset. My earlier prejudice belatedly undone!
Neville Brody, Brody Associates
The revelation for me with Letraset wasn’t so much the new freedom it provided to space, distort, physicalise and curve type in ways that weren’t possible previously with letterpress or even woodblock printing, but the extra opportunity it gave to play with textures, silhouetted clichés and patterns – very much a pre-Mac era of experimentation and post-dada punk playfulness.
My copy of the Letraset book is so well-worn and tattered, and evidences the central and liberating role it played for me at college, and consequently the studio.
As part of our Unit/10 celebrations, for one month only Letraset: The DIY Typography Revolution is available from the Unit shop for £25.
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Tadao Ando: Complete Works – Francesco Dal Co (Phaidon, 1997)
My favourite architect. His use of natural light is a design triumph, likewise his use of concrete. His buildings should be enjoyed in person – but if you can’t visit one, this book is a good second best.
Piet Zwart: Documents in the Visual Arts – Ed: Fridolin Müller (Arthur Niggli, 1966)
If designers ever need a lesson in how to handle form and space, Zwart is the man to turn to. He designed press ads for drill bits and flooring materials, yet made them look like works of avant garde art.
Wallace Berman: Support the Revolution (Institute of Contemporary Art/Amsterdam, 1993)
Berman was a 1960s American artist. His works contain lots of typography, and his famous magazine – Semina – is a work of real graphic innovation. Asked to design a cover for The Doors, he said no. You can see him on the cover of The Beatles Sergeant Pepper album.
17 Graphic Designers, London – John Commander (Balding + Mansell, 1963)
Long before graphic design became a sexy profession, it was the province of pioneer individuals and groups such as the ones featured here. British graphic design of the period does not compare with the best Swiss, German or Dutch work, but as this book shows, GB wasn’t too far behind. Features work by Derek Birdsall, Bob Gill, Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes, Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert.
Listen Whitey!: The Sights and Sounds of Black Power, 1965—1975 – Pat Thomas (Fantagraphics Books, 2012)
It’s very fashionable to eulogise the Black Power movement and easy to take a dilettante, voyeuristic view of that revolutionary movement. But the graphics that came out of that tumultuous time have an incendiary power that is given extra weight because many of the issues the Panthers and others fought against are still with us.
Vinyl Records and Covers by Artists – Guy Schraenen (Museu D'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2005)
Artists are not necessarily better at making album covers than designers, but they bring a contrarian, rule breaking spirit that few trained designers can match. To see what I mean, look at covers by Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Beuys, Marian Zazeela and Laurie Anderson.
The Aspen Papers: Twenty Years of Design Theory from the International Design Conference in Aspen – Ed: Reyner Banham (Pall Mall Press, 1974)
Essential reading for anyone interested in the origins of design criticism. The Aspen Conferences were amongst the first attempts to look at design with a critical eye and to ask the ethical and political questions that we are now familiar with today. Design by Chermayeff and Geismar.
Books on Japan 1931—1972 – Ed: Yoshiyuki Morioka (Ram Publications, 2012)
A book about books! Yet irresistible, especially if you are (as I am) infatuated with Japanese culture and Japanese design. Every time I open this book, I get an acute urge to go to Japan.
Vision in Motion – Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (Paul Theobald, 1947)
The book is a dense appraisal by Moholy-Nagy on many aspects of design and culture and ranges through poetry and literature to architecture and colour theory. Visionary!
Our Forbidden Land – Fay Godwin (Jonathan Cape, 1990)
I recently moved from London to the English countryside. This has caused me to become enraptured by trees, fields and skies. Few people capture the primal attraction of landscape better than Fay Goodwin. Most of her books (including this one) have the added bonus of being designed by Ken Garland.
Unit/10 is our celebration of ten years of Unit Editions. Look out for more book lists and details of other projects in the coming months.
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IBM’s understanding of the role of design in business had begun to emerge in the early 1950s after Thomas J. Watson Jr (son of IBM founder Thomas J. Watson Sr) visited the Olivetti shop on 5th Avenue, New York City. The Italian firm’s typewriters were manufactured in bright colours and boasted ultra-modern styling.
The Olivetti shop was vibrant and contemporary; by comparison, IBM’s offices were drab and uninviting, its computers dated and unstylish.
Watson Jr resolved to “put my stamp on IBM through modern design”. To this end he hired the well-respected architect and former curator of industrial design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Eliot Noyes, as IBM’s design consultant.
Noyes brought in many of the leading creative talents of the era, including Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen and Isamu Noguchi. One of his shrewdest moves was to appoint Paul Rand, the legendary graphic designer, to design the IBM logo and the company’s house style.
Rand evolved his original 1956 design into a version constructed from 13 stripes in 1966, refining this again – to an eight-striped iteration – in 1972. In 1978, IBM published The IBM Logo: Its Use in Company Identification. “It is the graphic designer who, in a myriad of ways, is confronted with the problem of using the logo effectively,” the Introduction stated.
“Effective use implies not only an awareness of special design problems, but also an awareness of semantics – the meaning and relationship of words and pictures.
“It further involves some understanding of people’s reactions to visual things. Often we say that a thing is beautiful if it works. A beautiful looking chair that offers little comfort is not a beautiful chair. The idea of discomfort affects the viewer’s impression of its appearance.
“Similarly, a printed piece that is attractive to look at but difficult to understand is not beautiful because it is not useful. In short, form and function are inseparable.”
The corporation’s 1990 manual, The IBM Logo, took this exploration further. “The design of the IBM logo, like any design problem, is one of integrating form and substance – of making three familiar letters of the alphabet look different, attractive, memorable, and adaptable to an infinite number of applications,” it explained.
“The most unusual aspects of the [IBM logo] design are the square counters of the B and the asymmetric serifs of the M – visual cues to aid recall.... Even the slightest suggestion of stripes says IBM.”
This last point was proven by the striking use (or non-use) of the logo on the manual’s cover, as shown below.
Four IBM design manuals are featured in our book, Manuals 2. With your help we can republish the title – visit our Kickstarter to find out more about the publication and to see the rewards available.
The 224-page document that North created for telephone- and internet-bank First Direct in 2008 is a little different to most design manuals.
‘Black & White: A Conversation’ introduced a branding overhaul for the bank (founded in 1989 by Midland Bank), which included a new vertical logo and minimalist black and white colour palette.
But in addition to conveying how the refreshed identity would work, the manual functioned as a wider brand book, with tone of voice a vital component. Through the bank’s new guidelines, the copywriters employed a plain-speaking, conversational tone – and produced a manual that was actually, well, funny.
In terms of its visual aspect, North provided a guide to type size and line spacing for headlines and body text, introduced the use of Helvetica Neue (45, 85), and included a coloured section that functioned as a manual for image usage.
“Black and white means honest,” runs the copy in the book’s Introduction. “You know, if you say, it’s there in black and white that means you’ve got nothing to hide. You can always tell what’s on our mind. We don’t need to elaborate.
“In fact, you could argue that our brand identity says more than any strapline ever could. It’s simple. Honest. Straightforward. In black and white. What else is there to say?”
In the world of global banking 2008 is largely remembered for the catastrophic crisis that engulfed the industry and caused massive distrust of the sector – still tangible over a decade later. And with hindsight, North’s work for First Direct might seem bold, brazen even, given the climate.
Yet, by this point, the bank’s own reputation was already built on strong customer service satisfaction – not to mention a revered ethical stance – so ensuring that it continued to play to its strengths seems to have been a very wise decision; crystallised here in a cleverly-designed (and amusing) graphics manual.
The design manual for First Direct (2008) is one of 20 featured in our book, Manuals 2 (spread shown, above). With your help we can republish the title – visit our Kickstarter to find out more about the publication and to see the rewards available.
]]>The international news agency Reuters presented the team with a multidisciplinary project to overhaul the company’s identity. Fletcher’s ‘dot-matrix’ design idea was born out of the holes punched out of the ‘teleprinter’ tape which was used in newsrooms at the time – not, as is often thought, the ‘tickertape’ used for stock market information, according to Reuters’ then General Manager, Michael Nelson.
This identity system was based on a “regular modular pattern” and the logotype was constructed from 84 dots. This gave the design some creative flexibility in terms of how the Reuters name could be reproduced, with “holes, lightbulbs, nuts and bolts, coins, bottle tops” all apparently used to render the name at some point, according to project page on the Alan Fletcher Foundation site.
In the introduction to the design manual that accompanied the new identity, the following text introduced the visual components: “Reuters has adopted a house style – a carefully designed form of presentation for all printed matter. We have done this because just as Reuters itself is modern and efficient so should the face be that it presents to its subscribers and the public.”
Typefaces chosen for the stationery were Neue Haas Grotesk Light and Helvetica Light, while the manual itself made use of a foldout, wrap-around cover (below) and different paper stocks, including tissue papers.
Fletcher’s identity was in use for just over 30 years, until the dots were transferred to a roundel design and a new logotype was introduced in the late 1990s. The organisation became Thomson Reuters in 2008.
The design manuals for Reuters (1965) is one of 20 featured in our book, Manuals 2. With your help we can republish the title – visit our Kickstarter to find out more about the publication and to see the rewards available.
]]>Liza Enebeis has been at Studio Dumbar since 2008 and is now a partner and Creative Director. After graduating from the Parsons School of Design in New York and the Royal College of Art she began her career at Pentagram in London, remaining there for several years. In 2003 she relocated to the Netherlands. Enebeis also co-founded the typography and design podcast channel, Typeradio, and regularly posts work to Instagram via Books Love Liza.
The images shown here are of Studio Dumbar’s manuals for the Dutch Police and the postal service, PTT. Both are discussed below.
Adrian Shaughnessy: Printed standards manuals are a thing of the past – today, brand guidelines are most commonly produced as PDF or online instructions. What have we gained and what have we lost as a result?
Liza Enebeis: We have probably gained more than we’ve lost. You can distribute digital guidelines at higher speed; you can update them, correct them and re-adjust them in an instant; all without incurring huge extra costs. And they offer much more functionality because you can simply download files. With the changes in the media landscape, it is almost inevitable that guidelines also have to change. We have so many more applications to consider than 20 years ago – online playing a large part in this.
Currently the number of print applications of an identity has reduced drastically. For example, it would be strange to have a printed manual for a company that only prints a letterhead. Of course, a printed manual can still have its specific use, for example when it comes to colour referencing. But overall I think we are nostalgic for print – we miss the tactility and a confirmation of existence.
In the past the printed manual was seen as the cherry on top of the identity. It was the initiation of the rollout, and it was treated and regarded as one of the most important design items of the identity. And that is what is very different currently: printed manuals no longer have the status they used to have. The question is: why don’t online guidelines have the same impact as the printed ones? Surely it’s possible to capture the essence of the NYC Transit Authority guidelines, for example, in an online version too?
AS: In the age of adaptable and flexible digital identities, do we still need manuals of any kind?
LE: Adaptable and flexible doesn’t mean ‘Do whatever you want’ – even the identities that look or feel completely free have guides and checks and balances on how to achieve that. I find it fascinating and a great challenge to be able to create an identity that even though it looks relatively complex or free, has a very simple system of implementation behind it.
I find it a pity when an identity becomes simplified, not in a positive sense, to serve the guidelines – sometimes you see designers cut corners because they can’t find the answer to interpreting their identity into a system that can be easily interpreted by others.
AS: How would you describe your approach manuals at Studio Dumbar?
LE: Just like every other project, we approach each company guideline differently. We always ask ourselves: What is really necessary in order for this identity to have continuity and consistency in the most successful way? Who is the audience – designers, communications managers, etc.? Is the manual a PDF only, or is it an interactive website with downloadable templates? All this information helps define our parameters.
In very general terms, you could say there are roughly two parts to our work. Part one is the concrete instructions, such as logo, colour specifications, grid, photography and graphic language. Part two is capturing the spirit. This can be done in many ways, through visual examples and/or keywords. And of course the manual itself, whether online or a PDF, should be treated as part of the identity.
AS: Do you have a favourite Studio Dumbar manual?
I would say the Dutch Police [five images shown above]. I find it hard to divide the identity from the manual. I still look at the Dutch Police identity and I’m really impressed; I have not seen any other police identity that beats it. Another favourite is the PTT (subsequently TNT Post, the Dutch national postal company) manual [two image shown below], but that’s for more nostalgic reasons.
During my first day at Dumbar as an intern, I was given the PTT manual to read. It was one of the most recent projects at that time, and everyone in the studio was really proud of it. As I looked through it I regretted applying for an internship at Dumbar – all I could think was, ‘This is the most hideous and boring thing I have ever seen, and can someone please get me out of here!’ The PTT manual will always remind me of that day.
AS: This is the second volume of classic manuals produced by Unit Editions. Much to our surprise, the first proved madly successful. What do you think is the attraction of these dusty volumes? Nostalgia? Rejection of the digital?
LE: I think the selection is what makes them successful: the identities that are showcased are very powerful. Plus each manual is designed to last; they are not disposable. They are milestones within the identities themselves – a proof that they exist.
Maybe that’s what we miss: the longevity of the work we do. The NYC Transit manual was issued in 1970 and it still exists almost intact. You can recognise the care that has been put into designing it – unlike the PDF guidelines you see now. These manuals are also rare objects: there were only a handful of people who had access to them, especially if they only existed in print.
Plus having a glimpse behind the building blocks of an identity is rare. You see so many blogs regurgitating the same work over and over, logo after logo, but you never see the manuals behind them.
This is an edited extract from the interview with Liza Enebeis that appears in Manuals 2. With your help we can republish the book – visit our Kickstarter to find out more about the publication and to see the rewards available.
Adrian Shaughnessy: What was the first design publication that caught your eye?
Teal Triggs: It would have been Domus (1928–present, Italy) in the late 1960s when I couldn’t have been more than ten years old. My dad was a graphic designer and I distinctly remember the Italian magazine stacked neatly on the living room floor next to his favourite Eames reading chair. The covers attracted my attention – the use of bold graphics, photographic detailing and playful illustrations. By the 1980s, when Ettore Sottsass took over as editor and Postmodernism became de rigeur, I was hooked.
AS: As an American designer and writer who has lived in the UK for many years, what is the main difference – if any – between USA and UK design publications?
TT: I guess their editorial emphasis. In recent history, mainstream USA design magazines such as Communication Arts (1959–present, USA), Print (1940– present, USA), I.D. (1954–2009, USA) and How (1985–present, USA), have tended to operate as showcases for trade or commercial design. Whereas in the UK, design publications such as Design (1949–99, UK), Blueprint (1983–present, UK) and Eye (1990–present, UK) have traditionally had a strong sense of the historical, cultural and social contexts in which design operates. Trade magazines such Portfolio (1949–51, USA) and Word and Image (1985–present, UK) were notable exceptions.
Other exceptions, of course, include periodicals that were key to influencing new ways of thinking about graphic design, but also impacted on the visual language of design: in the USA, there was Wet (1976–81), Avant-garde (1968–71), Interview (1969–present), Spy (1986–99), Emigre (1984–2005), Beach Culture (1989–91), Ray Gun (1992–2000), and so forth. And in the UK, popular culture and lifestyle magazines such as i-D (1980–present) and The Face (1980–2004) influenced a generation of designers internationally.
From my experience in both countries, publications that have been mouthpieces for professional design organisations have tended to provide platforms for writing and criticism which encouraged authors to look differently at design and often be more experimental in how they approached their subjects: for example, the AIGA Journal for Graphic Design (1947–present, USA), Icographic (1971–78, UK), Circular (1993–present, UK) and Typographic (1969–present, UK), amongst others. Some of the same authors writing in the UK would also write for US publications, providing readers with cross-cultural design perspectives.
AS: What is the role of design journalism and critical writing at a time when everything can be seen free online?
TT: The role of design journalism and critical writing is even more crucial now that content is readily available online. However, the role of the critic as an arbiter of taste has shifted to that of a navigator – leading us through a plethora of information that tells us what to think about design. There is always a space for critical writing to keep the profession from being too introspective. And in order to be critical you need to be informed and alert to what is going on. Today everybody is a critic – but not everybody can be a good critic.
I would suggest that more broadly, the role of the design magazine as a space for debate is losing its position as a place where designers might question and critically engage with the profession. Debates are moving online, either through Twitter or personal blogs and websites, or emerging in hybrid print and digital forms with alternative, independent small press magazines produced and edited by designers. That New Design Smell (2011–present, Canada), produced by Michèle Champagne, and Modes of Criticism (2015–present, UK/ Portugal), by Francisco Laranjo, are cases in point.
AS: How have design journals influenced your role as an educator and academic research leader?
TT: As an educator it’s important to help our students engage with current research in the field, but also to be able to position their practice within a historical and theoretical framework. Academic journals are important as forums for inquiry and critical discourse. Journals inform and shape our field professionally and intellectually and, in doing so, help establish a future for the study of design.
Visible Language (1967–present, USA) – edited until recently by Sharon Helmer Poggenpohl – was an early academic design research journal, which influenced my thinking about the potential for design and typographic scholarly research. In particular, an issue from 1978 on the theme ‘French Currents of the Letter’, designed by four graduate students from Cranbrook Academy of Art – Richard Kerr, Alice Hecht, Jane Kosstrin and Herbert Thompson, with the then co-Chair of Design, Katherine McCoy. This printed issue clearly evidenced the potential for how research and typographic experimentation could be integrated into an academic space.
Whilst academic publishers have tended to become more conservative in their approach to the design of journals (in part fuelled by constraints of online publishing), the introduction of the visual essay has been a regular feature that my co-editors and I have used on the journal Visual Communication (2002–present, UK) to encourage alternative formats for disseminating visual research.
Equally, in my role as Editor-in-Chief of Communication Design (2009–present, UK), we are seeking to provide new and relevant platforms for emerging researchers in graphic and interdisciplinary design practice: for example, the introduction of the specialist archive section and the visual essay format complement more conventional forms of academic writing. My involvement in these and other journals has been important in raising my awareness about new research in the field, which ultimately informs the way that I teach and support students in their learning.
AS: You have a strong interest in the role of women in design. How have design journals advanced – or hindered – the cause of a feminist graphic design culture?
TT: Design journals merely reflect the status quo of its editors and readers. As such, the absence of coverage by the design press of the work of women designers is nothing new. An identifiable male-orientated canon for graphic design is the result of who and how the press has historically covered the field. The cause of a feminist design culture has been hindered by the continual perpetuation of the gaps in raising awareness about women working in the field.
Occasionally, however, it must be said that design magazines address the issues head on. Notable examples include Sheila Levrant de Bretteville’s seminal essay published in Icographic 6 (1973), which was one of the early essays to raise awareness about a feminist graphic design culture.
Later in the 1990s and early 2000s design publications such as Emigre and Eye gave pages over to an emerging discourse around the canon in design, with key writings by Ellen Lupton, Laurie Haycock Makela, Liz Farrelly, Martha Scotford, Bridget Wilkins and the Women’s Design+Research Unit (WD+RU). Yet, even today, most of the awareness-raising is taking place online.
Teal Triggs is Associate Dean in the School of Communication at the Royal College of Art. As an editor, academic and writer, her work focuses on graphic design history, feminism in visual communication and design criticism. This interview appears in Impact 1.0: Design magazines, journals and periodicals [1922–73], available now from the Unit shop. Impact volumes 1.0 and 2.0 are also available together as a bundle for £50.00, here.
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If you are a fan of John Lydon, The Fall, Julian Cope, Boards of Canada, Stereolab or Berlin-era Bowie, you’ll already be a fan of Krautrock. I prefer the name Cosmische Musik, but I’m talking about the school of music that flourished in Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was music made with guitars, drums and keyboards, but it wasn’t pop music. It was much closer to the 20th-century classical avant garde and the experimentalist wing of US and UK rock.
By the late 1970s, the Cosmische sound was forgotten. Today, however, it has been rediscovered by a generation of musicians and fans attracted to the motorik rhythms, synth drones and ‘cosmic’ meanderings of bands such as Can, Faust, Neu, Amon Düül and, of course, Kraftwerk.
Here are my top ten Cosmische/Krautrock albums. I’m heartbroken not to include A.R. & Machines, Walter Wegmuller and Tangerine Dream. I could easily do a Top 50, but this list will be useful for anyone who needs an introduction to the weird and fractured sounds of post-war German youth. I have selected currently available CD versions as they are easier to find than original pressings.
Can – Tago Mago (Mute/Spoon)
One of the numerous Can albums I might have selected. Tago Mago stands out because it encapsulates the Can ethos of fusing funky, chugging rhythms with space rock drones and the whispered far-away vocals of Damo Suzuki.
Faust – IV (Virgin)
One of the great Cosmische albums by one of the great German experimentalists: drones, beats and ghostly folk resonances abound.
Amon Düül II – Phallus Dei (Gammorock Records)
A record titled God’s Penis has to be good! The second incarnation of this group is closer to prog rock than other German bands but laced with the Cosmische other-worldliness we have come to expect.
NEU! – NEU! 2 (Gronland)
The ür-Krautrock album, full of hallucinogenic guitar noodling (Michael Rother) and the pulse of motorised beats (Klaus Dinger). I could easily have chosen any one of their three (official) albums, but NEU! 2 has a grandeur that has rarely been surpassed. NEU!’s influence on everyone from Bowie to Eno to Mark E Smith is immense.
La Düsseldorf – Viva (Captain Trip Records)
Formed by NEU drummer Klaus Dinger, La Düsseldorf were a Krautrock hybrid – anthemic prog rock stylings, gurgling electronics, birdsong and weird vocals that hinted at punk! Like visiting a carnival in a nightmare – it’s that good.
Cluster – Cluster II (Brain)
Formed by Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, Cluster were defiantly avant garde. Cluster II was one of the great albums to come out of early 70s Germany – it was often shapeless, hypnotic and beatless. It was co-produced by Conny Plank, and its influence can be felt in albums by Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada and many others.
Harmonia – Musik von Harmonia (Brain)
Roedelius and Moebius, with the addition of NEU guitarist Rother, made an album of propulsive rhythmic grandeur. Could have been made today, it is a high-water mark for Cosmische Musik. Later the trio were joined by Eno, who recorded one album with them, and identified their pivotal role in the development of ambient music.
Popul Vuh – Aguirre (Ohr)
Best known for their transcendent soundtracks to the films of Werner Herzog, Popul Vuh offered a radical alternative to the relentless rhythmic surge of most Krautrock bands. Often using acoustic instruments, choral singing and elements from indigenous music from around the world, Popul Vuh leader Florian Fricke is one of the great originals of 20th-century music of any kind.
Cosmic Jokers – Cosmic Jokers (Spalax)
The psychedelic house band for the ballrooms of Mars. True space rock. Dreamy guitar-led jams by the great Manuel Göttsching that unravel over a rhythmic bed of synths (Klaus Schulze), drums and bass. Five Cosmic Jokers records were made by unscrupulous producer Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser, who invited the group to jam sessions which he recorded and, without the musician’s knowledge, released as albums.
Kraftwerk – Tour de France (Kling Klang)
Arguably as influential as the Beatles, without Kraftwerk electronic music (pop music, even) might have mutated into something quite different from its present incarnation. I might have been expected to choose Autobahn, the group’s most famous album. But I’ve gone for this much later work (2003), which is like inhaling a blast of life-affirming oxygen every time I hear it. Back when I designed record covers for a living, I met many famous rock stars, but meeting Ralf Hütter was the only time I felt overawed.
Unit/10 is our celebration of ten years of Unit Editions. Look out for more top tens, book lists and details of other projects over the next few months.
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The ground-breaking projects that Pyke and his various collaborators have created over 15 years is the subject of our forthcoming book, What is Universal Everything?, more details of which will be revealed very soon. For now, enjoy Matt’s own list of inspirational and thought-provoking books.
The Object Stares Back – On the Nature of Seeing by James Elkins
The book which taught me the fundamentals of seeing, our primal perception of movement and the phenomenon of Pareidolia – revealing faces in forms.
Four Thousand Threads by Dick Jewell
An independently-published artist’s book, greatly disobeying usage rights. The artist finds the links between thousands of similar photographs courtesy of Google’s AI-driven ‘find similar images’ function. It reveals global harmonies of human behaviours.
Dawn of the New Everything: A Journey Through Virtual Reality by Jaron Lanier
A book of wisdom by the pioneer of VR and maverick critic of Silicon Valley. Always a decade ahead of his time.
Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by Paul Graham
An early book of writings by the most thoughtful and honest mind of Silicon Valley, and founder of pioneering startup school, Y Combinator.
Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark
The first chapter alone confidently predicts what may become the next Google, an AI-owned multinational creating the most desirable products every human needs, thanks to today’s overuse of user-behaviour tracking. Scary, but better for us to be prepared...!
Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
An enlightening insight into the depth of Da Vinci’s restless mind. Reassuring to see him rarely finishing many of his ideas and obsessions. His paintings are viewed anew, as proof of his understandings of the fundamentals of optics, fluid dynamics and anatomy.
A Bigger Message – Conversations with David Hockney by Martin Gayford
Yorkshire’s greatest export expresses himself in such a confident manner, which inspires me to work with integrity and a singular voice to represent our world.
Watermark by Joseph Brodsky
More Venice than Venice itself.
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
Such visual writing conjuring places from memory, my recollection of reading this feels like I’ve watched a film.
The Old Ways by Robert McFarlane
On my daily traipses across the Peak District, his poetic writing helps me see nature from new angles.
Unit/10 is our celebration of ten years of Unit Editions. Look out for more book lists and details of other projects in the coming weeks.
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As well as we think we know them, favourite books are always ready to give up their secrets again, from long-forgotten sentences, thoughts and ideas, to sequences of images or design decisions we previously might have missed.
Some of the books I’ve chosen here are ones I’ve not opened for a while, but, in going back to them over the past few days, I’ve both recognised – and been surprised by – what they contain.
Peter Mendelsund had already established himself as one of the world’s most talented book cover designers when he published What We See When We Read (Vintage), a fascinating, often playful visual essay about how we read and interpret literary texts.
As a designer, he brings an interesting perspective to the enjoyment of reading and the mechanics of visual construction. A very revealing and rewarding book.
A great writer can bring any subject alive and Luc Sante does just that in his book, Folk Photography: The American Real-Photo Postcard 1905-1930 (Yeti), a brilliant study of the way technology enabled the sending of images of local, newsworthy events via the US postal service at the beginning of the 20th-century.
The postcards themselves are bizarre and fascinating, while Sante’s writing is a joy.
On the subject of joy, how about the drawn adventures of a cat called Krazy and a mouse named Ignatz? George Herriman’s surreal comic strips from the 1930s and 40s were a real discovery for me – and the influence of them on modern cartooning is considerable.
The Fantagraphics edition I have collects the later Krazy Kat strips from 1941-2, reminding me I still need to look further into Herriman’s work, which goes back to 1913.
The action hangs on Krazy’s unrequited love for Ignatz – and the latter’s attempts to curtail the cat’s advances by throwing bricks at his/her head (which Krazy takes as a sign of love). Confusing, witty, brilliant and nearly 100 years old.
I really like the format of this book from Penguin; essentially the transcripts of several conversations between the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.
The Q&A format can often be the clearest way to render an interview (the reader sees the question asked, rather than just the answer as a quote) and, here, the sense is that you are sitting in an audience listening to one of today’s most significant voices in art talking about his life and craft.
As an example of the book as an artwork in its own right, Irma Boom’s design for textile artist Sheila Hicks’ Weaving as Metaphor (Yale), takes some beating.
From its tactile deckle edges to the varying type sizes and detailed reproductions of Hicks’ intricate works, the book honours the artist’s sensibilities perfectly. In the hand it echoes the feel of both paper and cloth – a big, white block of fibres containing all manner of colourful works within.
A book of the cool, detached photographs of mainly European industrial buildings by Bernd and Hilla Becher offers a nice counterpoint to Hicks’ art. The pair’s images of these striking structures, such as blast furnaces and water towers, have long been celebrated; the lines and forms appealing to the designer as much as the photographer.
This Thames & Hudson collection of work made across their career records an architectural landscape that has gradually disappeared, while highlighting their contributing to modern photography – and its potential subjects.
Andrzej Klimowski’s On Illustration (Oberon Masters) is a neat evocation of what’s involved in a pursuing a career in the art form, recalled from personal experience. Klimowski touches on everything from the immediacy of drawing and the importance of reading, to the illustrator’s identity and working with clients.
At just over 60 pages, it’s a slim book, but one packed with detail from a long life in illustration alongside some wonderful anecdotes.
Finally, a fairly tatty edition of a familiar yet influential book. And it’s only now, years after first reading – and writing – about John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (Pelican), that I’ve noticed the unusual credit given to the book’s designer Richard Hollis.
The second page of my 1982 paperback edition includes the line “A book made by…” and introduces the five people who contributed to the book’s construction, including Berger, Hollis and Michael Dibb, the director of the ground-breaking 1973 BBC TV series upon which the book was based.
It’s rarely stated that books are actually ‘made by’ people in this way – and I rather like its collaborative inference.
Hollis’ intelligent design and layout centred on the relationship between text (set in ‘Monophoto’ Univers) and related image, and still looks fresh today, 45 years after it was first published.
In his introduction, Berger even asserts the role the design plays in disseminating his message: “The form of the book is as much to do with our purpose as the arguments contained within in it.”
It’s a good way to think about the book in general – an inseparable combination of content and form, brought together in collaboration.
Unit/10 is our celebration of ten years of Unit Editions. Look out for more book lists and details of other projects in the coming weeks.
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Rhoda Sparber, 1971
As she told me: “My art teacher Ms. Curran, (carrot-colored hair, purple clothes) tiptoed to my desk and whispered ‘Mayor La Guardia is opening a new school for talented students. I will recommend you. You will be scheduled for an interview. Bring a portfolio.’ Portfolio? What was that?
“I evidently passed muster, and with two-dozen other students, was admitted to the first class of Music and Art H.S. Those were the first of many exciting years of learning and adapting. After graduation I was accepted into Hunter College, a municipal, tuition-free college, where I majored in art, and minored in French.”
Rhoda met Herb Lubalin at a dinner party in the 1970s: “This was the early years of Women’s Lib,” she recalled. “There was a guest at the table who would not stop ranting negatively about women’s demands. He would not shut up or change his position in any way. Finally, I left the table and went into the living room. After a little while, one of the other guests came to join me, sitting quietly next to me.
“That was a momentous event . . . a life-altering moment. We started to chat, and Herb informed me that he was a graphic designer. I informed him that my brother was a designer who worked in advertising. Herb straightened me out quite properly. ‘I am not in advertising,’ he scolded. ‘I am a Graphic Designer’.”
Rhoda meets Herb dressed as Abraham Lincoln
As a subscriber to Avant Garde, the revolutionary magazine Lubalin art directed, Rhoda knew who he was. She describes him as charming and soft-spoken, and how over the next few years they became dear friends, marrying eventually on St. Valentine’s Day.
Their life together was short. Lubalin died age 63 in 1981.
Today, Rhoda lives in upstate New York, surrounded by artwork by her late husband. In 1990, she created the Rhoda Lubalin Art Scholarship to encourage the arts locally. The photographs included here were sent to me by Rhoda, and as far as I can tell, have never been published.
Herb Lubalin: American Graphic Designer 1918—1981 is available now from the Unit shop.
Rhoda and Herb on steps of their country home
]]>Prior to writing a book on Herb Lubalin (1918–81), I had a rather sketchy opinion of him, writes Shaughnessy. Of course, I recognised that he was a significant American typographer and designer, responsible for some high quality typographic logos and a handful of era-defining typefaces.
Yet the more I delved into the life and work of Lubalin, the more interesting he became. He emerged as a sophisticated and surprisingly progressive designer. Gradually, I became seduced by the typographic poise and power of expression that he brought to every project that bore his – or his studio’s – name.
It is against the backdrop of this journey from skepticism to admiration, that I offer you ten things that you should know about Herbert Frederick Lubalin.
Above: Typographic self-portrait by Lubalin for an exhibit at the American Institute of Graphic Arts
1. The correct way to pronounce ‘Lubalin’.
His name is pronounced ‘Loo-baa-lin’, with the accent on the ‘baa’. Like most Brits, I had always referred to him as ‘Loo-b’lin’ (accent on ‘Loo’), and it took many months of interviewing Lubalin family members and former colleagues, to break the habit.
2. He was colour-blind and ambidextrous.
An inability to distinguish colours might be thought of as a severe handicap for a graphic designer, yet Lubalin seems to have negotiated professional life without being greatly hampered by this inability. In fact, it could be argued that his colour blindness contributed to his genius for incisive black and white imagery.
His ambidextrousness, however, was seen as a sign of virtuosity. He was famously known to sketch all his ideas on ‘tissues’ that were then passed to lettering artists to turn into highly polished artwork. So great was his virtuosity that he could draw with his right hand while signing cheques with his left.
3. He was a key figure in the ‘creative revolution’ that transformed American advertising in the 1960s.
After Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB), Sudler & Hennessey was widely regarded as the most important agency in the creative revolution that took place in mid-century American advertising. Lubalin worked at S&H from 1949 to 1964.
During that time he became one of the pioneers of expressive typography (‘word pictures’, to use his phrase): his print ads for leading pharmaceutical companies radicalised advertising at a time when press ads often featured people in evening dress standing next to Cadillacs.
But although Lubalin became a partner in the firm – and hired many of the smartest brains of the ‘new advertising’ movement (George Lois, Helmut Krone, amongst others) – he ultimately rejected a career in advertising in favour of graphic design.
Later, he outlined his objection to advertising: his opposition was partly moralistic (“I don’t particularly like to advertise products and help clients sell products that I have no particular use for. And very often I turn down a product because I just think it detrimental for people to buy certain products”) and partly creative (“At an agency there are no individuals … and all those who stick to it become anonymous”).
4. He was a generous acknowledger of the contribution made by his employees and partners.
As with many graphic design studios – especially those run by celebrated designers – the question of authorship arises: the ‘who did what?’ question. In the case of Lubalin, the matter is further complicated by the fact that, as has already been noted, he only ever produced ‘tissues’ – sketches done with a cheap Pentel pen and then passed over to highly skilled lettering artists such as John Pistilli, Tom Carnase and Tony DiSpigna.
This process made authorship questionable. Was Lubalin the sole author of his work, or was he part of a team? In interviews he always paid humble tribute to his many collaborators. Their names frequently appeared on studio promotional literature, and in the case of Carnase, DiSpigna, Ernie Smith and Alan Peckolick, he also made them partners.
For Ernie Smith, however, there was no doubt about the central role Lubalin played in the studio’s creative output: “The art director who got a Lubalin tissue couldn’t take credit as the designer,” he said. “You tightened it up and refined it; but the idea, the major spatial relationships, the elegance, was built into it. Once Herb made the tissue, the ad or booklet was designed.”
5. Sometimes a phone call was all that was needed.
A key member of the Lubalin studio in its final days was Mike Aron. I interviewed Mike for my book, and he told me this story.
He was struggling with a design for the masthead of a new magazine called Families. As the deadline drew near, he began to panic. Nothing was working. Then he received an internal phone call from Lubalin. In his customary gruff manner, Herb said, “Dot the ‘L’”.
By dotting the lowercase ‘L’, which on both sides was accompanied by the lowercase letter ‘i’, a graphic representation of a family – mother father and child – was created. The logo is now considered a classic. But it only took a phone call.
6. He rejected Swiss modernism in favour of a more humanistic ‘graphic expressionism’.
Unlike Paul Rand or Lester Beall, Lubalin rejected the ‘Swiss Style’. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate Swiss rigour, or that he knew nothing about it, it was just that he thought it was unsuited to the mainstream American imagination.
As he told IDEA magazine: “The American people react to ideas. We are a concept-conscious society.” So rather than pursue European minimalism, Lubalin gave birth to a new conceptual typography which he called ‘graphic expressionism’.
In an essay he wrote in 1979 for Print magazine he said: “Graphic Expressionism is my euphemism for the use of typography, or letterforms, not just as a mechanical means for setting words on a page, but rather as another creative way of expressing an idea, telling a story, amplifying the meaning of a word or a phrase, to elicit an emotional response from the viewer.”
7. He was a designer with a political conscience at a time when it was not fashionable amongst leading US designers to have one.
Lubalin was never a shout-out-loud political revolutionary and he didn’t go on protest marches, but he frequently used his talents to support causes that appealed to his liberal sensibilities.
He designed a number of left-leaning publications (often, it must be said, for reasons as much to do with the artistic freedom these small magazines gave him as for their political complexions). He co-designed The McGraphic which has been described as a pro-McGovern/anti-Nixon/anti-Vietnam War publication.
As an employer, he hired African American women at a time when this was not common. And for Ebony magazine, he produced one of the most effective advertising campaigns, exposing discrimination amongst US corporations, reluctant to spend ad dollars in a magazine for black readers. This was a man with a political and moral view of the world that was not common amongst prominent graphic designers of the period.
8. He ‘nearly’ designed the MTV logo.
In 1980, the year before his death, Lubalin was asked to do some spec ideas for a new broadcast company – MTV. Lublin sketched a few ideas in his usual manner – interlocking letters and sharp angles. As we now know, he wasn’t awarded the job, and it went to a design company called Manhattan Design, who recognised that the broadcast landscape was changing – and designed one of the first mutable logos.
Suddenly, Lubalin’s signature style was no longer seen as avant-garde. Had he lived, it's interesting to speculate whether he would have been able to adapt to the new design environment? We will never know.
9. Reflecting on the obscenity conviction of his friend and client, the magazine publisher Ralph Ginzberg, Herb said, “I should have gone to jail too”.
One of the longest professional associations in Lubalin’s life was with his friend the publisher and editor Ralph Ginzberg. Ginzberg was the editor of three great publications that Lubalin designed: Eros, Avant Garde and Fact. All three publications were radical, controversial and ahead of their time.
But in 1972, Ralph Ginzberg was jailed for obscenity, over an issue of Eros. By today’s standards it was mild, but the issue in question showed an African American man and a white woman embracing. The couple were nude, but no genitalia were visible. Herb’s wife told me that, after Ginzburg’s jailing, he'd told her that he should have gone to jail too.
What does this tell us? It tells us that Lubalin was more than just Ginzberg’s designer, he was a true partner, and the publications they worked on were the product of collaboration of a sophisticated kind.
10. Lubalin often said that when he retired he would devote his life to painting.
This is something else that Herb’s wife Rhoda told me. Lots of designers have a secret – or not so secret – desire to be an artist. But I always think of Herb Lubalin as the ultimate graphic designer. Someone who loved lettering, typography, and the processes and craft of graphic communication.
But it seems he had a secret desire to paint. This surprised me. But, as I said at the beginning of this text, most of what I learned about Herb Lubalin surprised me.
Herb Lubalin: American Graphic Designer 1918—1981 is available now from the Unit shop. An audio version of this post, published as part of the #Lubalin100 project, can be found at lubalin100.com.
]]>When we started Unit Editions ten years ago, lots of people told us not to waste our time. Print was dead, they said, and it certainly looked that way. Bookshops were closing, magazine and newspaper sales were evaporating, eBooks were on the rise, and pretty much everything that was once printed now seemed destined to move online.
But something told us this wasn’t the complete picture.
When Tony Brook and I decided to set up a publishing company, we were only sure of two things: firstly, we both loved books and, secondly, we knew that graphic designers, no matter how immersed in the digital world, also loved books.
So, despite the warnings about the future of print, we pushed ahead and formed Unit Editions.
Now, ten years later, we’re still here – we’ve published over 40 titles, we’ve won a few awards, and we have a healthy list of books currently in production for 2019 and beyond.
And although we can look back over the past decade with pride, it hasn’t been easy. There have been moments when it has looked as if the people who told us not to do it may have been right.
Each book takes delicate negotiations with rights holders and each book takes hundreds of hours of research, photography, retouching, writing, editing, designing, print testing and production. And that’s before the mammoth tasks of distribution and promotion.
If we’ve learned anything in ten years it is that publishing is labour intensive and there are no shortcuts.
Yet we wouldn’t have it any other way. Mostly, Unit Editions is pure pleasure. There’s the delight in making something the best it can possibly be, no matter what the cost in hours and cash. There’s the pleasure in making something that you can hold in your hand. And there’s the pleasure in bringing a neglected subject or designer to a new audience – something we’ve achieved with our books on Herb Lubalin, Lance Wyman and Soviet-era design, amongst others.
But there are few pleasures to cap the experience of working with enlightened designers.
Our books on Lance, Paula Scher, Vaughan Oliver, and our forthcoming title on Matt Pyke’s Universal Everything, are shining examples of high-achieving designers trusting us not only to select the material for their respective books, but also to design, write and edit them.
This trust is humbling but it is also a sign that perhaps, after ten years, we can at least say that we know how to make books.
As we enter our second decade, surrounded by political and social turmoil rarely seen in the western world, there is one other group we need to acknowledge. You!
Without the people who buy our books, attend our events and help spread the word about Unit Editions, Tony and I might still be in the pub talking about what a publishing company in the 21st-century might look like.
Thank you! And have a happy 2019.
My top ten films of 2018.
The Image Book
(dir: Jean-Luc Godard)
Roma
(Dir: Alfonso Cuaron)
You Were Never Really Here
(Dir: Lynne Ramsey)
The Wild Pear Tree
(Dir: Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
Phantom Thread
(Dir: Paul Thomas Anderson)
BlaKkKlansman
(Dir: Spike Lee)
Shoplifters
(Dir: Koreeda Hirokazu)
Other Side of the Wind
(Dir: Orson Welles)
The Ballad of Shirley Collins
(Dirs: Rob Curry and Tim Plester)
Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami
(Dir: Sophie Fiennes)
My top ten records of 2018.
The Art Ensemble of Chicago and Associated Ensembles
Art Ensemble of Chicago (ECM)
Age Of
Oneohtrix point Never (Warp)
Listening to Pictures
Jon Hassell (Ndeya)
Stadium
Eli Keszler (Shelter Press)
Aviary
Julia Holter (Domino)
Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album
John Coltrane (Impulse!)
Composograph
Arve Henriksen (Rune Grammofon)
An Angel Fell
Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids
5 Klavierstücke
Irmin Schmidt (Mute)
Ultraviolet
Kelly Moran (Warp)
The festive season provided Herb Lubalin’s New York studio with an opportunity to send warm messages of goodwill to its clients, while indulging in some witty, often heartfelt, self-promotional work that displayed its mastery of type. To coincide with the republication of our 2012 monograph, Herb Lubalin: American Graphic Designer 1918—81, we wanted to take a look at some of the work his studio made around this time of year, some forty-five years ago.
The festive messaging that Lubalin and his team produced in the early 1970s – from Christmas and New Year’s cards, to packaging designs for client gifts – occupies an interesting place within the studio’s creative output. Take this holiday poster from 1967, issued by the Lubalin studio’s second incarnation where long-time associate Ernie Smith and lettering maestro Tom Carnese worked as partners.
Set on a bold red background, the central graphic appears to be a Victorian assemblage of several letterforms, possibly found “in one of the old copyright-free graphic ephemera books that Lubalin treasured,” as Adrian Shaughnessy writes in the Lubalin book.
This cryptic design is semi-explained by the small bit of text that runs alongside: ‘It says here, somewhere: “Peace on earth, goodwill to all men.” Let’s get it together’.
While wry humour was often an important part of the studio’s voice, it could still convey more serious sentiments, even during a typically jovial time of year. Attempting to instill a sense of goodwill to all, one seasonal project that Lubalin worked on for the Danish jewellers Georg Jensen in the early 1970s resulted in a rather more austere-looking typographic holiday card in festive green and red.
Bearing the message ‘Others – That’s what it’s all about’, the design was joined by the instructions to ‘Love’ at all times, everyday, all throughout the year.
In the sixth issue of the FlatFile series examining Lubalin’s work, Alexander Tochilovsky, curator of the Herb Lubalin Study Center, points to a New Year’s card that signalled the start of Lubalin’s journey into the 1970s proper, having recently expanded his studio to three partners and changed its name to Lubalin, Smith, Carnese.
“The studio was busy with client work, and were about to embark on a decade of work which will visually come to define the 1970s,” Tochilovsky writes. “What better way to mark the start of this journey than with a typographic bang – a holiday card announcing the year 1972.”
Lettered by Tom Carnese in a Spencerian style, the numerical ambigram made use of the visual similarities between the ‘7’ and the ‘2’ and claimed that while, yes, ‘69 was good – ‘72 is better’.
Interestingly, the ‘72’ design also had a second outing at the close of the year (1972 was nothing if not busy) and was reused in a season’s greetings card issued by the newly-formed Lubalin, Burns & Co., the business that Lubalin established with partners Aaron Burns and Bob Farber and that would go on to become ITC.
Of course, like any studio or agency worth its salt, Lubalin, Smith, Carnase Inc. were also well aware of the power of producing actual gifts for clients over the holiday period. So in 1973, this charming LSC-branded label for ‘Jug-o-Glug’ was designed by the studio’s Annegret Beier for a series of bottles of mulled wine that were delivered in time for Christmas.
According to lubalin100.com, Beier even made the seasonal drink that the bottles contained, too. A clever way to remind people of the packaging design talents within the studio – and a gesture that would no doubt be warmly enjoyed over the holiday period.
Finally, and with this year’s Christmas season already upon us (did the feeling that it gets earlier every year occur in the 1970s?), what better way to finish than with the ‘Love and Joy’ Christmas card that was sent out by Lubalin, Smith, Carnese in 1975 (art directed by Lubalin, designed by Alan Peckolick, with Carnese producing the glorious letterforms).
A lovely sentiment and a pretty effective way of reminding people of the joy that the work of Lubalin and his team could bring to projects in the coming year.
Thanks to the support of our Kickstarter backers we have been able to reprint our 2012 monograph on Lubalin. Herb Lubalin: American Graphic Designer 1918—81 is available to pre-order now, via the Unit shop. Thank you to Alexander Tochilovsky for his help and expertise in putting this post together.
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