Reviews (30 texts)

Third in the heavily subsidised series ‘Graphic design in the Netherlands’, Jan van Toorn, Critical Practice takes on the difficult task of exploring and striving to elucidate the work of Jan van Toorn (JvT), a designer who is not always clear about his intentions, who makes frequent use of inexplicable images and text, and whose work is often described with concepts such as ‘alienation’, ‘incomprehensibility’, ‘defamiliarisation’, ‘digressions’ and ‘intrusion’.

More than 35 years after the seminal art book Ways of Seeing was published, Peter Biľak looks closely what it means still today.

Review of the first India's design conference held in 2006 in Goa.

As a teacher of type design and typography I have always wished to have a book, which I could recommend to my students without hesitation, and so I was excited to receive Karen Cheng’s Designing Type. As the author remarks in her introduction, there are simply very few books that comprehensively explain the type design process.

Graphic designer Willem Sandberg became the director of Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum in 1945. From that time until 1962, he designed almost all the printed matter for the Stedelijk, and transformed the museum introducing new ideas into the stuffy world of museums of that time.

Dan Reynolds reviews a travelling exhibit of Czech and Slovak type design from the past two decades, and compares this exhibit to the Fresh Fonts exhibit of Swiss design shown in Zurich until July 2004.

A critical review of the London-based design group’s second collection of work, published in 2004. Peter Biľak’s review, first appearing in Items magazine, poses questions about the role of self-promotional design publishing as he describes the visually stimulating work of a contemporary design studio.

A critical review of a new book featuring excerpts of Marshall McLuhan’s work, designed by David Carson. Tha author considers the complex task of illustrating McLuhan’s intricate work, and whether or not Carson’s visual devices are successful.

Two books are reviewed and compared: one, a Phaidon book by Steven Heller on the history of avant-garde publications from the early 20th century on, the other, a glossier Taschen book featuring the recent design work of some 100 studios. Read on as Stuart Bailey puts the two in a ring together and hands Heller a very large pair of gloves.

A review of Emigre Number 64, the Rant issue, where upon its pages designers do just that. Siegel talks about the old Legibility Wars of the 1990s, how design is being produced, thought of and critiqued today and in the 1990s, and he even provides an interesting background of the Dutch design environment as a foil for the maintream of the western design world.

A review of a new comic strip novel by an ‘underground comix master’, full of complex plot lines and psychologies, stories about and parodies of the underbelly of the cartoon business, all drwan exquisitely.

A film review of director Tony Silver‘s documentary about the life and work of the Amercian illustrator Marshall Arisman.

A critical review of the design book Restart, first appearing in Items first issue. Some very well-known designers’ work is featured in this modern vs. post-modern, 175 page book from two London-based authors.

A review, first appearing in Items first issue, of Bruce Mau‘s other large book, which arrived three years after S,M,L,XL. Described is an interesting archaeology of contemporary culture and design.

Steven Heller, in his affable way, reviews a book by Lewis Blackwell and Lorraine Wild which takes on Ed Fella's Polaroids of found graphics and alphabets throughout the US as well as some of his lettering. The book sounds like a lively account of American vernacular lettering and images, as well as a good platform to view Ed Fella's own work.

A collection of Robert Crumb’s lesser known work spanning three decades gives credence to Steven Heller's claim that Crumb is the god of comics. Heller also gives a bit of background to the New York/US counterculture that Crumb fed with his racy work.

The autobiography of iconoclast Tomi Ungerer is a fascinating first-hand account of his childhood under Nazi occupation. It is also a rare visual collection of his dangerously rebellious drawings from the time as well as the dark ephemera he collected, making this a rare combination of cultural and political documentation and artist's history.

A review of the late Kalman’s monograph in context, with a brief background of Tibor’s influential design work and approach to its role in the consumer culture of the 80s and 90s.

A critical review and description of an open-structured live multimedia performance series which took place in the Netherlands in 1999.

A useful critical review of the monograph from the Swiss designer who bent the Swiss grid. Stuart Bailey looks at the contradictions in Weingart's book and his design work in context.

A review of John Maeda's monograph from 2000. A critical look at the book's design, and the philosophy and work of the new media designer/artist.

Stuart Bailey discusses the curation of a retrospective of Dutch design, illustrating the fallibility of presentation methods which treat design work as museum or gallery pieces.

A positive review of a simply designed handbook of package design in a time where gloss is king in design publishing.

Darryl Hannah, politics, typeface choices, supermodels and Paula Scher are discussed in this review of the first issue of John F. Kennedy Jr.’s magazine, George.

A critical review of the design and content of a collection of some 20th century type and its applications.

An in depth account of Malcolm Quinn’s book about the swastika, which investigates in depth the history and function of the symbol, beginning with its earliest manifestations in cultures around the globe and even its pre-Nazi uses in western commerce, then focusing on its forever tarnishing appropriation by Hitler.

A review of Lewis Blackwell’s book The End of Print: The Graphic Design of David Carson. The review contains an archaeology of the state of design in the mid-90s and some of the discussions which surrounded the work of the surf pro gone design star.

Paul Rand’s design philosophies, latter publishing history and vinegar attitude to 90s design is discussed in this review of several of Rand’s books of his essays and design.

A thorough albeit pointed review, from a perspective of the early 1990s, of Neville Brody’s and Jon Wozencroft’s pioneering magazine Fuse. A timely piece of history for those interested in the design of type.

Lars Muller is taken to task for his religious reverence for and faith in the omnipresent Helvetica, and the book he produced which is described as a sort of universalist, modernist gospel but several decades misplaced. What one might come away with from the book and review is the possibility that type preferences are simply individualistic... so what does it matter anyways?