Opinion:
What has writing got to do with design?
Design history, Graphic design, Agenda, Anne Burdick
We canonise the giants of design history as champions of total authorship, while overlooking the obvious message of their work
Whatever became of the content?
Book design, Graphic design, New media, Rick Poynor
Much new design is over-complex and confusing. An alternative current, sharing many of the same assumptions, aims for clarity
Features:
Godard: Images, Sounds, Politics. by Eye editors
For the first in a new series, Eye revisits Richard Hollis’s innovatory design for a book on the French film-maker
Reputations: Roman Cieslewicz by Margo Rouard-Snowman
‘Posters are dying out. They need strong themes, which at present they lack. As a form of communication, they belong to another age’
White space black hat by Jeremy Myerson
Derek Birdsall harbours a secret. It has given him 30 years at the top. If it works, he says, use it again
Stop making sense by Véronique Vienne
The best-loved children’s stories are for adults too. Five American illustrators push at the boundaries of the book.
Prints of Islam by Rana Salam
In Syria and Beirut, craftsmen make inexpensive devotional images for the workplace and home
Cult of the ugly by Steven Heller
Designers used to stand for beauty and order. Now beauty is passé and ugliness is smart. How did we get here and is there any way out?
Video to go by Michael Horsham
Video packaging is an area of graphics both marginal and ubiquitous. Who decides how it looks?
Max Bittrof: visual engineer by Friedrich Friedl
Max Bittrof was one of the leading German designers of the 1920s. Unlike many exponents of the New Typography, he was able to apply the aesthetic to a major commercial client
Reviews:
Understanding Hypermedia: From Multimedia to Virtual Reality
Octavo, issues 1-8
The Boundaries of the Postage Stamp
Russian Avant-Garde Books 1917-34
Modernism and Eclecticism
Letterwork: Creative Letterforms in Graphic Design
Lift and Separate: graphic design and the quote unquote vernacular
Brett Wickens on non-Roman typesetting on the Macintosh
Software / hardware: Modems