Letter to the Editor: Reading the most recent issue of Sight & Sound (‘Seeing the Light’, April ’09) made me wonder if your magazine shouldn’t be renamed Movies & Men. Your article ‘Talking Shop’ features thirteen (white) cinematographers, only one of whom is a woman. Representative? Perhaps not. Your list of Contributors features fifteen names [...]
Today I read an article on Design Observer by Michael Bierut all about the Ernst Bettler story that appeared some years ago in dotdotdot. The ‘Bettler affair’ was a key part of my PhD dissertation, which I finished in 2002. The dissertation, which I hope is reasonably accessible, addresses the politics of graphic design practice [...]
This is the unedited version of a review I wrote of Kalle Lasn’s new book Design Anarchy (ORO Editions, 2006) for Eye magazine. He’s a West-coast sneaker marketer with one of the coolest brands around. He’s ironic and media-savvy, and he understands his target audience. He has a singular appreciation of the power of graphic [...]
Pentagram partner Paula Scher speaks truth to power. A timely reminder for those designers who claim that graphic design has nothing to do with politics.
When I opened Saturday’s edition of The Globe and Mail and saw this photo, all I noticed, at least initially, were the two white horns protruding from the man on the left’s head. On further inspection, I decided they weren’t so much wildly out of place as simply on the wrong head.
Public lettering is a term that is increasingly used to describe the totality of visible letterforms that surround us: on street signs, storefronts, monuments, drain covers, bus tickets, etc. Public lettering predates the development of graphic design and of typography before that.
I’ve just finished an interview with a Slovenian journalist called Barbara Predan for Klik magazine. She contacted me because I was a jury member for this year’s Memefest. I found Predan’s questions about the politics of graphic design, especially logos and culture jamming, both informed and challenging. I’m posting the full, unedited, English version here [...]
It’s almost a year to the day since we last joined our friends for a trip to Lake Champlain. This time around we even stopped at the same gas station – which led me to take a snap of this motel sign across the road once more (top: 2004; bottom: 2005). It’s definitely the same [...]
