The designers who designed not only on the screen, but for the screen, ushered in a new era of digital design, mixing media and incorporating motion, sound and interactivity. Read about some of the pioneers at Smashing Magazine.
Category Archives: book
Switching Gears at 99U
Are you stuck in a rut? Maybe it’s time to change course, as icons of design like Stefan Sagmeister, Ed Fella, and Muriel Cooper have done. Read more at 99U.
Visionaries Series
Excited about a series we have going at Speckyboy Design Magazine: each week, we highlight some of the graphic design pioneers featured in Graphic Icons. This week, it’s Milton Glaser. We’ve also featured Saul Bass, Cipe Pineles, and Wim Crouwel. Check them all out at Speckyboy.
Pioneering Women of Graphic Design
Today, women make up around half of the graphic design profession. This wasn’t always the case. Read my guest post at GD USA profiling a few of the pioneers who challenged the status quo and paved the way for today’s female designers.
Book Review
Nice review at The Book Design Blog: “Graphic Icons serves as a ‘leg-up’ into the broad and exhaustive field of design history, and is a relaxed, welcoming source of inspiration and a lead to other, more in-depth sources. This is simply an easy-to-pick-up, easy-to-read, well-designed book about graphic design and graphic designers…a design book that deserves a spot on your bookshelf.” Read the whole review–
Midcentury Modern Graphic Designers you Should Know
We all know midcentury modern designers and architects like Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, George Nelson, and Richard Neutra, but what about the era’s graphic designers? See my post on Buzzfeed for 7 that you should know-
6 Iconic Logo/Identity Designers
Paul Rand said, “Visual communications of any kind… should be seen as the embodiment of form and function: the integration of the beautiful and the useful.” It’s not only about how it looks, or how it works, but about how it looks and works together. Whether you’re a student or a practicing designer, it’s helpful to occasionally look back at the work of iconic designers like Rand. Read about a few that contributed to the rise of corporate identity design at Logo Design Love.
Seeing Graphic Design
Museum of Modern Art; Herb Lubalin Study Center
You can find plenty of design inspiration by looking online, but there’s nothing like seeing design works in person to get a true sense of the scale, materials, and details. There are museums, galleries, and special collections that host exhibitions and allow research. Some are open to the public, while others require an appointment. Here are some places to see graphic design up close:
AIGA National Design Center Gallery
164 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
aiga.org
Bauhaus-Archive Museum of Design
Klingelhöferstraße 14
D – 10785 Berlin, Germany
bauhaus.de
Design Exchange
234 Bay Street
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
dx.org
Design Museum
28 Shad Thames
London SE1 2YD
designmuseum.org
Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
2 East 91st Street
New York, NY 10128
cooperhewitt.org
Graphic Design Archive at Rochester Institute of Technology
90 Lomb Memorial Dr.
Rochester Institute of Technology
Rochester, NY 14623
library.rit.edu/gda
Haas Family Arts Library, Yale University
180 York Street
New Haven, CT 06520
web.library.yale.edu/arts
The Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography
The Cooper Union
41 Cooper Square, Room LL119,
New York, NY
lubalincenter.cooper.edu
Letterform Archive
1001 Mariposa Street #307
San Francisco, CA 94107
LetterformArchive.org
The Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives
380 Second Avenue
New York, NY 10010
glaserarchives.org
Museum Für Gestaltung
Ausstellungsstrasse 60
CH-8005 Zürich Switzerland
museum-gestaltung.ch
Museum of Design Atlanta
1315 Peachtree Street
Atlanta, GA 30309
museumofdesign.org
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
New York, NY
moma.org
Museum of the Image (MOTI)
(Formerly Graphic Design Museum)
Boschstraat 22
4811 GH BREDA
Netherlands
motimuseum.nl
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
151 Third Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
sfmoma.org
San Francisco Public Library
Book Arts & Special Collections
100 Larkin St.
San Francisco, 94102
sfpl.org/bookarts
Walker Art Center
1750 Hennepin Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55403
walkerart.org
Wilanów Poster Museum
10/16 Stanisława Kostki Potockiego Street
02-958 Warsaw, Poland
postermuseum.pl
The Wolfsonian
Florida International University
1001 Washington Avenue
Miami Beach, FL 33139
wolfsonian.org
10 Crucial Lessons From History’s Greatest Graphic Designers
Simplify, visualize, know your user: the lessons of these design pioneers, from El Lissitzky to Paula Scher, are as relevant as ever. Read my guest post, complete with slideshow, at Fast Company’s Co.Design.
Designers and Tech
Technology does not create good design – but it is an important tool, and can help designers develop something original.
While writing my book Graphic Icons: Visionaries Who Shaped Modern Graphic Design, profiling the field’s pioneering designers, I learned about several people whose embrace of technology enabled them to create innovative work. Read about a few of them at Creative Bloq–