How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer by Debbie Millman
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Allworth Press, 2007
How acquired: Purchased at Debbie Millman lecture

This collection of interviews presents 20 noted graphic design-related figures ruminating about their activity. In her introduction, Debbie Millman disclaims the book’s title but it’s fairly descriptive, being instructive by example rather than recipe. Since the book makes no pretension of compiling a definitive list of contemporary design “greats,” I won’t fuss overlong (for me) over the arbitrariness of the designation.

What does constitute graphic design greatness? All of the interviewees are practically accomplished graphic designers (save John Maeda, who has renown but simply isn’t a graphic designer by the field’s common standards). However, the jury’s out on the long-term significance of most of these practitioners. That many other designers could claim equal—or greater—stature compared to those selected doesn’t spoil the book. Still, it would have helped for Millman to, at least briefly, outline her criteria. [Read more →]

Yesterday, I volunteered to help out at my daughter’s Emma’s third grade picnic. It’s a one-hour lunch followed by outdoor fun at the park next door. Because of the 100°+ heat-indexed weather, the picnic was held in the cafeteria. My task was to oversee the beverages: keep them stocked and on ice. Even I can handle that. What I couldn’t handle was a melee that spontaneously broke out toward the end of the meal—over a novel drink package. [Read more →]

I love print stuff and have a lot of it (not as much as I’d like, though). Anyone who’s visited my office can testify to this. They’ll also confirm that it’s dangerous to start picking things out and asking me to comment upon them. Where to start? Where to stop!

One reason I’ve never personally referred to myself as a design critic was because of my highly selective and sporadic output. Once, maybe twice a year isn’t even warming up. But I’ve wondered what a sustained graphic design criticism would look like. [Read more →]

On Stefan Sagmeister’s Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far

The arguments these artists mount to the detraction of beauty come down to a single gripe: Beauty sells, and although their complaints usually are couched in the language of academic radicalism, they do not differ greatly from my grandmother’s haut bourgeois prejudices against people “in trade” who get their names “in the newspaper.” Beautiful art sells. If it sells itself, it is an idolatrous commodity; if it sells anything else, it is a seductive advertisement. Art is not idolatry, they say, nor is it advertising, and I would agree—with the caveat that idolatry and advertising are, indeed, art, and that the greatest works of art are always and inevitability a bit of both.
—Dave Hickey, “Enter the Dragon”

Gonna make you, make you, make you notice
Gonna use my arms
Gonna use my legs
Gonna use my style
Gonna use my sidestep
Gonna use my fingers
Gonna use my, my, my imagination
‘Cause I gonna make you see
There’s nobody else here
No one like me
I’m special, so special
I gotta have some of your attention—give it to me
— Chrissie Hynde, James Honeyman-Scott, “Brass in Pocket”

I like Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far. As a showcase for previously released Sagmeister material, it’s an improvement over Made You Look. However, the compilation aspect is a minor similarity between the books. The focus exhibited by Things can be partially attributed to presenting a themed series of works. But Sagmeister also continues to come into his own as an artist. So much so, in fact, that he deserves his own category: hyperdesigner.

What’s significant about Sagmeister’s work, and makes him a “hyperdesigner,” is that he’s not very original, as that term is classically used. He lifts freely from a wide range of designers and artists (in this book, he channels his post-Hipgnosis sensibility through Ed Ruscha). Sagmeister recognizes that the history of art is a history of appropriation and adaptation. And, more importantly, that graphic design is now a distinct language operating in culture, with its own idioms, tropes, and representations. Hyperdesign is graphic design taken to a higher level, self-aware and self-referencing.

This is one way that Sagmeister represents another crisis for the Modern movement in design. He’s jettisoned or contradicted nearly all of Modernism’s directives, not out of a contending doctrine but simply because it’s dull and confining. Never mind your literacy-warrior typography and “ugly” graphics; it’s Sagmeister who’s killed off the Modern design movement—with kindness. [Read more →]

Welcome to the revised version of my site, now structured as a blog. As does every blog, I’ll be posting my news, comments, observations, and announcements on subjects in the various categories ranged elsewhere on this page. A particular feature will be a return to critical writing about graphic design, as I did for ten years in the pages of Emigre magazine. When that journal came to an end, I set aside the notebook that I kept of ideas for and fragments of a number of possible writings. I didn’t foresee any comparable interest in the writing I was doing. The subsequent years have affirmed that conclusion (with some gratifying exceptions). One article did make it out of the notebook and into the world—“The Resistance”—but I wasn’t feeling it. Most importantly, continued writing like this offered few—if any—tangible career benefits (something I’ll detail in a future post after my UCDA conference presentation). [Read more →]

I will be attending the University & College Designers Association’s fourth national conference for Design Educators on May 29-31, 2008 in DeKalb, Illinois. I’ll participate in a panel discussion, “Gettin’ R-E-S-P-E-C-T in the Academy: What Constitutes Graphic Design Research” with Daniel Jasper, and Steven McCarthy. My topic will be critical writing as research. A revised and expanded version of my comments will (eventually) appear here.

My profile of illustrator/designer Mark Andresen is included in the spring 2008 issue (#67) of the international design review Eye. The article, titled “Pesky Illustrator,” looks at the former New Orleans resident and Hurricane Katrina refugee. Andresen’s work has been published in New Orleans: As It Was (Gingko Press), and he’s the creator of the typeface Not Caslon.