Panóptico de Actualidad Gráfica y Visual
David Jon Walker is an assistant professor of graphic design at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, as well as principal of Rhealistic Design, a small design consultancy that specializes in special events for nonprofits and partners with small minority marketing agencies to help build their portfolios. He’s also one of 12 designers featured in Black, Brown + Latinx...
One of my favorite pieces by the artist Shannon Ebner is ASTER/SK R/SK R/SK, a work that comprises four flickering light boxes spelling out ASTER/SK over two lines. Each letter is made out of cinderblocks arranged on a gridded pegboard and photographed; the light behind them flashes in a choreographed sequence, illuminating over time the piece’s repetitious title. The modular...
The days are getting longer, the ground drier. Picnic season is upon us, and perhaps more than any other spring, eating outdoors is a welcome treat. This month, we’re bringing you a selection of sleek cans that all contain various degrees of buzz — from carbonation to fermentation. And the outsides aren’t bad, either....
Kathleen Sleboda’s work traverses disciplines, often involving acts of making, curating, collaborating, and documenting. Sleboda has been teaching at the University of Connecticut since 2020, and at Rhode Island School of Design since 2017, where she co-designed the stand-out course Newly Formed with her partner and frequent collaborator, Christopher. Sleboda is a principal of Gluekit, where her collages and illustrations...
This piece was originally published in 2019 in Eye on Design magazine’s “Worth” issue. It has been updated to reflect changes in statistics and at the studios since its original publication date. When I first spoke to Greg Mihalko, one of three partners at the NYC design studio Partner & Partners, in 2019, he was knee-deep in the legal language...
At the beginning of 2021, type designer and typographer Julius Hui launched a crowdfunding campaign for Ku Mincho, a Ming-style typeface he began concepting six years ago. The initial goal of four million NTD (a little under $150,000) was reached in only a few hours. To date, he’s raised more than five times that amount—indicating both an excitement and a...
In 2018, the musician and writer Claire L. Evans began cataloguing examples of an increasingly ubiquitous style of editorial illustration she calls “Corporate Memphis,” a winking reference to the vibrant, patterned abstraction popularized by the Memphis Group in the 1980s. By now you know the style: A woman whooshes past on tiny white roller skates, a periwinkle leg twice the...
Spurred by the economic crisis of the coronavirus pandemic and social upheaval of the Black Lives Matter movement, independent publishers are rethinking what publishing is and can be. The pandemic has deeply shaken the publishing industry — mainstream book sales are up, but the cultural institutions and book fairs that supported independent art and design publishers have been decimated. Meanwhile,...
Forest Young’s career has spanned an impressive range of disciplines and contexts. He was recently named Wolff Olins’s first Global Chief Creative Officer, has received the industry’s highest design accolades (Gold Design Lion at Cannes, the Art Directors Club Black Cube) and is an MFA Senior Critic in graphic design at the Yale School of Art. In 2018, California College...
Name: Magnet Designer: Inga Plönnigs Foundry: Frere-Jones Type Release Date: January 2021 Back Story: Inga Plönnigs first showed her typeface-in-progress to Tobias Frere-Jones during a guest critique in the spring of 2015, while she was getting her Master’s in type and media at the Royal Academy of Arts, the Hague. Impressed by what he saw, Frere-Jones got back in touch after Plönnigs...
For many designers, the past year’s near-constant social unrest has made the idea of addressing power inequity through design feel daunting. Where do you start? Is it even possible to address looming problems like white supremacy, racial justice, misogyny, or colonialism through visual form alone? As queer theorist Jack Halberstam suggests in The Queer Art of Failure, the best approach...
Neville Brody is a journalist’s dream. He has a well-honed knack for wryly provocative, headline-ready takes on the design industry that others would take hours to delineate. As one of the best-known graphic designer since the 1980s, he’s adept at this sort of thing. Even those who haven’t heard his name in the UK have definitely seen his work: the...
