Panóptico de Actualidad Gráfica y Visual
In the early ’70s, artist, publisher, and activist Raja Dhale published a pocket-sized magazine called Chakravarty for thirteen consecutive days. It was one of the most seminal publications that celebrated Dalit literature — a writing movement produced by people belonging to the lowest stratum castes in India — and it marked the intersection of the Dalit Panthers Movement and the...
This conversation took place as part of our Summer Salon, which explores the intersection of branding and culture. Our next Zoom event on Thursday, July 28 asks “What’s The Role Of TV Branding In The Streaming Age?” — register here! Of all media, the book is perhaps the most enduring. Continually outliving the narratives about the demise of publishing, how...
It’s fifty million years after the extinction of humans. Emissions have ceased, property lines have vanished, and plastic particles have all but dissolved. Across the grasslands of what was once the United States, Falanx (giant, dog-like rats) hunt Rabbucks (long-necked, deer-like descendents of the rabbit). On small islands in the Pacific, ground dwelling bats known as the Flooer feast on...
This story is part of our Weekend Reads series, where we highlight a story we love from the archives. We don’t always realize it, but graphic design saturates every part of our lives. It informs the decisions we make as consumers and serves as a structure for how we understand and engage with our environment—whether through navigating the labyrinth of...
With its rectangular and pocket-friendly form, a matchbox reminds one of a popular contemporary object: the smartphone. Apart from physical similarities, the two also have much in common in the world of advertising. Even before the proliferation of smartphones led to the popularity of “mobile advertising,” matchboxes plastered with advertisements once offered an affordable and portable means of marketing too....
There’s a classic image of Grace Jones that’s so ubiquitous as to have passed into iconic territory: the athletic, eccentric pop singer with the famous high flat-top fade, as shot with a cigarette draped over her bottom lip by Jean-Paul Goude. Jones helped to make androgynous power dressing mainstream, and epitomized the 1980s as much as Sony Walkmans or Max...
In 2010, graphic designer Adam Michaels was looking for a different kind of book series. He wanted to see more accessible, visual and editorially experimental books, books that were typographically and materially nuanced, research-based, and socially-driven. He imagined these books in a small, mass-market paperback format. “There was a kind of generational impulse that was part of this too,” said...
This story is part of our Weekend Reads series, where we highlight a story we love from the archives. It was originally published in issue #02 of Eye on Design magazine. For a flash in the 1990s, Magic Eye, the world’s most famous—and infamously frustrating—optical illusion, was everywhere. Posters bearing the brightly colored op-art hung from the walls of Midwestern...
The packaging design of fireworks is at once easy and hard to ignore. As a category, it’s just loud enough to catch your eye, then dismiss as undeserving of analysis, or even a second look. The defining traits of the genre — bright colors, cartoonish illustrations, evocative names — can melt into one campy swath. But focus for a moment,...
Name: Aureum Designer: Anna Sing Foundry: Greenhouse Type Release date: May 2021 Aureum by Anna Sing, Greenhouse Type Back Story: Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary designer Anna Sing started Greenhouse Type as her senior thesis project for her BFA in design at the University of Texas. Finding herself in a creative rut, forced to take classes online and work from home since this...
There’s a scene about halfway through Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults that somehow felt more unbelievable than everything else that had come before. The 2020 three-part HBO documentary series recounts the story of Heaven’s Gate, a 1990s cult group that believed there was an earth-bound spaceship behind the Hale-Bopp comet, steered by extraterrestrial servants of God who were returning...
This story is part of our Weekend Reads series, where we highlight a story we love from the archives. It was originally published on September 19, 2019. When I arrived to Berlin at the start of this year, Prem Krishnamurthy’s collaborative residency had just come to a close, but I still heard about it everywhere. A procession of designers had...
