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Graphic Design

Forget All The Rules About Graphic Design

In 1954 Bob Gill developed a design the he would later call more pleasing “than any other design job [he] had done up until that time…”

What pleased Gill so much was the Title Card for CBS sitcom Private Secretary, “because the result looks so inevitable and easy.”

He was 23 when he received this job and it served as the moment his career went into overdrive. Not only did it win him his (first) ADC medal and saw his name grow to demand more respect (he would joke it was the year that he finally got an answering service for his office), but it taught him something monumental.

Private Secretary was special because it helped him realise that a design can only be taken so far by an aesthetically driven solution.

“I stopped trying to ram my aesthetic prejudices down their throats. Why should clients have my tastes? … I talked to them about solutions and ideas instead of design.”

It is because of this attitude towards “inevitable” solutions that Gill’s clients thought so fondly of him. He was giving them tailored work that was concept driven and so well considered that he was able to effectively describe them over the phone.

He started to consider what the solution should be first, worrying about appearance second.

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Good Designers Learn From History

What a wasteful child I was, unaware of what graphic design history can give.

I foolishly thought of history as dusty facts and faded images. And only the foolish child thinks history doesn’t matter, that it’s irrelevant and inessential to growth.

I browsed Meggs’ History of Graphic Design sparingly, reading not much more than the captions.

Then a few designers kept catching my eye, so it was more reading — but no longer mere captions, but the illustrious body copy that Meggs gives us in search of understanding. Then it was everything I could get my hands on.

And something fantastic started to happen — I was becoming a better designer, producing work with greater reason, stronger justification and refined meaning.

Jan Tschichold is the designer who really kicked my interest in discovering beauty of image and theory in history

Graphic Design History Gives Us Theory

History is of as much importance as theory — they should be married in the classroom and honeymoon in the studio.

To truly understand and use a piece of theory properly, we need to know why it became worth knowing — in what conditions was it first developed and used, why was it successful and what was its original purpose and audience? Without this knowledge, how could we use it effectively?

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The Timeless Beauty of National Geographic

Who isn’t familiar with that wonderful yellow frame?

It holds breathtaking images of exotic destination and mountains of nostalgia! It’s the flag of the editorial institution that National Geographic has established over the span of 120 years.

The eponymous yellow rectangle has seen virtually no change, much like the interior pages, since it first bordered the front covers of the 1888 launch issue.

I thought it could teach us a few things about timelessness in graphic design, so I randomly picked four issues to look at; March 1964, November 1988, April 2000 and a recent December 2009.

The Front Cover

National Geographic’s front cover is a great example of how well simple branding can be tied to a product or message. In this case, the slightly warm yellow has become a symbol of wonderful photography, intriguing articles and serves as a doorway into places worlds away.

The ’64 issue is clearly the most different because of a floral border that, while taking up space, being distracting and kind of just kitsch, is romantically wonderful. It feels so appropriate to the sixties (echoes of William Morris?) that I’m glad to see it. Though I must say I’m also glad to see it evolve to nothing more than a yellow border.

The yellow frame works the hardest as a piece of branding, being more recognisable than the logotype (which only changed slightly — notice the slight type size change in the ’09 issue?) and far stronger than the floral badge that was used in the ’88 and ’00 issues.

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“Clarity!” Demanded the Modernists

The design shouldn’t uselessly babble and scream until it’s foaming at the mouth.

It should speak clearly and be easily understood. It should have a charming level of clarity and character as all parts are given a reason for taking up space.

It has to be quickly and easily understood, as elements accent the message and design, never drowning them.

This is where the soul of the early 20th century modernist lives.

Fifty years before the Swiss movement really got some bounce, The New Typography got the ball rolling.

It started as the 20th century was moving into its early years, with the Bauhaus and the Futurist art movements fueling the fire.

Before the design was clean, it was messy. Before it was quiet, it was loud. Very loud. To the modernist, this wasn’t appropriate. It wasn’t easy to digest information and too much intervention upon the message was being done by the designer.

Let’s have a look at where it all began for the modernists — with The New Typography.

Spread from NKF cableworks catalogue designed by Piet Zwart.
The imagery and text dance with one another, rather than one simply pointing to the other. (1928)

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The Secret Law of Page Harmony

“A method to produce the perfect book.”

The perfect book. This is how designer-genius Jan Tschichold described this system. Not the ok book, nor the pretty good book, but the perfect book.

This method existed long before the computer, the printing press and even a defined measuring unit. No picas or points, no inches or millimeters. It can be used with nothing more than a straight edge, a piece of paper and a pencil.

And you can still use it. This is a system which is still as valid, beautiful and elegant with ultra-modern design as it ever was for the work of the scribes, Gutenberg and Tschichold.

The Secret Canon & Page Harmony

Books were once a luxury only the richest could afford and would take months of work to be brought to fruition.

And they were harmoniously beautiful.

The bookmakers knew the secret to the perfect book. They shared among themselves a system—a canon—by which their blocks of text and the pages they were printed on would “agree with one another and become a harmonious unit.”

So elegant is this method of producing harmony that a few designers saw to rediscover it. Even though it was considered a trade-secret, they all came to the same conclusion, hundreds of years apart, independent of one another, but each supported by the other.

They found the way to design a harmonious page. A perfect page.

There’s a dance to all this

Let’s look at this dance, shall we? In it’s simplest form, here is the canon, without the guides.

And here it is with them (using the Van de Graaf Canon and Tschichold’s recommended 2:3 page-size ratio, which we’ll get into next).

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Jan Tschichold's Inspiring Penguins

It is far more valuable to see five beautiful pieces and understand how and why their beauty touches you, than it is to see a hundred beautiful things and merely understand that they are beautiful.

Today, I’m going to show you a few pieces of beauty that send shivers of joy through my heart, and how the designer behind them—Jan Tschichold—turned the mundane into the magnificent.

A hand-rendered concept produced by Tschichold while exploring his ideas.

After recently writing an article on how inspiration can provide a journey, I thought a few holiday snaps of an enlightening trip I’ve taken might be of interest.

Earlier this year I explored the tracks laid forth by one of the most renowned graphic designers and typographers in history — Jan Tschichold.

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The Power of Emotion in Graphic Design

The driving force behind all our decisions is emotion.

It’s what makes us human, is what defines who we are and how we react to different situations. Graphic design is a platform from which emotional fighter-jets can be launched. So why is so much of what we see not much more than emotional paper-planes?

This logo makes me cry

Oh, what emotion this logo pulls from me!

The typeface gives a fitting air of femininity and gentleness.The heavier strokes of the letters negate any delicateness that one may consider this logo to have. The exclusive use of uppercase, the elegance of the lettering—especially the finials of the R and the E—lead to a quality of stability.

Then there is the child-in-womb beauty that the ampersand creates. This is the moment where my heart swells. The head of the fetus as ampersand that is sitting safely within the O just works. This is elegant design thinking at its best.

Not only does the ampersand look beautiful in itself, but the slight curve and attention to detail of it—especially the back of this child—and how it derives its shape from its mother O sends a tingle through my spirits. It looks so comfortable. It looks like the ampersand is fittingly the child of the O as their shapes compliment and reflect one another so well.

Reminiscent of a baby in the womb with face and feet so close, balled up, waiting for oxygen to fill its lungs, the ampersand creates a beautiful illustration that wouldn’t work if on its own. In lesser hands, this may not have been pulled off with such grace, but Lubalin manages it so well here. The concept is great, the execution perfect.

And it breaks my heart.

This bookmark slides a smile upon my lips

The stock has a velvety soft texture to it that is inviting, looking so warm that the fingers lust to reach out and touch.

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Reimagining Nineteen Eighty-Four

George Orwell’s masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four, is a piece of literary work that few are ignorant of. Yet after a bit of time looking at different covers designed since its first edition, I began to think that there weren’t many that felt like true reflections of the original.

George Orwell’s masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four, is a piece of literary work that few are ignorant of.

A chilling story of a world at war where all information, culture and, to a terrifyingly easy extent, ideas are controlled by the Thought Police from their Ministry of Love—it’s a lot worse than it sounds—under the law of a strict ruler – Big Brother and his totalitarian regime. We focus on Winston, a man of no importance in this alternate world of 1984, whose purpose is to alter records as to better reflect the current politcal mood of the party.

When the designer includes a subtle reference
or link it’s always a delight

While the covers of books don’t have to represent exact moments or ideas contained within the pages they cover (there’s a saying about it, I believe), when the designer includes a subtle reference or link it’s always a delight. When the cover makes more and more sense the deeper your understanding of the story becomes, it begins to become an inside joke between you and the block of paper in front of you.

This doesn’t really happen with many, if any at all, of the covers of this classic novel. There seems to be something lacking for most of the covers designer for Nineteen Eighty-Four since it’s original writing, which is surprising given its popularity and position within literary history.

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Art Director: Milton Glaser

Milton Glaser is a name virtually anyone who has studied graphic design history to any extent knows. The Bob Dylan poster and the I Love NY logo are two works that many people even outside of the field know and have seen time and time again. For several years, between his time as co-founder and president of Push Pin studios, yet before the I Love NY logo, he was art director of New York magazine.

I love magazines. Editorial design is second-to-none for me. It’s a world where things can be tried and if successful, pushed, evolved, grown. If an idea looks good at first but not so good 20,000 copies later then damned be the embarrassments! There’ll be another issue soon enough. Typography is played with, photography and illustration can carry all the weight of a layout and the rules and expectations can be pushed to within an inch of their lives, only to be brought back to something graceful and elegant the next story. Because of this love I have, when I read about Google’s new digitizing of publications from the last century or so, I wet my self.

Well, not really, but you get an idea of the level of excitement I was experiencing.

In the small pile of publications that this new digital archive was building, only a few names aroused a modicum of interest. Except one, one caught my eye for one reason or another: New York. A name I was at best vaguely familiar with. A level of awareness I was more than happy to boost as best as I could for a couple of hours a night for the better part of a week.





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50 Movie Poster Remakes (S-Z)

Here we are, the last stretch, the last eleven, the last show-downs. In this final part of the series on movie poster remakes, we get a look at Harrison Ford being creepy, Al Pacino acting the bad-ass, Chrispin Glover looking freakish and as always, Audrey Hepburn looking glamorous. What else could you ask for?

This is a good batch for balance. The split between which works better, the original or the remake, is almost divided straight down the middle. As what seems to be the norm, horror movies were remade over and over and so we have a few good comparisons, with the newer ones winning through simplicity and light splashes of colour. We also have a great example of a remake that is so laughable compared to the original you could weep—I’ll let you figure out which one that is, but I’ll warn you, it’s damn easy.

Sabrina (1954 & 1995)

The epitome of grace and elegance within the film world, Audrey Hepburn, stands playfully and is clearly the attraction to this movie. Yes, there is too much type, bizarre floating heads and someone either being punched or stretching out their back while a friend rubs their shoulder, but it all works so well.. even though it’s hard to tell what the movie is called. Then we have Harrison Ford looking as creepy as possible with a “… dance for me and call me daddy” expression on his face. You pick which is better.

Scarface (1932 & 1983)

“Why you! I’ll show you boy-o, put your dukes up, it’s time to rumble! Time for a farce!” vs “Say hello to my little friend!” You can decide this one, too.

Anyway, now that obligatory Scarface line is out of the way, let’s get to the meat. The 1983 version is so iconic I don’t even know what to say. Tony lies between the light and dark, between being a peasant and a drug-lord, between life and death. A look of distaste for what he sees before him and gun in hand, the black/white/rad imagery is so fantastic that you look past the reams of type.

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