ESAD Personal Views

A lot has changed in the world of graphic design over the past 15 to 20 years. The tools with which we make things, which are also the tools we use to think with, have been revolutionised. What was held to be true and fundamental in design has become open to question and challenge. Differing sets of values and theoretical models now compete for acceptance and perhaps the strongest effect has been felt within design education.

Considering these changes it seemed important within the context of a design college, to ask whether traditional concepts of design are still legitimate, whether the very idea of orthodoxy – that there is a standard approach to design – has been replaced by a range of personal preferences. It’s within this context that the Personal Views seminar series was conceived, and from which it draws its title.

With this in mind Personal Views set out to explore the parameters and perimeters of our profession. And in a time when the crossing of boundaries is seen as an act of modernity, these words might provoke a degree of apprehension in some quarters, and perhaps, not without reason. There is a fear that framing exploration in terms of parameters and perimeters is ultimately conservative in outlook and will unavoidably result in a process of containment, a process that limits the scope of our activity, the connections we are able to establish with other ideas and practices and also our vision of what is possible. And in a world in which more than ever we need to make connections, any process that seeks to insulate or restrict our activity is rightly viewed as counterproductive.

But establishing connections between ideas and practices presupposes there are differences between them and depends therefore on being able to identify common ground. This stands in contrast with attempts to make connections by eliminating differences, often resulting in a collapse of boundaries that makes it impossible to distinguish one thing from another. Looking out onto a terrain which has no individual distinguishing features, where everything is believed to be interchangeable and interdependent, makes the search for connection and understanding more, rather than less difficult.

Perhaps this is the intellectual reflection of a culture in which the boundaries and distinctions in other areas of our lives – between the private and the public, between desire and need, between choice and participation – have been eroded and blurred. The resultant endemic loss of social being seems to make the mapping out of territory ever more significant.

Personal Views then is one such attempt at mapping out territory, working from the principle that a search for clarity and substance should not be confused with attempts to arrive at fixed definitions. Notwithstanding the links between ideas and practices, Personal Views asks what it is about our activity that is different from others, what it is that we can do that others cannot, or will not. And because different territories require different tools of navigation and exploration, it also aims to question the nature of the territory we inhabit so that we might equip ourselves adequately. It aims to do this by asking experienced professionals within the world of graphic design to talk about the values, references and objectives that guide them. No single speaker is likely to supply a consensual response, but taken together they will build a picture from which young designers in particular may begin to construct an understanding about the intellectual as well as operational tools necessary to build and sustain a social practice that is both visually stimulating and meaningful.

Andrew Howard, coordinator

Born in Croydon and raised near Bracknell, Ian Anderson studied Philosophy at The University of Sheffield. Ian announced The Designers Republic (TDR) in 1986. TDR works for clients such as Coca Cola, Nokia and MTV.

In recent years, Ian has lectured to over 65.000 people in Britain, Europe, US, Japan, and Australia at events such as Fuse Berlin, T/Hype Rotterdam, Creative Futures London, AGIdeas Melbourne, Instituto Europeo di Design Madrid, Graphic Europe Tokyo and The Pompidou Centre Paris. He was tutor and external examiner at Designskolen Koldoing Denmark 1997-2000 and has been invited to be visiting professor at ECAL Lausanne, Switzerland. He was the design juror responsible for selecting and recommending fellowship awards for the 2003-2005 programs at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart and has also been invited to contribute to programs at institutes such as Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht and Sarajevo Fine Arts Academy in Bosnia.

The link above will open Apple Quicktime.
Make sure you have latest version or at least version 7.
When Quicktime is opened please wait about a minute before the video starts streaming.

Credits

curator
andrew howard
coordination
israel pimenta
diogo vilar
edition and post-production
ana pinto
production, captation and direction
students of the 3th year of Digital Arts and Multimedia course:
david gonçalves
guillerme gomes
joão sousa
manuel fardilha
with the prompt support of other colleagues

© ESAD Matosinhos 2008

1960 Born in Lochem, the Netherlands. 1979 Enrols at the AKI School of Fine Art in Enscheden 1985 After graduation, she joins the Dutch government publishing and printing office in The Hague as a designer and works there for five years. 1991 Opens the Irma Boom Office in Amsterdam and begins a five year project to design a book commemorating the centenary of the Dutch conglomerate SHV. 1992 Starts teaching at Yale in the US. 1993 Designs a series of Butterflies stamps for the Dutch PTT. 1996 Publication of the SHV centenary book on which Boom has worked for five years. The book has 2,136 pages but no page numbers or index. 1998 Begins a two year stint as a tutor at the Van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht and stages a solo exhibition – Irma Boom on her Books – at the Stroom Centre in The Hague. Designs the Workspirit book for Vitra, the Swiss office furniture group. Appointed to the advisory committee for the Dutch ministry of finance. 2001 Stages a solo exhibition – Boom Beyond Books – at the Bilbiothèque Nationale de France in Paris. Wins the Gutenberg Prize. 2003 Completes work on the design of an art book for Aernout Mik and a monograph of her own work Gutenberg Galaxie. 2004 Designs the book False Flat - Why is Dutch design so good? for the Netherlands Architecture Institute.

The link above will open Apple Quicktime.
Make sure you have latest version or at least version 7.
When Quicktime is opened please wait about a minute before the video starts streaming.

Michael Johnson spent his twenties learning graphic design in locations as varied as Wolff Olins in London, Emery Vincent in Australia and Dentsu in Japan. In 1992, at the age of 28, he established his own company. Now in its 14th year of business, johnson banks has gradually established itself as one of the pre-eminent British design companies. Two clients in the mid-nineties put them on the design map: a series of projects for the Victoria and Albert Museum which opened up a cultural vein of work that continues to this day; and several projects for the British Council. There followed a long tranche of work for No10 and government agencies such as the Design Council, and recently with the identity for the UK Presidency of the EU. With full scale identities for Parc de La Villette in Paris, MORE TH>N, Shelter and Think London, Johnson has been able to develop his theories on corporate identity and compete at the highest level: the company is now re-branding the international development agency Christian Aid, The Art Fund and the BFI. Johnson banks is also beginning to grow its international client list, including several clients in Tokyo and the USA. He has won eight ‘Pencils’ from D&AD (British Design and Art Direction) including their highest and rarest prize, a gold, 10 Design Week awards and gold and silver from the Art Directors Club of New York. 25 of his poster designs are held in permanent collection of the V&A. The company’s work has been exhibited several times at the V&A, at two consecutive European Design Biennales at the Design Museum and featured in the Communicate exhibition at the Barbican. Their first solo show. ‘Words and Pictures’ was held at the Creation Gallery in Tokyo in 2004. He was recently selected as one of the 10 most notable British Designers by the Independent Newspaper, and in both 2003 and 2004 featured in Design Week’s ‘Hot 50’ list of the most influential figures in design. Johnson banks’ stand-out 2003 project, a set of Fruit and Veg sticker stamps for the Royal Mail, was named one of the ten best designs of 2003 by Design Museum director, Alice Rawsthorn. Johnson has integrated himself into design education by teaching regularly at Central St Martins, recently completed his fourth year as external examiner at Glasgow School of Art and will become Kingston University’s external this year. He lectures worldwide on design theory and practice. He spent half a decade on the executive committee of D&AD; two of which were spent planning, co-writing and co-curating the book and exhibition at the V&A of the first forty years of the organisation, called ‘Rewind’. He spent 2003 as president of the organisation, one of the youngest presidents ever. In October 2002 Phaidon Press published Johnson’s first book, called ‘Problem Solved: a primer in design and communication’, now out in paperback and french publisher Pyramyd published a bilingual book on johnson banks’ work in summer 2005.

Daniel Eatock is a London-based designer known for his conceptual approach to solving traditional client problems as well as those of his own choosing. Eatock graduated from the Royal College of Art and worked as a designer at the Walker Art Center before returning to England to create Foundation 33 and most recently Eatock Ltd. His work has consistently employed a systematic but not necessarily dogmatic rigor that privileges the elemental over the extraneous—a philosophy neatly embodied in his motto: “Say YES to fun & function & NO to seductive imagery & colour!” His work for entertainment and cultural clients ranges from such projects as the graphic identity and promotion for the British television hit Big Brother to a street exhibition of Warhol billboards for Channel 4 to a collaboration with artists Oliver Payne and Nick Relph for an exhibition catalogue with sound chips, a flip book, handwritten notes, and a cover wrapped in the upholstery fabric used on London transit seating. Eatock’s idea of “entrepreneurial authorship” has led to the creation of numerous self-published limited-edition works such as Untitled Beatles Poster, which includes the lyrics from every Beatles song, and the 10.2 Multi-Ply Coffee Table, fabricated from an entire single sheet of plywood.

The link above will open Apple Quicktime.
Make sure you have latest version or at least version 7.
When Quicktime is opened please wait about a minute before the video starts streaming.

Rick Valicenti is the founder and design director of Thirst/Chicago, a communication design firm devoted to art, function and real human presence.
Rick Valicenti provides inspiration to his colleagues and mentorship to a generation of students. In 2006 Rick was awarded the American Institute of Graphic Artists (AIGA) Medal, the highest honor in the graphic design profession, for his sustained contribution to design excellence and development of the profession. Rick is a member of AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale).
His works are included in the permanent collection of MoMA, The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and the 2006 Triennial, Design Life Now. His clients include the leaders of Chicago’s design and cultural community.

The link above will open Apple Quicktime.
Make sure you have latest version or at least version 7.
When Quicktime is opened please wait about a minute before the video starts streaming.

William Drenttel is a partner, with Jessica Helfand, in Winterhouse, a design studio in Northwest Connecticut. Their work focuses on publishing and editorial development; new media; and cultural, educational and literary institutions. Recent clients include The Poetry Foundation, Nextbook, New England Journal of Medicine, the U.S. State Department, Errol Morris, Norman Rockwell Museum, Yale Law School, New York University School of Journalism, University of Chicago Press and the National Design Awards. In recent years, they have also worked with Netscape, Booz Allen & Hamilton, Miavita, Lingua Franca, Newsweek, Champion Paper, News International, and Teach for America.
Drenttel also has an ongoing management role, serving as creative director, in two of the largest literary foundations in America — The Poetry Foundation in Chicago and Nextbook in New York City.
Drenttel is the publisher of Winterhouse Editions, publishing design criticism and literary works by writers including Susan Sontag, Leon Wieseltier, Jessica Helfand, Paul Auster, James Salter, Thomas Bernhard, Paul Celan and Franz Kafka, among others. Winterhouse Editions are distributed by the University of Chicago Press, Princeton Architectural Press and Small Press Distribution.
From 1985-1996, he was a partner at Drenttel Doyle Partners in New York City. Selected clients and projects include: editorial design of numerous magazines, including Spy, The New Republic, and Inc.; strategic consulting and large design programs for companies such as Champion International, Springs Industries and Hewitt Associates; the overall graphic identity, and program and exhibition design for the World Financial Center; a new identity program and exhibition design for the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum; a new graphic identity and publications program for Princeton University; and exhibition and store design at Grand Central Station. Among its over 300 awards, Drenttel Doyle Partners was named to the I.D. 40 list of design innovators in 1994.
Drenttel has been a co-editor of three of the Looking Closer anthologies of critical writings on design published by Allworth Press. He is president emeritus of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, a trustee of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, and a Fellow of the New York Institute of the Humanities at NYU. He has lectured at two AIGA National Biennial Conferences, the Library of Congress, Walker Art Center, the Annenberg School of Public Policy, and San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art, among others. He received a B.A. in European Cultural Studies from Princeton University.

Jessica Helfand is partner with William Drenttel in Jessica Helfand | William Drenttel, a design consultancy in New York that concentrates on editorial design and the development of new models for old and new media. Clients include Newsweek, Business Week, Lingua Franca, America OnLine and Champion International Corporation. Helfand is also media columnist for Eye magazine and a contributing editor of I.D. Her book, Six (+2) Essays on Design and New Media was published in 1995 by William Drenttel New York. She is visiting lecturer in graphic design at Yale University School of Art and adjunct professor at New York University's graduate program in Interactive Telecommunications, and has lectured at The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the Columbia University School of Jounalism and the Netherlands Design Institute, among others. She holds a B.A. and a M.F.A. in graphic design from Yale University.

The link above will open Apple Quicktime.
Make sure you have latest version or at least version 7.
When Quicktime is opened please wait about a minute before the video starts streaming.

Paula Scher studied at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and began her graphic design career as a record cover art director at both Atlantic and CBS Records in the 1970s. In 1984 she co-founded Koppel & Scher, and in 1991 she joined Pentagram as a partner.
Paula has developed identity and branding systems, promotional materials, environmental graphics, packaging and publication designs for a wide range of clients. Drawing from what Tom Wolfe has called the “big closet” of art and design history, classic and pop iconography, literature, music and film, Paula creates images that speak to contemporary audiences with emotional impact and appeal. Three decades into her career, these images have come to be visually identified with the cultural life of New York City.
Paula is a member of the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame and a past recipient of the Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design. She has served on the national board of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), and in 2001 she was awarded the profession’s highest honor, the AIGA Medal, in recognition of her distinguished achievements and contributions to the field. She holds an honorary doctorate from the Corcoran College of Art and Design, and she is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI). She currently serves on the board of directors of The Public Theater, and in 2006 she was named to the Art Commission of the City of New York.
Her work has been exhibited all over the world and is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., the Denver Art Museum, the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Her teaching career includes over two decades at the School of Visual Arts, along with positions at the Cooper Union, Yale University and the Tyler School of Art. In 2002 Princeton Architectural Press published her career monograph Make It Bigger.

The link above will open Apple Quicktime.
Make sure you have latest version or at least version 7.
When Quicktime is opened please wait about a minute before the video starts streaming.

Andy Altmann graduated in graphic design from the Royal College of Art in 1987 and almost immediately formed the multi disciplinary design group Why Not Associates with fellow graduates David Ellis and Howard Greenhalgh. Located in London, Why Not Associates gained an international reputation based on a creative and experimental approach. In 20 years of experience they have worked on projects ranging from exhibition design to postage stamps via advertising, publishing, television titles, commercials and corporate identity. Their clients include the Royal Academy of Arts, Malcolm McClaren, the Royal Mail, Nike, Paul Smith, Virgin records and Channel 4.
A book was published in 1998 by Booth-Clibborn editions documenting the first ten years of their work. A second was published in 2004 by Thames and Hudson which documented another five years. They still strive to push the boundaries of graphic design and more recent projects collaborating with artist Gordon Young have moved them into the world of public art.

The link above will open Apple Quicktime.
Make sure you have latest version or at least version 7.
When Quicktime is opened please wait about a minute before the video starts streaming.

Stuart Bailey graduated from the University of Reading in 1994, the Werkplaats Typografie in 2000, and co-founded the ongoing journal Dot Dot Dot the same year. His work since then has involved aspects of graphic design, writing and editing, most consistently in the form of publications for artists and arts institutions. Since 2002 he has worked with Will Holder under the compound name Will Stuart on a broader range of projects including theatre and performance. Since 2006 he has worked with David Reinfurt under the compound name Dexter Sinister, originally set up as a publishing imprint for the abandoned Manifesta 6 school on Cyprus, then transferred to New York's Lower East Side. From a modest basement space, the workshop is intended to model a ‘Just-In-Time’ economy of print production, running counter to the contemporary assembly-line realities of large-scale publishing. Alongside its current incarnation as an 'occasional bookstore' on Saturdays, Dexter Sinister is currently involved in various gallery shows and projects at venues such as the Lyon Biennial 2007, the Centre d'Art Contemporain Genéve, the Whitney Biennial 2008, and Kunstverein Munich.

The link above will open Apple Quicktime.
Make sure you have latest version or at least version 7.
When Quicktime is opened please wait about a minute before the video starts streaming.

Experimental Jetset is an Amsterdam graphic design unit founded in 1997 by Marieke Stolk, Erwin Brinkers and Danny van den Dungen. Focusing on printed matter and installation work, their clients have included the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum (SMCS), Centre Pompidou, Colette, Dutch Post Group (TPG), Réunion des Musées Nationaux (RMN), and De Theatercompagnie. Their work has been featured in group exhibitions such as Terminal Five (JFK Airport, New York, 2004) and The Free Library (Riviera Gallery, New York, 2004). Solo exhibitions have included Kelly 1:1 (Casco Projects, Utrecht, 2002) and Ten Years of Posters (Kemistry Gallery, London, 2006). Since 2000, they teach at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (Amsterdam).

The link above will open Apple Quicktime.
Make sure you have latest version or at least version 7.
When Quicktime is opened please wait about a minute before the video starts streaming.

Credits
curator
andrew howard
directed by
ana pinto (student from Digital Arts and Multimedia)
cameras
tiago sousa (student from Digital Arts and Multimedia)
david pinto (student from Digital Arts and Multimedia)
fernando resende (student from Digital Arts and Multimedia)
post-production
israel pimenta
diogo vilar
coordenation
israel pimenta
technicians (conference)
ana pinto
tiago sousa
david pinto
fernando resende
filipe pinto
© ESAD Matosinhos 2007

Ellen Lupton is a writer, curator, and graphic designer. Her most recent books are D.I.Y: Design It Yourself (2006) and Thinking with Type (2004). One of her best selling books is Design, Writing, Research: Writing on Graphic Design (Princeton Architectural Press, 1996) which she co-authored with J. Abbott Miller. She is director of the graphic design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. She also is curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City, where she has organized numerous exhibitions, each accompanied by a major publication, including the National Design Triennial series (2000 and 2003), Feeding Desire: Design and the Tools of the Table, 1500–2005 (2006), Solos: New Design from Israel (2006), Skin: Surface, Substance + Design (2002), Graphic Design in the Mechanical Age (1999), Mixing Messages (1996), and Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines from Home to Office. Books in the works include D.I.Y. Kids (with Julia Lupton) and Graphic Design: Structure and Experiment (with Jennifer Cole Phillips and MICA students and faculty). The third National Design Triennial, Design Life Now, opened in December 2006.

The link above will open Apple Quicktime.
Make sure you have latest version or at least version 7.
When Quicktime is opened please wait about a minute before the video starts streaming.

Jon Wozencroft studied as a postgraduate at the London College of Printing, working for various printers and publishers before setting up the multimedia publishing company Touch in 1982. As well as working as a freelance writer, designer, editor and programme-maker, Wozencroft collaborated with artists and musicians from around the world and developed Touch as an alternative vision of audiovisual publishing. A series of contributions to Touch from Neville Brody led to closer involvement, firstly in helping to set up the Brody Studio in 1987, later as an author of The Graphic Language of Neville Brody. At the end of 1988, they published a treatise on corporate design culture in the Guardian Review. In 1990, they started the FUSE project, of which Wozencroft is the editor. Jon Wozencroft began teaching at Central St. Martin’s School of Art and Design in London in 1992 where he developed a new course for BA Graphic Design. In 1994 he was appointed main tutor and assistant course director for MA Interactive Multimedia at the Royal College of Art. He is currently Senior Tutor in the Communication Art and Design Department at the Royal College of Art.

The link above will open Apple Quicktime.
Make sure you have latest version or at least version 7.
When Quicktime is opened please wait about a minute before the video starts streaming.

Gerard Unger Born at Arnhem, Netherlands, 1942. Studied graphic design, typography and type design from 1963-67 at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam. He teaches as visiting Professor at The University of Reading, UK, Department of Typography and Graphic Communication, and taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, till January 2007. From September 2006 he is Professor of Typography at the University of Leiden. Free lance designer from '75. He has designed stamps, coins, magazines, newspapers, books, logo's, corporate identities, annual reports and other objects, and many typefaces.
In '84 he was awarded the H.N.Werkman-prize for all his typographic work, for digital type designs in particular and for the way he reconciled technology and typographic culture. In '88 he won the Gravisie-prijs for the concept of Swift, and in '91 he was awarded the international Maurits Enschedé-Prize for all his type designs. He wrote articles for the trade press, and several larger publications, such as 'Landscape with Letters' (1989), linking the usually limited scope of type and typography with a much wider cultural view. His book 'Terwijl je leest' - about reading - was published in '95 and a completely new edition has been published in the autumn of 2006. English, German, Italian and Spanish versions are in preparation. He lectures frequently in Holland and abroad, about his own work, type design, the reading process, newspaper design and related subjects.

The link above will open Apple Quicktime.
Make sure you have latest version or at least version 7.
When Quicktime is opened please wait about a minute before the video starts streaming.

Erik Spiekermann is information architect, type designer (FF Meta, ITC Officina, FF Info, FF Unit, LoType, Berliner Grotesk et al) and author of books and articles on type and typography. He was founder (1979) of MetaDesign, Germany’s largest design firm with offices in Berlin, London and San Francisco. Projects included corporate design programmes for Audi, Skoda, Volkswagen, Lexus, Heidelberg Printing, Berlin Transit, Duesseldorf Airport and many others. In 1988 he started FontShop, a company for production and distribution of electronic fonts. He holds an honorary professorship at the Academy of Arts in Bremen, is board member of ATypI and the German Design Council, and president of the ISTD International Society of Typographic Designers. In July 2000, Erik withdrew from the management of MetaDesign Berlin. In 2001 he redesigned The Economist magazine in London. His book for Adobe Press, Stop Stealing Sheep, has recently appeared in a second edition. A corporate font family for Nokia was released in 2002. His new studio, United Designers Network, is currently designing the corporate design programme for Deutsche Bahn (German railways), including a family of corporate typefaces. Erik lives and works in Berlin, London and San Francisco.

The link above will open Apple Quicktime.
Make sure you have latest version or at least version 7.
When Quicktime is opened please wait about a minute before the video starts streaming.

William Owen is a design strategy consultant who also writes about design. He is the author of Magazine Design, a history of magazine design in the 20th century, and five essays on mapping in Mapping: an illustrated guide to graphic navigation systems, as well as many articles, essays and reviews on design in Eye, Blueprint and Design magazines. As a practicing design strategist William works across design, technology and business disciplines to help organisations bring together different ways of thinking to devise service and editorial propositions and align brand, product and communication strategies. William is currently working with media organisations on combining social media with traditional editorial and rich media content. His clients include the National Magazine Company and Hearst Digital, the BBC, Reuters, Haymarket and the Man Group.

william owen

The link above will open Apple Quicktime.
Make sure you have latest version or at least version 7.
When Quicktime is opened please wait about a minute before the video starts streaming.

Adrian Shaughnessy is a self-taught graphic designer. He was creative director and co-founder of Intro, the London-based graphic design company. In 2004 he left to pursue an interest in writing and consultancy. He is currently consultant creative director of This is Real Art, the design and advertising company. Shaughnessy has written three books on design for music (the Sampler series) and edited a book of Intro work (Display Copy Only). His book How to be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul has sold extensively around the world. He is currently working on a follow-up, entitled A User’s Manual: the A-Z of Graphic Design, to be published in 2008. He writes for many of the leading design publications including Eye, Creative Review and Grafik. He has a monthly column in Design Week, and is a guest contributor to Design Observer. He also writes for The Wire. Shaughnessy is editor of a new magazine called Varoom – the journal of illustration and the made image. He has been interviewed on TV on five occasions, and lectures extensively around the world.

The link above will open Apple Quicktime.
Make sure you have latest version or at least version 7.
When Quicktime is opened please wait about a minute before the video starts streaming.

Neville Brody, the British designer and art director, has now been at the forefront of graphic design for over two decades. Initially working in record cover design, Brody made his name largely through his revolutionary work as Art Director for the Face magazine. Other international magazine directions have included City Limits, Lei, Per Lui, Actuel and Arena, together with London's The Observer newspaper and magazine, and recently The Times newspaper. Brody has consistently pushed the boundaries of visual communication in all media through his experimental and challenging work, and continues to extend the visual languages we use through his exploratory creative expression. In 1988 Brody published the first of his two monographs , which became the world's best selling graphic design book. Combined sales now exceed 120,000. An accompanying exhibition of his work at the Victoria and Albert Museum attracted over 40,000 visitors before touring Europe and Japan. In 1994, together with business partner Fwa Richards, Brody launched Research Studios, London. Since then studios have been opened in Paris, Berlin with plans to open a New york studio. Clients range across all media, from web to print, and from environmental and retail design to moving graphics and film titles. A sister company, Research Publishing, produces and publishes experimental multi-media works by young artists. The primary focus is on FUSE, the renowned conference and quarterly forum for experimental typography and communications. The publication is approaching its 20th issue over a publishing period of over ten years. Three FUSE conferences have so far been held, in London, San Fransisco and Berlin. The conferences bring together speakers from design, architecture, sound, film and interactive design and web.

The link above will open Apple Quicktime.
Make sure you have latest version or at least version 7.
When Quicktime is opened please wait about a minute before the video starts streaming.

Andrew Blauvelt is Design Director and Curator at Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Since 1998 he has provided creative direction for the Walker’s innovative graphic identity across various media platforms, oversees its publications program and design studio, and curates design-related exhibitions and programs. The Walker’s design work is the recipient for more than 80 design awards, including numerous selections for the AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers competition and has been profiled in such magazines as I.D, Eye, Print, and Metropolis. The recipient of many honors, the studio has been nominated for the Chrysler Award for Design Innovation and the National Design Awards in Communication. His work has been exhibited and published extensively, most recently in Area (Phaidon), a survey of 100 international graphic designers, and c/id: Cultural Identity (Laurence King). As a curator of architecture and design projects at the Walker he has organized exhibitions such as Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life (2003), an international Survey of avant-garde architecture and design whose roots lie in the exploration of commonplace materials and daily routines and rituals; and some Assembly Required: Comtemporary Prefabricated Houses (2005), featuring eight modern modular designs in actual production. He is currently developing a multidisciplinary exhibition about the contemporary American suburb (2008) organized by the Walker Art Center and the Heinz Architectural Center at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. As a writer and critic of design and culture, his articles have appeared in numerous journals and publications. Blauvelt has been a visiting professor in the graduate design programs of the Jan Van Eyck Akademie (The Netherlands) and at Cranbrook Academy of Art (USA), where he received his MFA in Design (1998). He was Associate Professor of Graphic Design, and served as director of graduate studies and department chair at the College of design, North Carolina State University, from 1991-1998.

The link above will open Apple Quicktime.
Make sure you have latest version or at least version 7.
When Quicktime is opened please wait about a minute before the video starts streaming.

Wim Crouwel, typographer, graphic designer, type designer, teacher and curator is one of the Netherlands’ greatest design icons. Born in 1928 in Groeningen, Wim studied at the Academy of Arts & Crafts, Groningen, Netherlands from 1946 to 1949, continuing his studies at the Amsterdam Art School IVKNO, where he was later to teach. Over his extensive career he has taught at numerous other academies and institutions including, The Royal Art Academys’ Hertogenbosch, Delft University, Royal College of Art, London (honorary title as visiting professor), culminating in holding the Private Chair at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, in art and cultural sciences. His work on the Benelux pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair won him the Ordre Leopold II. Later, this experience would help Crouwel earn the opportunity to work on the 1970 Osaka World’s Fair Dutch pavilion. Since 1980, he has been involved with the Museum Boymans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, eventually instated as the director. In 1963 he co-founded the ‘swiss inspired’ design studio, Total Design together with Friso Kramer, Paul Schwartz, Dick Schwarz and Benno Wissing and was a figure who loomed large over Dutch design discourse in the 1970’s. Apart from his numerous awards for his commitment and excellence in graphic design and typography, Wim has exhibited works at numerous shows including exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Museum Wiesbaden; and the Design Centre, Stuttgart. Wim’s work has been published in many books and journals, including the recent monograph, Wim Crouwel Alphabets, published by BIS in 2003. He is especially admired for his systematic approach and his creative handling of the shape of letters. Several of his typefaces have been released in digital form: the New Alphabet (1967) in three weights, the Fodor (1969) and Stedelijk ‘museum’ alphabets, and recently, the entire Gridnik family of letters.

Steven Heller wears many hats (in addition to the the New York Yankees): For 33 years he has been an art director of the New York Times, originally on the OpEd Page and for almost 30 of those years on the New York Times Book Review. Currently he is a senior art director. He also writes book reviews and obituaries for the Times.He is the founder and co-chair of the MFA Designer as Author program at the School of Visual Arts, New York, where he lectures on the history of graphic design. Prior to this, he lectured for 14 years on the history of illustration in the MFA Illustration as Visual Essay program at the School of Visual arts. He also was director for ten years of SVA’s Modernism & Eclecticism: A History of American Graphic Design symposiums. With Seymour Chwast he has directed Push Pin Editions, a packager of visual books, and with his wife Louise Fili he has produced over twenty books and design products for Chronicle Books and other publishers. For over two decades he has been contributing editor to Print, Eye, Baseline, and I.D. magazines, had has contributed hundreds of articles, critical essays, and columns (including his interview column "Dialogue" in Print) to a score of other design and culture journals.
As editor of the AIGA Journal of Graphic Design he published scores of critical and journalistic writers on design, and currently as editor of AIGA Voice: Online Journal of Design, he continues to help build a critical vocabulary for the field. The author, co-author, and/or editor of over 100 books on design and popular culture, Heller has worked with a score of publishers, including Chronicle Books, Allworth Press, Harry N. Abrams, Phaidon Press, Taschen Press, Abbeville Press, Thames & Hudson, Rockport, Northlight, and more. He is currently completing Iron Fists: Branding the Totalitarian State for Phaidon Press, an anaylsis of how the major dictatorships used graphics to propagate their ideologies. He has produced or been curator of a number of exhibitions, including Art Against War, The Satiric Image: Painters as Cartoonists and Caricaturists, The Malik Verlag, and The Art of Simplicissumus: Germany’s Most Influential Satire Magazine, among them. He has organized various conferences, including The School of Visual Arts’How We Learn What We Learn, devoted to the future of design education, and the AIGA’s Looking Closer: Graphic Design History and Criticism. Heller is also the recipient of the AIGA Medal for Lifetime Achievement in 1999, the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame Special Educators Award in 1996, The Pratt Institute Herschel Levitt Award in 2000, and the Society of Illustrators Richard Gangel Award for Art Direction in 2006.

Garth Walker trained as a graphic designer at Technikon Natal in the mid 70's. He went solo in 1995 by starting Orange Juice design – and was acquired by Ogilvy South Africa in 1997 as their premium design brand. OJ designs for most of SA’s top corporate and consumer brands in the fields of identity, literature and packaging. Garth’s real passion is vernacular design from South Africa’s streets and townships. The creativity of ordinary South Africans inspires much of his non commercial work. In 1995 Garth published Issue 1 of OJ's studio magazine i-jusi (Zulu for juice) which continues to promote, educate and encourage a local design language rooted in the South African experience. Garth is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI), British Design and Art Direction (D&AD), Type Directors Club and is a Trustee of the South African Design Council. His work is in the collection of Biblioteque Nationale de France in Paris, Victoria & Albert Museum in London Library and the Smithsonian in Washington.

Talk postponed. New date to be announced.

By defining a distinctive graphic style to a diverse range of projects, Graphic Thought Facility has emerged as one of the UK’s most influential – and productive – graphic design teams. Founded in London in 1990 by Andy Stevens and Paul Neale, GTF now works for such clients as Habitat, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and the Design Museum. The work of Graphic Thought Facility is defined less by a distinctive visual language than the rigour with which the designers approach the process of developing and executing graphic projects. The defining characteristic of GTF’s finished work is its eclecticism. Drawing on a diverse range of typefaces – from robust use of Helvetica in the Digitopolis gallery at the Science Museum in London, to the curlicue lettering in marketing material for Habitat – printing techniques and materials, GTF reinvents its graphic style for each project. Founded in London in 1990 by Paul Neale and Andy Stevens after they graduated in graphic design from the Royal College of Art, GTF has since combined cultural projects – for Manchester Art Gallery, the Frieze Art Fair and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre as well as the visual identity of the Design Museum – with commercial commissions from Habitat and the design of graphic-based products such as the MeBox storage system. Huw Morgan is now a partner of GTF alongside Neale and Stevens

Through cultural commissions and public sector projects - from stamps to urban identities - Armand Mevis (1963-) and Linda Van Deursen (1961-) of MEVIS + VAN DEURSEN have played a critical role in modernising Dutch graphic design and redefining it as a dynamic medium. Both as designers and as teachers Armand Mevis and Linda van Deursen are influential figures in the dynamic Dutch graphic design scene. After meeting as students at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam during the 1980s, they worked as interns at Total Design before opening their own studio in Amsterdam. Operating from a small studio with just two assistants Mevis and van Deursen have combined cultural commissions from the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art and the Netherlands Architecture Institute with projects for the fashion designers Viktor & Rolf. The catalogues they have created for artists such as Mechac Gaba, Carlos Amorales and Gabriel Orozco are projects in their own right rather than simply representations of the work. Mevis, born in 1963, teaches at the Werkplaats Typographie in Arnhem while van Deursen, born in 1961, is head of the graphic design department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. They act as mentors to younger Dutch graphic designers such as Maureen Mooren and Daniel van der Velden, Jop van Bennekom and Experimental Jetset.

Rick Poynor is a writer, editor and lecturer. He founded Eye magazine in London in 1990, edited it for seven years, and is now its writer at large and columnist. He is a contributing editor and long-serving columnist for Print magazine in New York, and his essays, interviews and reviews about design, media and visual culture have appeared in Blueprint, Icon, Frieze, Domus, I.D., Metropolis, Harvard Design Magazine, Adbusters, The Guardian, The Financial Times, and many other publications. Poynor’s books include More Dark Than Shark (1986), a study of Brian Eno’s early songs; Typography Now: The Next Wave (1991), the first international survey of the new digital typography; Typographica (2001), a history of Herbert Spencer’s influential design magazine; and No More Rules (2003), a critical study of graphic design and postmodernism since the 1960s. He has also published three essay collections, Design Without Boundaries (1998), Obey the Giant: Life in the Image World (2001), and Designing Pornotopia: Travels in Visual Culture (2006). Poynor studied the history of art at Manchester University and gained an MPhil in design history from the Royal College of Art, London. He was a Visiting Professor at the RCA from 1994 to 1999, and since 2006 he has been a Research Fellow at the college. In 2003, he co-founded Design Observer, a weblog for design discussion, which rapidly became a leading site in the field. In 2004, he was guest curator of the exhibition “Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties” at the Barbican Art Gallery, London. The exhibition toured to four venues in China and was also shown in Zurich. Poynor is a frequent speaker at public events, conferences and design schools in Europe, the United States, Australia, and China.

Karel Martens (born 1939) finished as a student at the Arnhem School of Art in 1961. Since then he has worked as a freelance graphic designer, specializing in typography. Alongside this, he has always made free (non-commissioned) graphic and three-dimensional work. Among his clients have been the publishers Van Loghum Slaterus (Arnhem) in the 1960s, and the SUN (Nijmegen) in the years 1975–81. As well as designing books and other printed items, he has designed stamps and telephone cards. He has also designed signs and typographic façades for a number of buildings. In 1993 KM was awarded the H.N. Werkman Prize for the design of the architectural magazine Oase. In 1996 he received the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art; as part of this prize, a monograph on his work was published: Karel Martens: Printed Matter. His work has been nominated three times at the Design Prize Rotterdam: 1995, for the design of the standard series of telephone chip-cards for PTT Telecom (this received an honorary commendation); 1997, for the book Karel Martens: Printed Matter; 1999, for the design of the façade of the Veenman printing works at Ede. In 1998 at the Leipzig Book Fair, Karel Martens: Printed Matter was awarded the gold medal, as the best-designed book “in the whole world”. Over the years his books have featured regularly in the annual Best-Designed Dutch Books competition. As a teacher Karel Martens has taught graphic design since 1977. His first appointment was at the Arnhem School of Art (until 1994). He was then attached to the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht (1994–99). From 1997 he has been a visiting lecturer in the graphic design department at the School of Art, Yale University. In the same year, together with Wigger Bierma, he started the Typography Workshop for postgraduate education within the ArtEZ, Arnhem.

More information soon.

Max Bruinsma is an independent design critic, editor, curator and editorial designer. He is former editor of Eye, the international review of graphic design in London. He studied art, architecture and design history in Groningen and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Since 1985, his critical writings have featured regularly in major Dutch art and design journals and in a range of international design publications (a.o. Graphis, Idea, Blueprint, The AIGA Journal, Eye, Form). Before he took over from founding editor Rick Poynor at Eye, Bruinsma was editor of the Dutch design magazine Items, published several books on (graphic and new media) design, and taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. His latest book is Deep Sites, intelligent innovation in contemporary webdesign, published by Thames & Hudson, in English and French editions, april 2003. In 2005, Max Bruinsma curated a major exhibition on the cultural significance of communication design, 'Catalysts!', for the ExperimentaDesign biennale in Lisbon. He is currently a curatorial advisor for the biennale. Bruinsma is co-founder of a new masters course in Editorial Design at the Graduate School of Visual Art and Design, Utrecht, the Netherlands, which also started September 2005. A guest lecturer on contemporary art and design, Bruinsma has presented at numerous art academies and congresses throughout the world, including on-line courses and workshops for several design academies. Besides his work as an art and design critic and educator, he was a music editor and program maker for VPRO, a Dutch radio and television broadcasting organisation and an advisor on cultural affairs for a great variety of institutions. In 2005, Max Bruinsma received the Pierre Bayle Prize for Design Criticism. Max Bruinsma's shortest definition of the design profession is: "Designers are cultural catalysts". More information: www.maxbruinsma.nl

Nick Bell design now has an established reputation for exhibition graphic design. The Churchill Museum is a new addition to a portfolio of recent work that includes: Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the 60s, Barbican Art Gallery: Art of the Garden, Tate Britain: Sparking Reaction (for the Science Museum, London) at BNFL’s visitor centre, Sellafield, Cumbria, UK: Posh, a worldwide touring exhibition about the transformation of traditional British brands, British Council: Making Portraits, National Portrait Gallery at Bodelwyddan Castle, Wales: Gainsborough, Tate Britain: Martin Parr retrospective, Barbican Art Gallery: This was Tomorrow, Barbican Curve. Nick Bell (born 1965) studied graphic design at the London College of Printing. His London-based studio was founded in 1988, and included a spell from 1998 to 2004 known as Una (London) designers when it was associated with Amsterdam based Dutch design group Una. Nick Bell has been creative director of Eye, the highly influential international review of graphic design since 1997. His experience on Eye has enabled him to develop a more curatorial method of editorial design – one he has adapted very successfully for the design of exhibitions. It was this specialism that won him the commission to design the book and touring exhibition Communicate; Independent British Graphic Design since the 60s in which his work is featured. The first ever major retrospective devoted to graphic design in Britain that showed at the Barbican Art Gallery until January 2005 and is about to tour China. Nick Bell design has also designed CD covers and a corporate identity for Virgin Classics, books for Phaidon, Taschen and Tate Publishing, stamps for the Royal Mail, and exhibitions for the Barbican Centre, the British Council, and Tate Britain. His animated typographic displays for the Science Museum’s BNFL visitor’s centre won two D&AD silver awards in 2003. In 2004, Heist, (the Higher Education Information Services Trust) awarded the London College of Printing with a Gold award for their prospectus designed by Nick Bell design. Nick Bell’s work was featured in the touring exhibition Lost and Found: Critical Voices in New British Design (British Council, 1999) for which he designed an award-winning tablecloth. Nick Bell has lectured widely in Europe and the US. He was a visiting lecturer at the London College of Printing from 1990 to 2000. In 1992, the American magazine Emigre devoted an entire issue to his work and teaching. Nick Bell was a selector for the global graphic design survey Area (Phaidon ‘10x10’ series, 2003). Through graphic design, Nick Bell’s primary, overriding concern is with the exchange of knowledge and information. For seventeen years his approach has been underpinned by an understanding of design as not just a tool for business but of design as a cultural service. See Eye no.53, vol.14, Autumn 2004 (Brand Madness Special Issue) where Nick Bell accuses the discipline of branding of diminishing the experiences offered to us by our national cultural institutions.

Born Viseu, Portugal, 1966. Doctor of Philosophy in Communication Art and Design (Royal College of Art, London, 2003). Master of Fine Arts in Visual Communication (School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1992). Professor and Researcher in Design and Cultural Criminology, with papers presented internationally since 2001 and research work published since 2003. Head of Communication Design at the University of Porto, Course Director of BA and MA Design and Multimedia Programmes. Visiting Tutor at the Drawing Studio of the Royal College of Art. Member of the Editorial Board of Crime Media Culture (Sage Pub.). Member of the General Council of the Gomes Teixeira Foundation, University of Porto. Design and Intermedia Arts: Exhibits internationally since 1989. Regular collaborator of the UK media label Touch in Design, Photography and visual work for live events (Biosphere, Fennesz, BJNilsen, among others). Works under the alias Autodigest in the production of conceptual sound pieces, released on CD by Ash International (UK), the Gulbenkian Foundation (UK) and Crónica (Portugal). Performs regularly in international events. Curator of Design exhibitions and conferences since 2002.

Katherine McCoy began her work in design at Unimark International, and was a graphic designer for Chrysler Corporation's Corporate Identity Office, Omnigraphics of Boston, and Designers and Partners, an advertising design studio in Detroit. Other professional practice includes graphic design for MIT Press, Xerox Education Group, and major advertising agencies. As a partner of McCoy & McCoy Associates, projects include graphic and signage design, design marketing, exhibition design, the interior design of furniture showrooms and executive offices, and a television documentary, Future Wave: Japan Design. Recent clients include Formica Corporation, Unisys, Philips Electronics, Tobu Stores Tokyo, International Design Center Nagoya, Detroit Institute of Arts and Cranbrook Educational Community. She is Past President and Fellow of the Industrial Designers Society of America, and an elected member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale. In recent years she served as President and Chairman of the Board of the American Center for Design, and Vice President of the American Institute of Graphic Arts. She has been a member of the Aldus Graphic Arts Advisory Board, the Design Issues Advisory Board, and a Contributing Editor of ID Magazine. She served on the Design Arts Policy Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts and chaired the Design Arts Fellowships Grant Panel for three years. She was a 1982 IBM Fellow of the International Design Conference at Aspen. In 1987 she received the Society of Typographic Arts Educator Award and the Joyce Hall Distinguished Professorship at Kansas City Art Institute jointly with husband and partner Michael McCoy. In 1994 they were jointly awarded a Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design. Her work has been published internationally, including the book Graphic Design in America: A Visual Language History by the Walker Art Center and Women in Design, published by Rizzoli International. Her teaching methodology has been featured in the ABC Editions Zurich books Graphic Design International and Graphic Design Education, Eye Magazine, Novum Gebrauchsgraphik and Print Magazine. She recently coauthored and designed the book, Cranbrook Design: The New Discourse, published by Rizzoli International. She curated the exhibition New Dutch Graphic Design, which traveled to thirteen cities including Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, Seattle, Montreal and Vancouver from 1986 to 1990. In 1993 she chaired Living Surfaces, the first national conference in the U.S. on multimedia in graphic and industrial design. A major exhibition, Cranbrook Design: The New Discourse, traveled to New York and Tokyo in 1991, featuring posters and books by Katherine McCoy, as well as those by her students and alumni. Other exhibitions include Mixing Messages at the Cooper Hewitt Museum of Design, New York; Graphic Design in America: A Visual Language History at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and L' image des Mots at the Centre Pompidou Centre de Creation Industrielle, Paris; the Design Museum, London, the Cooper Hewitt Museum of Design, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the International Design Conference at Aspen, the Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum, and the Pacific Design Center; the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the Isreal Museum, Jerusalem, and the Cultural Palace, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. International lectures include five ICOGRADA and four ICSID congresses, the Stanford Design and Aspen conferences, the Cooper Hewitt Museum of Design, the New York Architectural League, Harvard University, the Rietveld Academy of Amsterdam, and JIDA and JAGDA, Japan. Juries include the AIGA Communication Graphics, STA 100 Show, Interiors Magazine "I" Awards, and 1984, 1988 and 1991 United States Presidential Design Awards. Awards include the ID Magazine Annual Design Review, the AIGA Communication Graphics Show, the STA 100 Show, the Print Regional Design Annual, the Type Directors Club of New York TDC Show, the New York Art Directors Club One Show, the Society of Publication Designers, the Interiors Magazine "I" Awards, and the Industrial Designers Society of America IDEA Awards.

Michael Rock is a founding partner and creative director at 2x4 and Professor of Design at the Yale University School of Art. At 2x4, he leads a wide range of projects including strategy for Prada and Condé Nast in collaboration with AMO/Rem Koolhaas. He leads environmental graphics and media design for the Prada New York Epicenter Store and was principal-in-charge of the IIT McCormick Tribune environmental graphics program and the Vitra Branding/New York Headquarters. Previously he was co-founder of Information Incorporated, in Boston. From 1984-91 he was Adjunct Professor of Graphic Design at the Rhode Island School of Design. In addition, he was a fellow at the Jan Van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht, The Netherlands, and a contributing editor and graphic design journalist at I.D. Magazine in New York. His writing on design has appeared in a variety of publications in addition to I.D. including Print, AIGA Journal and the British journal Eye. He holds a B.A. in Humanities from Union College and a M.F.A from the Rhode Island School of Design. He is the recipient of the 1999/2000 Rome Prize in Design from the American Academy in Rome. The work of the 2x4 is also featured on the Apple site in the profile section.

Essentially a self-taught designer, Paul Elliman was a member of the City Limits Magazine collective (1984–1986) and then became Design Director of the British music magazine Wire (1986–1988) before embarking on a career as a freelance designer. In 1991 he was awarded Design & Art Direction Gold and Silver medals for design and publication of an electronic journal that utilized fax and email. In 1992 he was the recipient of a Barclay’s New Stages prize for a collaboration with British choreographer Rosemary Butcher. Recent work includes commissions from Princeton School of Architecture; a collaboration with cycling activists Critical Mass; a series of imaging test patterns with Xerox, for the American Institute of Graphic Arts; and cover designs for Everything Magazine. His work has been exhibited internationally in, for example, The British Council and Tate Modern, as well as in smaller gallery shows. He has been a contributor to FUSE, the electronic type publication published by Font Shop International, and he has published essays in magazines as Eye and IDEA. Elliman has taught in the Cultural Studies Department at Central St. Martin's School of Art, London; The School of Visual Communications, University of East London; and at the University of Texas at Austin, and he has been a guest speaker and visiting critic at a number of schools. He was a project tutor at the Jan van Eyck Academie, between 1996 and 1999, and has been an assistant professor at Yale School of Art since 1998. Currently he is also an advisor to the new Shanghai University of Art and Design, and a critic at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Hamish Muir born 1957, Scotland. Studied Visual Communication at Bath Academy of Art (undergraduate) and Advanced Graphic Design at the School of Design, Basel, Switzerland (postgraduate). Founding partner/director 8vo, London, 1985–2001. 8vo built a considerable international reputation with projects in identity, print, publishing, record packaging and information design for clients in the UK, Europe and the US. He was co-editor of Octavo International Journal of Typography, London, 1986–1992. Since 2001 he has been running his own office and teaching on the Graphic and Media Design degree course at the London College of Printing. He is a member of the ISTD and the Alliance Graphique Internationale. Awards include International Typography Almanac 1991, Robundo, Japan, ‘Grand Prix’ Publications: 8vo’s work has been published/discussed in numerous periodicals including: American Center for Design Journal, Baseline, Blueprint, Communication Arts, Creative Review, Design, Design Week, Emigre, Eye, HQ, ID (USA) and Novum Gebrauchsgrafik. 8vo’s work has been featured in books published in Europe and Japan including: The Designer and the Grid, Lucienne Roberts and Julia Thrift, RotoVision, Hove, UK, 2002; International Typography Almanac 2, Robundo Publishing, Tokyo, 1993; The Graphic Edge, Rick Poynor, Booth Clibborn Editions London, 1993; International Corporate Identity 2, Robundo Publishing, Tokyo, 1992; International Typography Almanac, Robundo Publishing, Tokyo, 1991; Typography Now the Next Wave, Rick Poynor, Booth Clibborn Editions, London, 1991. Exhibitions: Work by 8vo has been included in exhibitions in Europe, Japan and the United States including: Design: 8vo, London, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, October 1993–January 1994; 8vo Visual Engineering, Hochschule für Gestaltung, Offenbach am Main, Germany, 1989; Octavo, Pieter Brattinga Print Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1988. Talks: Talks on 8vo’s work have been given at conferences and seminars in educational establishments and to professional bodies in the UK, Europe and the United States including: Basel School of Design, Switzerland, 2001; Bath Spa University, 1992–2000; Society of Typographic Designers, London, 1995; Fortuny Graphic, seminar and workshop, Venice, 1995; Norwegian Graphic Design Society, Oslo, 1993; American Institute of Graphic Arts, Boston Chapter, Boston, USA, 1991.

David Crow is Head of the School of Design at Manchester Metropolitan University. A former student of the communication media degree before the advent of computers or digital processes, David returned to MMU in the early nineties to complete an MA in Communication Design focusing on unofficial visual language systems. His industrial experience was gained in London where he worked on the design and production of various projects including books, brochures, packaging and promotional material. As a senior designer for Island Records, he was responsible for art direction and production and managed promotional and advertising campaigns for a variety of artists. Setting up his own studio as a freelance designer, his clients included Sony UK and USA, Virgin Records, Island Records and the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1993 he moved into HE as a Senior Lecturer in graphic design at University College Salford where he helped to write a new ambitious degree in design practice during what was a critical time for Salford as its course base moved away from FE. In 1995 he was appointed as Head of Graphic Arts at Liverpool John Moores University. Professor Crow's research specialty is experimental typography, using font authoring software to generate systems of symbols, and as a practising artist he has produced and exhibited works in different media using animation, CD-ROMs and interactive and non-linear work. He has exhibited in the USA, Korea and Israel, as well as Europe, and most of his tours have been funded by industrial sponsorship from software and hardware companies and the British Council. His first book, Visible Signs, published in 2003 by AVA, is an introduction to semiotics aimed primarily at students. But his work is more likely to be found in publications about graphic design that illustrate his interest and expertise in typography and visual language systems. His work is featured in the recent publications The Typographic Experiment by Teal Triggs and No More Rules — Graphic Design and Postmodernism by Rick Poynor.

Jonathan Barnbrook is one of Britain’s most influential graphic designers working today. In the 14 years as a designer he has both won many awards and gained notoriety though his work. His London office in engages in a number of diverse international projects and has become well known amongst other things for his book collaborations with leading artist Damien Hirst and his anti-advertising work with leading international activists 'adbusters' and corporate identities for Roppongi Hills and Mori Art Museum. Barnbrook has also become known as one of the leading type designers of his generation that were the first to use emerging technology to produce experimental relevant work which changed the face of font design. The studio also became one of the first exponents in the 1990s of the then new genre of 'motion graphics' – producing highly complex and innovative animations for both commercial and private projects. Currently Barnbrook design is involved in taking their message 'out of the studio' by putting their political work up in the city streets and exhibiting non-commercial projects in galleries worldwide. Barnbrook Bible – the first published monograph on the studio's work will be available in June 2007 from Booth-Clibborn Editions/Rizzoli. Friendly Fire: the graphic design of Jonathan Barnbrook, a major retrospective at the Design Museum, London, will take place between June 19th and October 10th 2007. www.designmuseum.org

Jan van Toorn lives and works in Amsterdam. He studied at the Institute of Arts and Crafts, Amsterdam. He has been a designer since 1957 specializing in publications and exhibitions. Among others he worked for Amsterdam, the Stedelijk van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, The Netherlands ministry of culture and the dutch Ptt. He has taught graphic design and visual communication at various academies and universities in The Netherlands and abroad, including Gerrit Rietveld academie in Amsterdam. From 1991-1998 he was director of the Jan van Eyck akademie, an international postgraduate centre for fine art, design and theory in Maastricht, The Netherlands, where he organised Design beyond design, critical reflection and the practice of visual communication a conference devoted to the discrepancy between the socio-cultural and symbolic reality of the information-economy [1997]. Jan van Toorn is associate professor in the graduate programme of Rhode Island school of design, Providence USA.

Tony Credland, lives and works in London, as a Lead Tutor on the MA Graphic Design programme at the London College of Communication and as a print-based graphic designer. Co-organiser of the Cactus Network which manifested itself as a mail-art magazine, and later the poster magazine Feeding Squirrels to the Nuts, he graduated from Portsmouth University, Chelsea School of Art and later studied at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. He continues to be active in grassroots politics in London, working collectively with the local Indymedia network in the UK, and recently co-edited a book We are everywhere; the irresistible rise of global anticapitalism

Teal Triggs BFA (Hons), MA, MA, PhD, FiSTD is Professor of Graphic Design and Head of Research, School of Graphic Design, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. As a graphic design historian, critic and educator she has lectured widely and her writings have appeared in numerous edited books and international design publications. She is co-editor of the academic interdisciplinary journal Visual Communication (Sage Publications) and has edited two special issues The New Typography (2005) and with Dr Carey Jewitt, Screens and the Social Landscape (2006). She is author of The Typographic Experiment: Radical Innovations in Contemporary Type Design (2003; paperback 2005) co-published in five languages; co-editor with Roger Sabin of Below Critical Radar' Fanzines and Alternative Comics From 1976 to Now (2000); and editor of Communicating Design: Essays in Visual Communication (1995). She is currently working on a book about fanzines based upon her PhD thesis undertaken in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading. She has received several AHRC grants for her work on feminism, design and comic books, and was a co-instigator on Designing for the 21st Century Research Cluster: 'Digital Design, Representation, Communication and Interaction: Screens and the Social Landscape'. Teal is also co-founder of the Women's Design + Research Unit (WD+RU), an organisation which seeks to raise awareness about women working in visual communication and related areas. WD+RU has recently completed a Royal Female School of Art Foundation funded research project exploring the cultural identity and role of women in craft and design history in the Elephant & Castle community.

Ian Noble is a designer, design educator and writer. He is the author and co-author of a number of books on Graphic Design: Picture Perfect – New Fusions of Illustration and Graphic Design, Up against the wall – Contemporary Poster Design, Experimental Layout and Visual Research – An Introduction to Research Methods for Graphic Designers. He is a regular contributor to design magazines writing for Eye and Grafik in the UK. He has spoken at a number of design events, workshops and conferences around the world and continues to run a small design practice ‘The Office of Ian Noble’ working for a range of social and cultural clients in the UK. Noble’s work has been featured in a number of books on graphic design and he has also exhibited his posters at international events. He has taught full-time for the last seventeen years and has been the head of both Undergraduate and Postgraduate programmes in Graphic Design at the London College of Printing part of the University of the Arts during the last 8 years. He currently teaches Information Design and is writing two more books on the subject of Graphic Design. Noble’s work as a teacher, designer and writer is influenced by the work and ideas of Jan van Toorn. He is particularly concerned with the process of graphic design and its larger social effects – an investigation Noble terms Visual Research – a reflexive process exploring the relationship between making and reflecting on the theory of practice.

Born 1958, Kendal, England. After studying to be a Catholic priest for three years at Ushaw College, Durham, he re-trained in graphic design and graduated from St Martin's School of Art in 1985 and the Royal College of Art in 1987. A freelance graphic designer since 1987 undertaking anything from humble print work for small publishers and arts organisations to typographic sequences for TV commercials. Since 1995 he has concentrated on editorial design, mainly for galleries such as Matt's Gallery, or publishers such as Phaidon Press. His approach acknowledges the primacy of the text and results in work which cannot easily be pigeon-holed: it accepts some of the ideals of Modernism without any of the stylistic restrictions. Characteristics include a careful use of typographic structure – sometimes organic, sometimes highly 'engineered' – and a free approach to typeface choice. In September 1991 he became a Senior Lecturer (half full-time) in typography at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London where part of his responsibility includes jointly currating the Central Lettering Record with Catherine Dixon. Currently they are involved in creating a photographic record of Lettering in Lisbon for the Museu da Cidade. In addition to articles for Eye and other magazines, he has written two books, Type & typography with Andrew Haslam (London, Laurence King 2001) and Signs, lettering in the environment with Catherine Dixon (London, Laurence King 2003).

Lucienne Roberts studied graphic design at the Central School of Art and Design, graduating in 1986. After a brief period at The Women’s Press, Roberts established the design studio, sans+baum, hoping to ally her commitment to accessible and engaging design with a socially aware agenda. Roberts’ new studio, LucienneRoberts+ started at the end of 2006. Whilst being selective in the choice of client, projects have been wide-ranging. They include exhibition design for The British Council, The British Museum. Women's Library and Kensington Palace; the identity and emblem for the Institute of Cancer Research’s Everyman campaign; identities for the Arts Council, Breakthrough Breast Cancer and the Design Council; and a signage strategy implemented in the London Boroughs of Barking & Dagenham and Havering. In 2000 Roberts was a signatory of the First Things First manifesto which calls for a greater awareness of design responsibility. She has taught at the London College of Printing and is a regular contributor to Eye magazine and Grafik. Her first book, The Designer and the Grid was published by RotoVision in 2002. sans+baum projects were included in the Barbican exhibition Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties. Roberts’ most recent book, Good: an introduction to ethics in graphic design was published last year. Roberts is currently design consultant to AVA publishing.

Ken Garland completed his studies in graphic design at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, in the 1950s. He was Art Editor of Design magazine from 1956-62, when he left to establish his own graphic design studio as Ken Garland and Associates. Among his many clients were Galt Toys, Race Furniture, Barbour Index, The Butterley Group, William Heinemann, Paramount Pictures, Harper & Row, Otto Maier Verlag, The Science Museum, Cambridge University Press, The Ministry of Technology, Jonathan Cape, The Arts Council, the Royal Parks Agency and the Barbican Gallery. He has contributed many articles to design periodicals in the UK, US, Europe and Japan. His own publications include: First things first: a manifesto (Self-published, London, 1964); Graphics handbook (Studio Vista, London/Reinhold Publishing, New York, 1966); Illustrated graphics glossary (Barrie & Jenkins, London, 1980); Graphics, design and printing terms: an international dictionary (Lund Humphries, London/ Design Press, New York, 1989); Mr Beck’s Underground map (Capital Transport, Harrow Weald, 1994); A word in your eye (Department of Typography and Graphic Communication, University of Reading, 1996); Metaphors: a portfolio of text and image (Bradbourne Publishing, East Malling, 2001). In addition to fulfilling regular appointments as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Reading (1971-99), the Royal College of Art (1977-87), Central School of Art and Design (1986-91) and the National College of Art and Design, Dublin (1982-92), he has lectured widely in the UK, US (two lecture tours in 1995 and 1997), Canada and Germany. He is currently Visiting Professor in Information Design at the Universidad de las Americas, Puebla, Mexico, and Visiting Professor of Brighton University, UK. TV appearances on design subjects include: Panorama, 1960; Tonight, 1964; The Visual Scene, 1969; Making Toys, 1975; Omnibus, 1976; Design classics, 1988; Tales from the Mapping Room, 1993; Underground – the Story of the Tube, 2000. Garland’s photographic work has been seen in the following one-man exhibitions: Linescape, lithoscape, landscape (Reading, 1987); Ken Garland: A retrospective (Reading, Coventry and Sunderland, 1997); The singing (South Armagh and Donegal, 1999); Images of Ulster and other places (Northern Ireland, 2000); Metaphors, a portfolio of text and image (Brighton and Coventry, 2002, Hull, 2003). www.kengarland.co.uk

Andrew Howard is a self-taught graphic designer and divides his professional time between running his studio, teaching, curating exhibitions and conferences and nurturing ambitions to write more often. Having originally studied Fine Art, he began working as a freelance designer in London in the 1980's for NGO's, local government and health authorities. In 1993 he moved to Portugal where he established and continues to run a design studio specialising in work for museums and cultural and educational institutions. At the same time he also began teaching at the ESAD Escola Superior de Artes e Design where he developed the schools typographic programme. Although not teaching at present, he is still involved in college activity as coordinator of the Personal Views project. In 2005 he was invited by the Serralves Foundation to curate and design a two-year series of communication design exhibitions. The series, entitled Idioms, explores the day-to-day world of graphic design by looking at the visual languages and forms that designers use, and the impact these have on the messages they create. The first exhibition which took place in January 2006 was entitled 175X120 and looked at Portuguese street posters; Read Before Using, (June 2006) explores the world of visual instructions, and Alphabet, (February 2007) celebrates the graphic code we know as letters. The forth exhibition in the series (May 2007) is entitled Chamadas Fotográficas: Imagens do quotidiano (Photographic Calls: Images of the everyday) and explores mobile phone photography. He has won various international design awards, was president of the Clube Criativo de Portugal design jury in 2003, and jury member on various other design competitions. His writing on design has been published in Eye, the International Review of Graphic Design, and in the Canadian magazine Adbusters. His writing has also been included in the anthologies, Looking Closer, Critical Writings on Graphic Design, issues 2 & 4 (Allworth Press, New York, 1997 & 2002). In 1986 he also collaborated in the authorship and production of Culture and Democracy, The Manifesto (Comedia Publishing Group, London, 1986). He is currently compiling and editing a book of essays to be published as a result of the Personal Views project.