C
TaBle of
CONTENTs
0 3 M EET DAVID CARSON
An introduction to David’s career and pioneering work
0 7 A NATOMY OF TYPOGRAPHY
The elements of letterform and major Latin font groupings
1 3 G OING OFF THE GRID
In praise of throwing out the design playbook
1 5 G LYPH STUDIES
David explains his wonkiest design moment
Assignment
1 8 D E S C R I B E T H E S E FO N TS
Start training yourself to harness the
evocative power of typography
1 9 T HE ART OF SEEING
Use everyday surroundings to ignite
creative inspiration
Assignment
2 0 I N TO T H E W I L D
Explore the possibilities of found
imagery in your area
2 1 R IPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Why are graphic designers obsessed with collage art?
2 2 B ITS AND PIECES
Five collage artists every designer should know
Assignment
24 C
O L L AG E L I F E
Three exercises to improve your
visual communication skills
2 5 T HE BUSINESS END
David’s seven essential tips for
working with clients
3 3 W HAT’S THE DEAL WITH
DESIGN COMPETITIONS?
The truth about industry contests
Assignment
34 E
YE ON THE PRIZE
Practice working to a brief by
entering your work in a contest
3 6 P ORTFOLIO POINTERS
How to assemble (or refresh) your
digital presence
3 7 M AKE YOUR MARK
The keys to designing an all-time-classic logo
3 9 CASE STUDY: THE DALÍ MUSEUM
Breaking down David’s process
for rebranding a surrealist institution
Assignment
4 0 M A K E , B E L I E V E
Propose a brand identity for
a hypothetical company
41 H OME SCHOOLING
The best affordable resources
for budding designers
2
D AV I D
CARSON
MEET
It’s no exaggeration to say that David Carson has transformed the way graphic design is practiced. If you want to
understand the immensity of his influence, take a moment
to chat up any young print designer. They’ll tell you how
David showed them that success isn’t dependent on fancy
art school degrees or climbing corporate ranks. They’ll say
he’s living proof that rules are made to be broken. They’ll
probably sound inspired. They might even relay a certain
catchphrase:
“Don’t give up / David Carson
wasn’t built in a day.”
ly as unconsuccess is near
to
th
pa
’s
id
av
. He was
Indeed, D
visual language
ng
ri
ee
on
pi
is
ther, a
ventional as h
in 1954; his fa
s,
xa
Te
i,
st
ri
h
sC
r landing proborn in Corpu
ASA’s early luna
N
on
d
ke
or
w
e skies, so he
test pilot,
d surfing to th
re
er
ef
pr
id
av
re he studgram. But D
alifornia, whe
C
rn
he
ut
So
to
Univermade his way
n Diego State
Sa
d
an
ge
le
ol
C
It
ology degree.
ied at Fullerton
ks and a soci
ar
m
s
p
al
to
g
du
in
vi
w indi
sity, earn
tanding of ho
rs
de
un
en
re
ke
is
ed h
gave him a
y and sharpen
et
ci
so
h
it
w
communicate
n skills.
ical-evaluatio
id
search and crit
s degree, Dav
his bachelor’
g
r
in
h
ea
is
n
n
l
fi
oo
Sch
After
ey Pines High
rr
To
at
y
re
og
e
ol
lf in th
taught soci
mersed himse
im
e
H
.
ia
n
p
or
to
e
Del Mar, Calif
he reached th
at one point,
—
re
idn’t
u
d
lt
d
cu
an
al
gion
circuit—
g
n
rfi
su
ro
p
,
ate’s
the age of 26
level of the st
course until
gn
si
de
e
th
ic
h
at
s
take a grap
two-week clas
d a listing for a
te
ot
signer
sp
de
d
he
n
an
he
w
ht by artist
ug
ta
a,
n
zo
ri
A
id enUniversity of
ck a chord; Dav
ru
st
k
or
w
he
ls. T
Jackson Boelt
gon and, the fo
school in Ore
t
ar
l
kal
or
sm
w
a
k
rolled at
for a three-wee
er, signed up
m
m
su
g
in
w
lo
rland.
typeshop in Switze
, accomplished
or
ct
ru
st
in
’s
The workshop
ay from design
z, didn’t shy aw
ut
L
f
ol
ud
R
srde theories.
setter Han
opean avant-ga
ur
E
d
an
on
ti
e U.S., he
experimenta
returned to th
he
n
he
W
.
ed
eboardDavid was hook
Now (née Skat
n
io
ct
A
at
rn
inte
sports. But he
took up as an
d on extreme
se
cu
fo
e
in
az
84, when he
er), a mag
is own until 19
h
to
in
e
m
co
ateboarding.
didn’t truly
Transworld Sk
of
or
ct
re
di
t
was named ar
3
David’s lack of formal training jibed
with the magazine’s rebellious
streak; he set about remodeling its
layout, breaking many supposed
rules of print design by mixing
opposing fonts, radically cropping
photos, and running text where and
how he saw fit.
This distinctive take on imagery and lettering
also earned him a spot at the publication’s sister
title, Transworld Snowboarding, where he implemented similar changes. In 1989, he left to join
Musician magazine in Gloucester, Massachusetts, later relocating to New York to work on
SELF magazine. He then headed back west to
join the upstart magazine Beach Culture as art
director; the title folded after just six issues but
won numerous awards, including Best Overall
Design and Cover of the Year from the Society of
Publication Designers in New York. That success
led to a stint at Surfer magazine, where David
spearheaded an imaginative redesign. He began
to solidify his reputation as a thoroughly revolutionary figure in graphics and editorial.
His outsider aesthetic came into full view
in 1992, when he was hired to design a fledgling alternative music magazine called Ray
Gun. The publication’s subject matter and
conceptual leanings proved a perfect fit
for David’s style and attitude; he effectively invented a new visual language
within the print medium, one characterized by rich texture, visual distortion,
and the deconstruction and reconstruction of typographical and photographic
elements. Above all else, he championed a
holistic concept of visual communication.
“I’m a big believer in the…message that’s
sent before somebody begins to read,
4
before they get the rest of the information,” David explained at the 2003 TED Conference. “That area of design
interests me the most.”
David’s graphic treatments for Ray Gun were unmistakably human, meant to convey (and expand upon) the editorial meaning of each story. In doing so, he demonstrated
that traditional layout templates weren’t mandatory—and
that a page’s design could be just as emotive as its prose. In
a 1997 retrospective, The New York Times declared that David’s works were “more like Abstract Expressionist canvases than magazine layouts”; the acclaimed video artist Arthur Jafa cited Ray Gun as the best example of visual jazz.
David’s work flowed into popular
culture, causing a paradigm shift in
the appearance of products and
packaging. His style was emulated
by other designers for television
graphics, album and book covers,
posters and signage, logos, clothing,
and advertisements. Unsurprisingly,
the look proved divisive: While many
applauded overlapping images and
disorderly typography, others derided
it as fractured and obfuscating.
But even critics couldn’t deny the
effectiveness of David’s approach.
Before long, he wasn’t just an industry sensation but a
bona fide celebrity, profiled in mainstream outlets like
Newsweek. After designing Cyclops, photographer Albert
Watson’s award-winning monograph, David published a
monograph of his own, The End of Print, in 1995; that same
year, he left Ray Gun to start his eponymous design studio
in New York. There, he developed bleeding-edge campaigns for Nike, Pepsi, Microsoft, Armani, and other bluechip clients. He also created album artwork for Prince and
Nine Inch Nails, graphics for the Smithsonian Institute
and FOX Sports, television commercials for Xerox and
Motrin, type treatments for Eddie Bauer and BMW, logos
for Burton Snowboards and Florida’s Dalí Museum, posters for Britain’s National Theatre, and a new version of the
I NY emblem.
Today, David continues to build on his prolific body of
work, hosting design workshops around the globe. He has
published four books; worked with David Byrne, William S.
Burroughs, and the estate of Marshall McLuhan; and won
more than 240 awards, including the prestigious American
Institute of Graphic Arts gold medal in 2014. His work now
resides in the permanent collection of the Library of Con5
gress. Creative Review magazine describes David as
“the most famous graphic designer on the planet”
and “the art director of the era.”
The common thread throughout David’s epic
career and eclectic portfolio? His belief that outstanding design is intuitive, personal, and communicative. It doesn’t require formal training, and it
certainly isn’t downloaded from a template. Here,
he wants to break down some core elements for
you: sending a message with typography, using
photographic imagery effectively, and establishing
your visual identity.
“At its best, graphic design can express what the
heart is trying to say, what the emotion is trying to
get across to somebody else or to a group,” David
says. “It’s the feeling we get from looking at something—not only what we read, but the emotional
impact and how we’re moved.”
“If it feels like anybody could have
just typed it in, then you really don’t
need designers. Did you look at the
space between the letters? IF IT
SHOULD BE IN CAPS? If you
should find something TALL or
CONDENSED? Make those decisions, don’t
get lazy. If it’s readable, it’s okay, but
you won’t have the most fun doing
it, or do your best work. Look at the
obvious, basic categories of fonts—
bold, thick, serif, sans serif, italic,
non-italic, CAPS, lowercase—to see
if something strikes you as feeling
right for the message and works with
the other information on the page,
like a photograph or graphs.”
— DAV I D
6
Tracking
Anatomy
of
Typography
Kerning
Shoulder
Counter
Crossbar
Baseline
Terminal
Sans Serif
Serif
Leading
Italic
Stem
Bowl
Cap
Height
Ascender
Ear
Bracket
Axis
Loop or Lobe
Descender
Link or Neck
David’s designs are all about impact. When it comes to typography,
he often breaks down letterform and reassembles them, mixing and
modifying fonts and pushing the limits of legibility in an effort to
capture (and convey) a specific emotion. Want to start experimenting on your own? Get acquainted with the basic language of typography and major font groupings in the Latin alphabet.
7
X Height
efaces
Major groupings of Latin typ
(15th century–present)
HUMANIST
B L AC K L E T T E R
Also known as:
Old Style, Venetian
Also known as: Textura
Origin: Italy, c. 1465
Origin: Germany, c. 1455
During the Renaissance period,
cultural hubs in Europe—largely
centered around Florence and
Venice in Italy—strived to evolve
from medieval norms. This effort toward sophistication manifested in new typographic conventions; printers started to
create letters that took on the
appearance of the Latin handwriting of the era’s philosophers
and scribes. The lettering appeared with a calligraphic aesthetic, mimicking the angles at
which a right-handed person
holds a pen. Traditionally, all
humanist typefaces were serif
fonts, but in recent years designers have created sans serif
versions that retain certain
calligraphic characteristics.
Johannes Gutenberg’s printing
press—and, with it, movable
Latin type—meant Western
texts could be reproduced in
large volumes at smaller costs
than previous methods of dissemination (i.e., writing out
each and every publication by
hand). The Bible was the first
substantial book Gutenberg
printed, using blackletter type
cut to replicate the handwriting of early 15th-century Germany, which had a formal appearance partly due to pens
being held at a 45-degree angle. In the 20th century, blackletter styles were co-opted by
the Nazi party to signify pride
in German history. The style
was revived in merchandise
and album cover designs for
1970s and ’80s metal bands
and, more recently, for those
of hip-hop artists.
You’ve seen it:
The New York Times
nameplate
You’ve seen it:
Penguin Classics book covers
GARALDE (SERIF)
Also known as: Aldine
Origin: France, c. 1540
This group of typefaces takes
its title from an amalgam of
the names of French type cutter Claude Garamond and
Italian scholar Aldus Manutius. They differ from humanist
type in their finer proportions
and were used in France under King Francis I as a tool to
create official standards for
grammar and orthography
(the set of conventions for
writing a language, including
spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation).
You’ve seen it:
Abercrombie & Fitch logos
Examples:
Bembo, Garamond
Examples (serif):
Centaur, Verona
Examples (sans serif):
Gill Sans, Johnston, Optima
Examples:
Bastarda (1455), Darka (2019)
8
SLAB SERIF
TRANSITIONAL
(SERIF)
DIDONE
Also known as: Realist
Origin: France, c. 1700s
Transitional fonts were
born thanks to King Louis
XIV, who was keen on elevating France’s printing
prowess. He set about
renovating the Imprimerie
Royale (the French government’s printing press)
and commissioned the
French Academy of Sciences to create a new
typeface. It came back
with the Roman du Roi, a
suite of 86 typefaces that
birthed an entirely new
way of creating type:
drawing letterforms on a
strictly geometric, gridbased system.
Characteristics
Very strong contrast,
near-vertical axis, flatter
serifs, refined details
You’ve seen it:
Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN.
album cover
Examples:
Baskerville, Fournier,
Times
9
Also known as:
Modern, Romantics
Origin: France and
Italy, c. 1800
Named after type designers Firmin Didot (France)
and Giambattista Bodoni
(Italy), didone is the product of an ongoing professional rivalry between the
two men. The style was informed by writing created
by hand using a pointed
nib held at a 90-degree
angle. In the West, Didone
became the standard of
general-purpose printing
during the 19th century.
You’ve seen it: Vogue
magazine nameplate
Examples: Bodoni, Didot,
Walbaum
Also known as: Antique, Egyptian,
Mechanistic, Mechanical
Origin: England, c. 1810
Slab serifs are a broad and varied
bunch, characterized by thick, blocklike serifs. They emerged in the early
19th century, in response to the explosion of commercial advertising, sharing very few elements with previous
type designs. The first known example
is a lottery advertisement from London
in 1810, but the earliest slab is widely
cited as Antique, by London typographer Vincent Figgins, which appeared
in a type specimen dated 1815. Slab
serifs were often created with display
purposes in mind—to grab people’s attention on posters and billboards, for
example—though some were intended for use in smaller sizes with large
chunks of text, such as on newsprint.
They were also often used in typewriters (such as Courier), and so these examples are monospaced, meaning the
characters each occupy the same
amount of horizontal space. The slab
category includes typefaces with
square, unbracketed serifs (often
called Egyptians) as well as those with
bracketed serifs (sometimes called
Clarendons or Ionics).
You’ve seen it: Wells Fargo branding
Examples: Clarendon, Courier,
Rockwell, Sentinel
N E O - G R OT E S Q U E
Origin: Switzerland, 1957
G R OT E S Q U E
Also known as: Gothic, Grotesk
GEOMETRIC
Origin: England, c. 1815
Grotesque is often used to describe any
sans serif font, but the term should really
be applied to the sorts of typefaces that
originated in the 19th century and bear
some unusual characteristics. (The first
official sans serif dates back to 1748,
originating in the foundry of William
Caslon; in 1785, Valentin Haüy, founder
of a school for blind children, also developed a typeface called the Haüy System,
essentially an early sans serif.) The true
grotesque font style was born around
1816 in William Caslon IV’s foundry, which
developed the first sans serif printing
type. The letterforms were influenced
by Didone typefaces, particularly the
varying contrasts between thick and thin
strokes. Re-creating this without serifs
means that grotesques have unusual
quirks and exaggerated shapes in strange
places, as the contrasts of calligraphic
letterforms doesn’t apply to sans serifs.
Initially designed to be a bold type style
for headlines and advertising, most early
grotesques are only created in capital
letters, with lowercase versions appearing
later on.
You’ve seen it: MoMA signage
Examples: Franklin Gothic, Ideal
Grotesk, Two Lines English Egyptian
Origin: Germany, c. 1920s
As the name suggests, these
are sans serifs constructed
from simple geometric
shapes, which are often optically adjusted by typographers to make the shapes
seem more linear and legible.
Notable early designs include
Erbar by Jakob Erbar, Futura
by Paul Renner, and Herbert
Bayer’s Universal alphabet.
(The latter, an unreleased
study from the mid-to-late
1920s, was revived digitally
as Architype Bayer in 1997.)
Some Geometric fonts use a
range of geometric shapes to
give them varied proportions,
like more classical roman
typefaces, while others use
repeated geometric elements
in the construction of each
letter for a more uniform look.
This group is strongly associated with Germany’s famed
Bauhaus art school.
Neo-grotesque fonts are
the ultimate modernist
typefaces; the first examples to be categorized as
such—Helvetica (or Neue
Haas Grotesk by Max
Miedinger), Univers (by
Adrian Frutiger), and Folio
(by Konrad Bauer and Walter Baum)—were released
in 1957. This category of
fonts is associated with the
Swiss International Style
that emerged in the mid20th century and continues
to be hugely popular today.
They’re simple, legible, and
even neutral, designed with
a range of uses in mind, unlike original grotesques,
which were largely intended
for bold headlines.
You’ve seen it: American
Apparel logos
Examples: DIN, Helvetica,
Univers
You’ve seen it:
2001: A Space Odyssey
movie poster
Examples: Avenir, Century
Gothic, Futura
10
11 "Pay attention to the details. Don't
let software determine the width
between columns, the spaces
between sentences or between
letters... Separate the title from the
subtitle, separate the author from
the body copy. Don't automatically
make all the drop caps or pull
quotes the same. They’re all
decisions you should be making."
— DAV I D
12
Margin
Off
the
Grid
Going
off baseline grid
base aligned
In praise of throwing
out the design playbook
Baseline
Guides for a gridded layout
T
o understand why David’s approach to design is so revolutionary, it’s important to
first understand the conventions he has defied. Chief among them is the grid structure,
Margin
which became an intrinsic part of graphic
design training after WWII. In the most basic sense, the “grid” is a two-dimensional framework of intersecting lines that helps designers organize content on a
page. The idea is to create layouts that are both legible and
aesthetically pleasing without demonstrating the existence
of the framework underpinning the whole thing.
This school of design is synonymous with the modernism
movement of the 1950s. Proponents like Max Bill, Emil Ruder, and Josef Müller-Brockmann were heavily influenced by
Jan Tschichold’s 1928 book, Die neue Typographie (The New
Typography), a strident manifesto for modern design, which
could be considered the antithesis of David’s visual language. Tschichold advocated for a codified, rules-based system for design, including the strict use of standardized paper sizes and blocky, neutral typefaces.
The modernists aimed to expand upon these ideas, culminating in Müller-Brockmann’s 1968 guidebook, Grid Systems
in Graphic Design. In it, he offered insights on the interdependency of type and grids—essentially creating systems for
Margin
placing text within a “container,” or page space. He also set
out recommendations for modular layouts that use horizontal rows and vertical “gutters” that stem from the baseline
text grid, forming modules that he termed “fields.”
Guide
6 Column grid
2 Column grid
3 Column grid
13 Margin
Here, it’s important to note that
Müller-Brockmann didn’t intend to
create a clinical methodology. He
merely offered the grid as a tool to
support a designer’s vision, emphasizing individual flair rather than
blind facsimile. He also pointed to
natural and historical precedents: The
honeycomb patterns formed by bees,
rudimentary proportions of the human body, traditional Japanese architecture, and Egyptian pictograms are
all analogous to his gridding concept.
Müller-Brockmann’s tenets can be expanded beyond the page for 3-D applications, too; the legendary Italian designer Massimo Vignelli used similar
modular systems in his iconic mapping of the New York City Subway.
Still, some designers came to see
these principles as rigid and dogmatic. By the 1970s, grids were part of
Gutters
Uniform spacing between columns
vid just has a different perspective:
“Sometimes I feel I’m one of the few
voices out there trying to keep graphic design a little more emotional or
give it some spirit, which is what intrigued me early on.”
ents in
standard teaching for design stud
ch of
mu
Europe, North America, and
e inLatin Americ a. Soon, they wer
popgrained in the very look and feel of
ider-a
put
com
of
ular design. The advent
re
mo
red
ed gridded layouts only offe
plex
preset, templated answers to com
design questions.
niDavid’s humanist approach—tech
cess
suc
bly
cally “incorrect,” yet inargua
a
wed
ful—upended the system. He sho
t they
new generation of designers tha
image
ut
abo
s
rule
didn’t need to stick to
aphy.
ogr
typ
placement and consistent
eroth
David has no formula, gridded or
tch,
wise. He starts each design from scra
ls
goa
the
to
e
ons
simply working in resp
of the project.
we
“Who’s the audience? What are
t look
trying to say, and what would tha
e the
forc
rein
ign
des
like? How would the
do
How
it?
message, or get people into
or
cle
you get people to dive into an arti
itute
website?” he told the American Inst
ut
abo
ed
ask
n
whe
of Graphic Arts blog
ons
rati
side
his process. “All these are con
ount,
that a lot of designers take into acc
tract
but from there I go a little more abs
ds
sen
ign
Des
.
itive
or looser or more intu
t
righ
ls’
‘fee
it
a message—whether or not
is a hard thing to quantify.”
has
He emphasizes that it’s not as if he
k
brea
to
out
sets
y
no rules or intentionall
dened
trai
those established by formally
s, Dasigners. Having never studied grid
He’s not alone. Some critics
now say grids have become yet
another aspect of design systematized by modern software, along
with automated type settings
and color corrections, making
the work feel stagnant and detached. Breaking from these
systems, à la David, can help you
facilitate conceptual thinking
and deliver something that’s both
truly original and entirely unexpected. “I’d like to encourage you
to not put things where they seem
to want to go,” he says. “Don’t
put them in the obvious place.
The idea that a computer sets up
guidelines is just all wrong to me.
I think this is where you end up
with boring design and boring
designers, and probably a boring
audience. Bring your eye to it,
rather than following somebody
else’s guidelines. Never snap to
guides. We want your mind, we
don’t want your software.”
Tilted text box 2°
14
15 Glyph
Studies
David explains his wonkiest
design moment
Dingbat fonts replace alphabetical or numeric
characters with symbols and shapes. Examples include Wingdings and Webdings, created by Microsoft in 1990 and 1997, respectively, and the Zapf
Dingbats, designed by Hermann Zapf in 1978 for
New York’s International Typeface Corporation,
which licensed it.
In 1994, David’s predilection for typographic
risk-taking—and his resolute adherence to his
own convictions—resulted in one of the most infamous magazine spreads ever created. He was laying out an interview with Bryan Ferry, the Roxy
Music crooner, for Ray Gun, and David considered
the piece to be “incredibly boring.” So he decided
to make it more interesting (and entirely illegible)
by setting the text in Zapf Dingbats font.
“I’m a bit surprised it became such a big thing,” he
told the American Institute of Graphic Arts blog in
2019. “I don’t show it in my talks, and design-wise
it’s average, it’s okay—it’s kind of funny and quick.
Sometimes you hear a band say they wrote the
song they’re best known for in 10 minutes, like a
throwaway thing, so it’s a bit like that. But it fit
with the attitude of the magazine, and you have a
responsibility to the audience to represent them
and the subject matter.”
And it’s not like David left Ray Gun readers stranded: He ran the Ferry interview (using an entirely
legible font) elsewhere in the issue. If you’re going
to pull a stunt, make sure you stick the landing—
and that you’re doing it in the interest of your audience, not at their expense.
16
With the font choice,
don’t overlook the message
behind each font. They all have
their own personality, and
you have to decide, as a designer,
which one fits your particular
project the best—one which
doesn’t simply carry
the information. It’ll help you
reinforce a message.”
— DAV I D
17 (descriptor)
(descriptor)
(descriptor)
(descriptor)
(descriptor)
(descriptor)
(descriptor)
(descriptor)
(descriptor)
(descriptor)
D e s crib e The s e Fonts
Typography can speak volumes, subtly (or overtly) conveying your message
to a reader or audience. Take a few minutes to study the front samples above.
Then match each of them with a descriptive term from the word bank below.
18
Word bank: quaint, loud, distinguished, gritty, haunting, warm, beautiful,
claustrophobic, insightful, celebratory
18
The Art
of Seeing
Use your everyday surroundings
to ignite creative inspiration
T
he best ideas, as the old cliché goes, come when you aren’t looking
for them. But those ideas are rarely the result of idleness or passivity. They’re the product of viewing the world—consciously or
not—with an eye for depth and detail. They require that you recognize emotional resonance and make cognitive leaps that forge
creative connections that no one else would make.
Take the now-classic severed ear scene in David Lynch’s celebrated 1986 film,
Blue Velvet: The image was born of the Bobby Vinton song that gave the film its
name. “What came from [hearing] the song at first was red lips in a car, and green
lawns with dew at night,” the director said during a 2015 event in Switzerland.
“The next thing that came was a severed ear in the grass.” Lynch didn’t take the
song or its lyrics at face value; instead he formed a surrealist visual narrative in
his head. He took the track’s subtle sense of the uncanny, and of unease, and
translated the literal meanings of Vinton’s words into a striking sequence.
Lynch is a vocal advocate of transcendental meditation as a means of accessing
ideas that the conscious mind might not, or, as he puts it, “catching the big fish.”
Designers can try those techniques, too. But with the pressures of client deadlines,
you need to create great work even when your muses don’t drop in. By actively
engaging with what’s around us—visually, sonically, even olfactorily—those types
of creative cognitive leaps will come far more readily.
Sometimes that means exercising ways of looking deeper into what might seem
ordinary or banal. Life drawing, for instance, sharpens the connections between
the drawing hand and the mind by breaking down the human body—usually
fraught with insecurities and warped perceptions—into its most basic lines,
curves, and proportions. It’s liberating to see the physical for what it is rather than
what it’s associated with. Loosen up the brain to express things in new ways, and
you might find something incredible.
The same can apply to sketching in general. While phones are handy for capturing an image for later reference, the immediacy and physicality of putting pen
or pencil to paper—taking in the topography of everyday life unselfconsciously
on a page—can shine an entirely new light on the mundane. Even just taking five
19 minutes a day to draw, without the
end goal of presenting the finished
work to anyone, is a great way to disentangle the thinking mind from its
more free-associative, creative counterpart.
Similarly, creatives across all disciplines have espoused the virtues of
writing longhand, particularly
through the Morning Pages ritual,
popularized by Julia Cameron’s 1992
book, The Artist’s Way. The exercise
simply involves filling three sides of
A4 paper with words (using pen or
pencil, and kept private) as soon as
you wake up. The aim is to write without thinking, stream-of-consciousness style. According to Cameron,
there’s “no wrong way” to go about it,
but she adds that “the second pageand-a-half comes harder” than the
first, and three pages is the absolute
limit, to avoid “self-involvement and
narcissism.” Those who swear by the
practice extol its virtues for calming
anxiety, resolving creative problems,
and leading to fresh insights.
The Morning Papers ritual must be
undertaken immediately upon regaining consciousness. This is crucial, and
similar meditative activities can be
incredibly powerful when the brain is
still a little sleepy; we’re less inhibited
then, meaning revelations are more
forthcoming. Truly seeing—and assimilating what we see, connecting it
with the unexpected, forging new
concepts from what might seem insignificant—is almost an art form unto
itself. As adults, especially those for
whom creative awareness pays their
rent, it takes work to arrive at viewing
the world in a way that’s both innately
perceptive and naively unselfconscious. It’s worth the effort.
Into the Wild
Awareness is crucial to developing your design eye, and
found imagery can serve as a source of inspiration. David
often photographs the man-made details of his everyday
surroundings, from community posters to graffiti tags.
Walk around your own neighborhood and inspect the text
elements—flyers stapled to telephone poles, signs for yard
sales, posted notices—and photograph them. Then do the
same on a different day while exploring a new neighborhood.
Compare the results. How does each object use typography? What message is being conveyed? Which ones are
effective? Which aren’t? What aspects (literal or figurative)
might you be able to translate into one of your own designs?
20
Ripped From
the Headlines
Why are so many graphic designers obsessed with collage art?
David is a huge advocate of collage as
a medium for expression. But, as he
rightly points out, “collage has been an
abused word over the years, sometimes it’s been designated as quite
‘cute.’ ” He allows for a few “amazing
exceptions” while offering his take on
the form: “It doesn’t have the same
clout as fine art or graphic design.”
Maybe that’s because collage is an
inherently democratic art form, at
least in terms of accessibility of materials or due to its popular perception
as a rainy-day distraction for kids. But
here’s the truth: Like high-quality
graphic design, high-quality collage
requires an incredible level of artistic
skill, in both planning and execution.
The form’s conceptual underpinnings are certainly storied. Collage, as
we know it today, is strongly associated with détournement, a practice that
stems from a midcentury European
avant-garde movement called situationism. The situationists aimed to
create new artworks by “creatively
disfiguring” existing ones; as outlined
in situationist theorist Guy Debord’s
1956 essay “A User’s Guide to Détournement,” the resulting piece must
21 “negate the ideological conditions of artistic production, the fact that all artworks
are ultimately commodities.”
Oftentimes, multiple works are cut and reassembled, revealing both hitherto
unseen meanings and creating new ones by dint of their placement alongside one
another. This concept of newness from the old—reinventing artifacts through
their evisceration or placement—is at the heart of the work of John Stezaker. The
pioneering conceptual artist’s early collages, in particular, reveal an obsessive
relationship with mass-produced imagery. Often combining postcards of vast
landscapes with intimate Hollywood film stills, his compositions cleverly riff on
the interplay between outdoor and interior spaces, as well as the aesthetics of
melodrama. The results are aesthetically beguiling.
Stezaker’s oeuvre exemplifies appropriation done well: He underscores collage’s capacity for subversion while making the case for the timeless relevance of
the medium. And just as David uses typography and layout as intrinsic message
carriers, Stezaker lets his materials communicate the content; postcards, according to art critic Yuval Etgar, are a deliberate choice to “capture exactly what mechanical reproduction did to our way of looking at pictures.”
It’s fair to say collage and graphic design share a beauty in subversion. They’re
both rooted in theorem or are willfully devoid of them; academic and visceral;
virulently antagonistic and coolly calm. So it’s no wonder that David is drawn to
this sort of work. His designs are often calcified by a need to interrogate the status
quo, a belief shared by many of his collage contemporaries. In elevating the meaning of materials, graphic designers cannot only find inspiration, but learn to better
understand the power of context.
1.
Hannah Höch
(German, 1889–1978)
5.
Mickalene Thomas
(American, 1974–present)
Thomas, a hugely influential multidisciplinary
artist, brings Black
femininity to the forefront of her collage
studies. Lush textures,
unexpected materials,
and striking juxtapositions give her pieces a
singular look.
A member of the Berlin Dada movement,
and a pioneering artist working
in collage and photomontage, Höch
was best known for appropriating
mass-media images and turning them
into critiques of the Weimar Republic, gender roles, and identity.
Five
Collage
Artists
Every
Graphic
Designer
Should
Know
2.
Linder
(British, 1954–present)
First emerging from Manchester’s fertile 1970s
punk scene, Linder is best
known for her provocative
explorations of society’s
treatment of the female
form; her collages have
frequently combined
imagery from pornography,
women’s magazines, and
mail-order catalogs.
4.
Kurt Schwitters
(German, 1887–1948)
Associated with both the
constructivist and Dadaist art movements,
Schwitters created collages from photos, found
objects, typography, and
discarded materials to
comment on the breakneck
modernization of the
20th-century world.
3.
John Stezaker
(British, 1949–present)
Taking inspiration from surrealism, the contemporary conceptual artist interrogates notions of truth, memory, time,
and culture through his assemblage of postcards, vintage
Hollywood press photos, and
magazine images.
22
“I stay away from anything that
feels too popular—too common,
too forgettable. I’ve always done
some part of hand lettering ... it’s
human. It sends a message that
there’s a person behind it. Never
use a font that’s made to look like
hand lettering: hand letter it, or
get someone else to do so."
— DAV I D
23 Collage Life
David gives design workshops all over the world; one of
his goals is to demonstrate how much can be conveyed
through graphics without using words. He suggests that
you try these three assignments at home to improve
your visual communication skills:
Create a 2-D graphic
artwork that shows
who you are, using
only the letters of
your first name and
black and white
coloring. When you’re
finished, carefully
consider how our creative expressions can
capture our personality—even when there
are strict, mandatory
guidelines in place.
Create a 2-D graphic artwork that
shows how your life
is going this week,
using only color.
When you’re finished, reflect on the
ability of colors to
send strong messages and how you
might use them to
convey more than
emotion at the
same time.
Create a 2-D or 3-D
graphic artwork that
shows where you’d like to
be a decade from now,
without using literal imagery. There are no limitations on color, texture,
typography, or any other
elements. When you’re
finished, think about how
a representational or
abstract visual can still
communicate powerful,
grounded ideas.
24
The
Business
When designers win work (i.e., get hired to take on a project), it’s not always a result of being approached directly by the client. There are several ways for a designer to be commissioned. They
might work through something called a tender—invitations from public- and private-sector businesses to bid for design projects, as listed on sites like Creative Tenders and Global Tenders. These
jobs will include a tender request document, explaining what services they require, with specific instructions and desired criteria.
Occasionally, designers can also win business by working “on spec,” a term derived from the
word speculatively. Here, the designer has already created something independently, approaches
a person or company they’re keen to work with, and pitches the work in the hope of being commissioned. More established designers do have a better chance than unproven names in this arena,
but the risk is fairly obvious—if the client isn’t interested, you’ve exerted a huge effort with zero return on your project. It’s a bit like cold-call sales: difficult but possible.
When a client does approach a designer or studio directly, the work can still require a lengthy
pitch process. Many would argue that these proposals should be paid (and working on spec, depending on how much detail is given, can be seen as creating an unpaid pitch), since the designer
is likely to invest time formulating ideas—and, in cases where they’re pitching against other design
agencies, might not even win the paid commission after doing so.
Of course, winning a project is only the first step. The next is actually doing the work. Everything
starts with the brief—a description of what’s needed from the designer. For some clients, this will
be a comprehensive document, packed with information that outlines each touchpoint the designer will work on; maybe it’s a one-off magazine cover, or maybe it’s an entire branding scheme, including logo, store signage, staff uniforms, and an app icon. For other clients, the brief could just
begin as a verbal request; in that case, it’s on the designer to find out exactly what’s needed and
how it fits the client’s attitude, selling points, target consumer, or audience.
To ensure that the client is happy (and you get paid in full), here are seven nuggets of wisdom
from David in order to make the most of your commission:
End
DAV I D ’ S S E V E N T I P S FO R WO R K I N G W I T H C L I E N TS
25 1
INTERROGATE THE BRIEF
(AND BEYOND)
Working with a range of different
clients—editorial (a magazine or other
publication), commercial (a brand),
and cultural (record labels, art galleries, theaters)—requires a deft
touch; as David points out, “They’re
all different.” Regardless of the
project, though, the best starting
point is always the brief. At this
point, David says, the designer has to
start asking questions: Who is this
client? What are they trying to say?
What are the benefits of their product
or the service? Who is their audience?
The first ideas for a project, whether
those are strategic or visual, can
only come from thoroughly investigating these lines of inquiry through
both micro and macro lenses.
“Read that brief. Read it well. And
what do you get from that? What are
you seeing? What are you feeling?”
says David. “Something in there is
gonna trigger something in you. That’s
the direction you start exploring with
your design work.”
The design elements you create—logos,
typography, color palettes, illustrations, photographs—should address the
issues presented in the brief. But the
brief alone is rarely enough, and a
good designer won’t take everything at
face value. They’ll investigate the
client’s origin story, the competitors
(and how they’re faring), the main audience, and new audiences they’re intending to reach. Looking back on the
client’s previous design work can also
inform its future: what worked and
what didn’t, and why. Following the
research phase, the next step is
“gathering materials you think can
‘reinforce’ the brief and answer the
questions it brought up,” David says.
“Then it’s a matter of letting your
design mind go to work.”
26
2 2 ² 2 2 2 ²22
2
Give Them
2
ioNs
Opt
(and make
sure that you
actually like
all of them)
When it comes to presenting initial ideas to a client, one
school of thought advises that a designer should bring
only their best ideas—three at the most. David disagrees. He says that he’s always worked by showing an
array of different concepts, “maybe because I’ve been
doing it for a while and I don’t feel any one project is
that precious.… Some are safer, some are more out
there, some are all in between.”
The client could pick your favorite. They might even
go for the one you consider the most experimental or
outlandish. But there are countless tales of designers presenting a few options, from which the client picks the one
its creator secretly hates. The trick to avoiding that is to
actually like everything you decide to present. Plus, from
David’s point of view, by putting forward more ideas, you
27 can better gauge the client’s response; if they go for, say, hand-lettering over something more formal,
you can fine-tune the work that’s
most aligned with that aesthetic.
“I’ll come back with a dozen or
more ideas based on feedback
around the direction [the client is]
liking,” David explains. “I think
there’s probably been a couple times
where I confused clients by giving
them too many options. Like, literally, a wall of printouts. But for me,
overall, it works really well. Usually
they’re appreciative of the fact you
did a lot of work.”
In short, David
advises you to “give
’em some options…
show the ones you really feel passionate
about, and ones that
you feel good about
but are a little safer,
and go from there.”
3
KNOW YOUR
STRENGTHS,
BUT PUSH
YOURSELF
CREATIVELY
Whatever your creative field,
self-awareness is key. Maybe a designer has a strong grasp on typography but isn’t the best with 3-D
graphics; an illustrator could be fantastic at futuristic CG images but terrible at hand-drawn likenesses. While
everything you do for clients should
fit the brief, you were likely hired because they spotted something about
your style, process, and chosen mediums—so play to those strengths.
David reckons that now, more than
ever, clients are picking designers on
the merits of “personal” work, since
it’ll likely result in a more unique design product. When the Macallan
whiskey company approached him
about a collaboration, he created a
series of original collages (see
“Ripped From the Headlines” on
page 21) for the brand’s campaign,
which were also made into a limited
run of hand-signed art prints.
“It wasn’t so much a matter of me
looking at this particular client and
saying, ‘Oh, they need collage,’ ” he
explains. Rather, the collages David
created conveyed the “hands-onness” of the whiskey-making process
and included abstractions of the
landscapes around the distillery,
which brought a natural feeling to the
work. In this case, David’s collage art
simply “made sense” for the brand
and the project.
28
4 BE ABLE
TO JUSTIFY
EVERY
ELEMENT
It’s all well and good to present several potential
design routes at an early client meeting, but that
work can be easily undone if, when questioned, you
can’t justify why you proposed these ideas. Simply
liking a certain color or typeface doesn’t cut it.
Every design decision has to be arrived at through
a considered process, whereby you can justify why
it would be a smart approach for that particular
brand, brief, or project. As David says, “It’s just
a cool shape, I like it” isn’t going to sell an idea.
29 Good creative is the product of
unique perspectives, so take advantage of yours. Don’t just reinforce the norms of what’s been
seen before for a particular sector
or type of client. Authenticity
sells. To wit, in an early project for
Burton Snowboards, David was
presented with many photos
showing what he terms “people
doing the obvious tricks in the
air.” They felt stale—and staged.
But one image was different: It
was of a man who’d just crossed a
half-frozen lake. Unexpected,
sure, yet it still showed off the
core product perfectly. “I had to
argue for this one, because they
really wanted another high-air
photo. But there was something
real about the way the guy was
looking back at the camera.”
30
6
Use your
work
for good,
not just a
payout
or
portfolio
piece
31 Eventually, most successful designers struggle to strike a balance between taking on projects to pay the bills and doing
ones they genuinely enjoy.
They’re likely to face difficult
ethical decisions, too. Some designers and agencies now flatout refuse to collaborate with
companies that don’t practice
climate consciousness or have
poor working conditions in
their factories.
In many cases, as a creative,
you can make small but significant changes; remember, you’re
in a unique position as someone
charged with making images for
public consumption. Tackling
social issues from the inside, as
a sort of graphic design Trojan
horse, can go a long way toward
effecting change.
And it doesn’t even need to
be overtly political. When David was working as the creative
director for Bose Corporation,
he realized that the company
had exclusively used white men
in its previous ads—something
many brands have been guilty
of doing. Rather than reinforcing that hegemony, David went
for a typographic solution that
suggested the design was progressive, answered the brief,
and, crucially, introduced more
inclusive imagery.
MAKE
YOUR
WORK
7
VISIBLE
THERE’S LITTLE HOPE OF A DESIGNER BEING APPROACHED
FOR COMMISSIONS IF THEIR WORK ISN’T READILY ON
DISPLAY, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY’RE STARTING OUT.
HERE, DAVID DOESN’T MINCE WORDS: “YOU COULD BE
THE BEST DESIGNER IN THE WORLD, BUT IF NOBODY
SEES THE WORK, IT’S GONNA BE DIFFICULT.”
OBVIOUSLY, A DECENT WEBSITE, SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE,
AND ROBUST ONLINE PORTFOLIO ARE KEY TODAY. BUT
MORE TRADITIONAL ROUTES, LIKE FACE-TO-FACE MEETINGS
AND DESIGN COMPETITIONS, CAN STILL DO HEAVY
LIFTING IN GETTING YOUR NAME OUT THERE—AND
WINNING NEW BUSINESS.
32
What’s the Deal With
Design Competitions?
The truth about industry contests
I
n recent years, there’s been an
increasingly heated debate over
the value of design competitions.
The main arguments against them
are expense (free time isn’t free,
suggesting that success can be
“bought,” in a way) and the inequitable nature
of the industry as a whole (bigger agencies,
after all, can divert more funding to ancillary
projects). It’s true that for smaller studios—
those with under, say, 30 people—the costs
to enter competitions can be prohibitive.
Still, big-name awards have enduring clout.
Many studios and designers are well-loved
by their peers and insider press but struggle
with expanding into wider markets or new
geographical territories. Recognition from
Design Week Awards, Cannes Lion, Red
Dot, Pentawards, or AIGA 50 Books/50
Covers can help firms break through the
design-world bubble and, eventually, win
33 more work. It’s no secret that many businesses use D&AD Annual (which collates the organization’s various award winners) as an
informal directory when looking for new designers. An award can also act as a shorthand for quality in the eyes of brands that are
less familiar with the design world but interested in experimenting or eager to commission new work. For studios, awards can help
attract and recruit fresh design talent, too.
So entering a competition doesn’t hurt,
provided the studio can allocate suitable
time and resources. Winning will mean increased publicity and recognition, though it’s
arguable how much of that is just peer-topeer recognition. The good news? If you’re
early into your career, student and amateur
design awards are usually free to enter. (See
“Eye on the Prize” on page 34.)
Eye on the Prize
New to the world of design? Eager to get more eyeballs on your work
and maybe even pocket some extra cash? Start researching amateur
design competitions. There are numerous contests held around the
globe every year, running the gamut of specialties and mediums,
from travel posters to sustainable packaging. Look closely at the
submission criteria, find a few that match your experience level, then
add the submission deadlines to your personal calendar. Set periodic
reminders to ensure that you allocate time to creating your best original work. The entire exercise—research, working to a brief, managing
multiple projects—is great practice for your career. If you feel proud
of your design, add it to your portfolio for future clients to reference.
34
35 Portfolio Pointers
A few things to keep in mind as you assemble (or refresh) your digital presence
Make it easy
to read.
If your online portfolio is difficult to
navigate, it’s an immediate turnoff for
most potential employers or clients. Avoid
bouncing them to external hyperlinks to
view your projects, as much as that’s possible. Keep it tidy.
Case studies, not
just pictures.
No, you don’t need (or want) an essay diving into each piece. But a few lines explaining the brief and how your designs fulfill it
(and tangible results, like sales conversions
or web traffic, if you have them) alongside
the imagery sends a message: You can hit
a client’s key points, and get results, while
making beautiful things.
Curate!
Making the most of five brilliant projects is
generally better than showing off a dozen middling ones. Remember, you can’t
control how somebody peruses your work;
each piece they see—no matter in the
order they view it—should be your best.
Padding out your profile with duds makes
you look inconsistent, not more prolific.
The work you
show is likely the
work you’ll get.
Clients and collaborators often hire designers based on a certain style, skill set, or
thematic focus. So if you’re looking to land
more print work, highlight your previous
magazine layouts or posters; if you want to
work with climate-friendly brands, show
off pieces that cleverly touch on sustainability. Dress (your portfolio) for the job
you want.
Show who
you are.
Sure, a quick personal paragraph covering
your background and your passions (when
it comes to design and maybe beyond) can
help. But your work should do most of the
talking. You don’t need a memoir here. Let
your creative samples fill in the blanks.
Keep it up
to date.
Check your portfolio periodically to make
sure there aren’t missing images or, if
you’re forced to hyperlink out, dead URLs.
Add a social media feed, if that’s your
thing. And when you’ve finished a work
that you’re proud of—personal or professional—make sure to include it under the
appropriate heading.
36
Make
Your
Mark
The keys to designing
an all-time-classic logo
At the risk of stating the obvious, a
logo is one of the most—if not the
most—significant design elements
for a brand. This is often the initial
point of contact for the wider world,
signifying what a business or organization is all about. Logos should be
striking, so that people unfamiliar
with the brand notice, and memorable enough to endure regardless of
the time and place in which they’re
displayed. The best ones demonstrate what both the brand and its
audience represent, and what sets
them apart from the competition.
“A logo is an image, just like a
word is an image,” says David. “A
logo is something we want to recognize from a distance, that people
want to put on their hats, T-shirts,
certainly their website, and maybe
their expensive car, too.”
37 M A K E I T C O M M U N I CAT E
Recognizing a logo is subconscious; all
it takes is a glimpse of the swoosh or
the golden arches to identify Nike or
McDonald’s. As such, remember that
when we see something, we don’t
“read” it. What gets our attention, at the
most basic level, is color and shape. As
David puts it: “Don’t mistake legibility
for communication. Just because
something’s legible doesn’t mean it
communicates. More importantly, it
doesn’t mean it communicates the
right thing.”
S K E TC H I T O U T
Legend holds that graphic design luminary Milton Glaser came up with his
iconic I NY logo in
the back of a cab, and
jotted it down right
then and there. You
never know when inspiration will strike, so
keep a notebook on you at all times. If
an idea works, you can always finesse it
digitally later, but pen and paper are far
quicker (and easier) than your computer for skeletoning a design idea. Plus,
you won’t get the tunnel vision of staring into a screen.
KEEP IT SIMPLE
When David begins a new logo, he always does so in black and white; the design
should be strong enough to work without color, so leave that until later in the
process. The simplest designs (think: the Apple logo) are often the smartest in
practical terms, since they can easily be adapted across static 2-D mediums,
from an app icon to a billboard, as well as in motion, like in a quick TV spot.
SOMETHING DIFFERENT
If all the brands in a particular sector
seem to lean on a certain typographic style or color palette, avoid
it; we don’t need more organic foods
packaging in shades of green and
brown. Avoid those types of clichés
as well as lazy visual shorthands, like
a Clipart-style light bulb graphic to
represent ideas or a book to represent education. Follow David’s credo: “The more literal the logo gets,
the less interesting it is.”
N E G AT I V E S PAC E
I S N ’ T E M P T Y S PAC E
Need proof? Look no further than the
FedEx logo, which uses the gap between the uppercase E and lowercase x
as an arrow, suggesting forward motion
while neatly summarizing the brand’s
purpose of transporting parcels. In the
hands of a smart designer, the spaces
that go unfilled can become brilliant
communication tools.
A logo is not an island. Brand strategy involves much, much more than one
icon, and a good identity works even when the logo isn’t visible. It’s crucial that all visual elements—from color palette to typefaces, text alignment, photography style, and copywriting—share a cohesive approach. When you’re designing a logo from a clean sheet, think about
how it might be iterated. Is it strong enough to provide the conceptual
framework for multimedia advertisements? Packaging? Apparel? The
strongest logo provides a versatile backbone that supports endless
permutations without losing its recognizability.
38
Case Study:
The DalÍ Museum
The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, commissioned David
to create a new brand identity for its grand reopening in 2011.
Here’s a peek into how the design process unfolded
Early Stages
Given the subject matter,
David felt this logo demanded experimentation. He
initially sent the client
around 25 mockups, many of
which could be displayed
either horizontally or
vertically, a nod to the
whimsical nature of Salvador Dalí’s artwork.
Refined Per Feedback
When the client expressed concerns about the
design feeling cramped and forced, David realized they wanted something safer. He carried
over the tilted and sideways letterforms from
his initial mockup while simplifying the
composition and adding color for contrast.
The Final Product
After dozens of iterations—including one
with a custom European typeface and another incorporating Dalí’s signature—David
finalized the logo. Colorful, versatile,
and inviting, this design conveys an elevated eccentricity, capturing the artist’s
persona (and the museum experience) without reverting to literal elements, like
mustaches or melting clocks.
39 Make, Believe
Ready to put your branding brain to work? Sit down with a friend and invent a fictional company together. Outline the key points of its hypothetical business plan:
what services or products it offers, its origin story, market position, direct competitors, intended customer, and core messaging. Now, on your own, mock up a logo
proposal for the company you’ve invented. This should include examples of how
your design could be adapted to fit various needs, like business cards, a letterhead, physical signage, and a smartphone app icon. Continue iterating until you
have a handful of mockups that might work. (Try to make at least one option radical and experimental.) Present them to your friend and ask for feedback. Which
design did they like most? Which one best reflected the spirit of the fictional company? What did they think of the logo’s color palette, shapes, and fonts? Can you
justify the thinking behind each design element?
40
Home Schooling
The best affordable resources
for budding designers
BO OKS
For branding tips…
Branding: In Five and a Half Steps
by Michael Johnson
For logo history and inspiration…
Logo Modernism
by Jens Müller and Julius Wiedemann
For a go-to typography guide…
The Elements of Typographic Style
by Robert Bringhurst
For advice from the best…
How to Be a Graphic Designer Without
Losing Your Soul by Adrian Shaughnessy
For definitive design theory…
Ways of Seeing by John Berger
MONOGRAPHS
How to Use Graphic Design to Sell Things,
Explain Things, Make Things Look Better,
Make People Laugh, Make People Cry, and
(Every Once in a While) Change the World
by Michael Bierut
The End of Print: The Grafik Design
of David Carson by Lewis Blackwell
The Art of Looking Sideways
by Alan Fletcher
A Designer’s Art by Paul Rand
The Graphic Language of Neville Brody by Jon Wozencraft
Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far
by Stefan Sagmeister
Interaction of Color by Josef Albers
41 F R E E D E S I G N TO O L S
WEBSITES
Best for multidisciplinary
design-industry news…
Design Week
Best for inspiration…
Creative Boom
Note: Adobe Creative Cloud software
can be downloaded for free for a
one-month trial, and additional
fonts are available from both Google
Fonts and DaFont.
For vector art…
Best for long-form pieces that
go deep into industry issues…
Eye on Design
Best for discovering
emerging designers...
It’s Nice That
Best for no-nonsense,
practical design tips…
Creative Bloq
Gravit Designer is suitable for design
tasks ranging from presentations to
creating icon designs to illustration and
animation. Features include nondestructive Booleans, a knife tool, and
path graphs, plus multiple fills and
blending modes and a powerful text
engine. It can be used online or downloaded onto Windows, macOS, Linux,
and ChromeOS machines.
A genuinely good alternative
to Adobe Illustrator…
Vectr offers the usual vector features,
as well as options for filters, shadows,
and fonts. It can be used online, enabling live collaboration, or downloaded
for Windows, Linux, or Chrome. Alternatively, GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation
Program) is an open-source software
available with Linux, Windows, and Mac
versions. It offers all the usual tools—
painting tools, color correction, cloning,
selection, and enhancement. There’s
even a version available that mimics
Adobe’s interface.
FREE ONLINE
ARCHIVES
Letterform
Archive
AIGA Design
Archive
Van Alen Institute
Design Archive
Limited but free alternatives to
Adobe Creative Cloud programs…
The Saul Bass
Poster Archive
P O D CA S TS
Canva is, broadly speaking, a piece
of image-editing software, but it provides a wealth of tools. Users can create
color palettes, match font pairings,
generate infographics, and more. It
can be used in-browser or downloaded
for iOS and Android.
Typeradio
M AG A Z I N E S
Eye
Creative Review
Print
Design Matters
Arrest All Mimics
Free 3-D–creation software…
Blender, which has been hyped by exciting young creatives like Julian Glander.
It’s now the largest open-source tool for
3-D creation, offering modeling, texturing, animation, rendering, and compositing for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
42
C R E D I TS
vid Carson’s
Footage of Da
gallery
a
work in
ollege of
/C
AD
ES
Courtesy
(esad.pt)
Art and Design
stage, along
vid Carson on
Footage of Da
lytechnic
Po
iew at the
with an interv
Spain
,
ia
Valenc
University of
University
c
ni
ch
te
e the Poly
ons
Footage by th
Creative Comm
Spain (UPV),
sen
ic
/l
rg
of Valencia,
.o
ivecommons
at
re
(c
0
3.
e
e
ag
licens
is foot
egalcode). Th
es/by/3.0/us/l
.
ed
fi
was modi
ers,
Talk 2 Strang
Footage from
eman
is
dW
Ki
n with
a collaboratio
on
rs
Ca
d
vi
Courtesy Da