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Tag: graphic design

Corita Kent: The Pop Art Nun
Published March 21, 2025

Corita Kent: The Pop Art Nun

I recently came across this short PBS Artbound documentary from 2021 on artist, educator, and social justice advocate Corita Kent (1918-1986), which is well worth 20 minutes of your time.

I don’t remember when I first came across Sister Corita’s work. It was probably not until I moved to Canada and became more interested in design and applying typography and lettering to art. Certainly, she was not someone I learnt about in school. It’s hard to know whether that is the result of a parochial British education, or more generalized misogyny and prejudice in art history, or a bit both. But, as the documentary makes clear, she remains a source of inspiration for artists, designers, and teachers 40 years after her death.

The ‘Ten Rules’ she helped create with the students of the Immaculate Heart College Art Department seem as relevant today as they must have at the time they were first written:

You can listen to former students, artists, community organizers, and others read and reflect on the Ten Rules here.

(Video via Letterform Archive!)

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Published May 24, 2019

Geoff McFetridge: AIGA Medalist

“Dude… it sounds like you’re making it up.”

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Published March 19, 2019

Munich ’72: The Visual Output of Otl Aicher’s Dept. XI

Munich ’72. The Visual Output of Otl Aicher’s Dept. XI, a book about the design team for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, is currently on Kickstarter. The project is the result of three of years of research and it needs a little help to get it over the finish line, so maybe go take a look?  

(via Under Consideration)

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Published November 28, 2018

Design Matters with Paul Sahre

Graphic designer and book cover designer Paul Sahre talks about his work and his recent memoir, Two-Dimensional Man, with Debbie Millman on Design Matters: 

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Published April 20, 2018

Design Canada

Design Canada, is a new documentary celebrating the ‘golden era’ of Canadian graphic design: 

The film is screening in Canada in the summer 2018, and releasing digitally in the fall. 

(via Coudal)

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Published August 15, 2016

David Carson: All For a Few Good Waves

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If you’re not a fan of David Carson’s (in)famous design work, this video is unlikely to change your mind. It is hard, however, to shake the feeling that he’s having the last laugh…

Between this and William Finnegan’s Barbarian Days, the surf dad aesthetic is clearly having a moment.

(I have also just learnt that there is already a Canadian indie band — from landlocked Regina of course — called Surf Dads. Perfect.)

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Published April 9, 2015

“I am not one of those designers who are eager to expand the role of a graphic designer”

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More wisdom from designer Michael Bierut, this time in an interview with Dave Benton for Behance’s 99U:

I have to admit I don’t like working on projects where I sense that the cosmetic side of design is meant to be the main differentiator. My design work isn’t interesting enough to differentiate something that’s not interesting otherwise. I look for things that are full of interest and that I am interested in, where I can really see the raison d’etre and the need that they are fulfilling in the world. If you really get all that, then you can calibrate what the appropriate response is design-wise.

I am not one of those designers who are eager to expand the role of a graphic designer. I’m a graphic designer. I know I’m good at that. I’m not an expert about customer service. I’m not an expert about coming up with the valuation of an IPO. If someone comes to me and has a shitty product, I will say tell them upfront that I don’t know why people would use this and that, to me, it doesn’t make sense, and I’m not sure a logo is what they need right now. But I’m not someone who is dying to have a seat at the table and have input earlier in the process; I’m surrounded by people who have goddamn opinions about things they don’t know anything about, and I don’t want to be one of those people.

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Published March 31, 2015

The Great Discontent: Michael Bierut

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The Great Discontent has a really interesting (and long) interview with Michael Bierut about his career in graphic design:

The reason I love graphic design is because it’s a way to get paid to learn new things. For example, let’s say someone asks if you’d like to design a book. It’s not about being interested in pagination, covers, binding, typography, or paper. Those are all important, but what really makes designing a book fun is being interested in whatever the book is about. Sometimes it’s a great and exciting book that you’re really into: that’s like someone asking, “Would you like to sit and eat ice cream with me?” But sometimes it’s a book whose subject you don’t know about at all, so you get to talk to people who may be the world’s foremost experts on that subject. Even better!

When I brief interns about a project, I don’t say, “It’s this big and it has x amount of words and pictures.” I say, “These people are trying to do this, they’re trying to get this message across, and their big challenge is that.” Those pieces of information put the project into a larger context. That’s how I learned when I was starting out. I was a pretty good designer in college, and I’m not sure I’m a better craftsperson as I was then. However, I’m a much better designer now because I made people pay me to go from dumb to smart over and over and over again.

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Published March 26, 2015

Annie Atkins and the Secret World of Film Graphics

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Designer Annie Atkins talks to Design Week (registration required) about her work on Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, and “the often ‘invisible’ role of graphic design on screen”:

“Most of the skills I employ today are things I’ve learnt on set,” Atkins says. “Before starting this job, I hadn’t really hand-crafted anything since being a child. Things like taking up a quill; getting my paints and pencils out; hand-binding books – I never would have done that in the advertising agency I was working in.”

Of course, 11 hours isn’t solely devoted to creating art. While a lot of the day is spent in a “production line” of stitching, gluing, folding, ripping things up, sticking them back together again, tea staining and pouring fake blood over things, there are less glamorous elements to the job too.

“A lot of the day is paperwork,” Atkins says. “Organising, planning, scheduling, ordering materials – that’s the boring bit. Then some of the day is liaising with art directors and the production designer to figure out the style and directions things will go in. Then it’s bums on seats, making stuff.”

It’s that “making” part that is so important. “It’s tempting to sit at a computer and make everything that way,” she says. “But if you’re working in a period in the past, you really have to understand the methods that were employed to make those graphics at the time, then imitate – or even better, use – them to give that authenticity.”

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Published October 20, 2014

Design Matters with Tom Geismar

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Kicking off a new season of Design Matters, Debbie Millman talks to pioneer of American graphic design Tom Geismar about how the practice of design has changed since the 1950s:

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Published June 25, 2014

Michael Bierut — The Creative Influence

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In this new short film for The Creative Influence documentary series, designer Michael Bierut talks about his mentor Massimo Vignelli, what makes an enduring logo, and how the internet has changed the way we work:

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Published May 6, 2014

100 Classic Graphic Design Journals

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A copy of 100 Classic Graphic Design Journals by Steven Heller and Jason Godfrey just landed on my desk. The book will be in stores in the US and Canada later this month, and it looks fantastic:

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It doesn’t seem that long since I talked to Jason Godfrey about his previous book Bibliographic: 100 Classic Graphic Design Books, but apparently it was four years ago!

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(100 Classic Graphic Design Journals and Bibliographic are published by Laurence King whose books are distributed in Canada by my employer Raincoast Books)

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