Top 20 graphic designers: the pioneering creatives that don’t just revert to type

To coincide with Wallpaper's landmark 200th issue, we've expanded our Power 100 list of the design world's superlative talents into a definitive (you've guessed it) Power 200. Running parallel to our main list – of the world's finest furniture and product designers – we've curated shorter selections of the best young practitioners, interior designers, architects, influencers and, here, graphic designers – the pioneering creatives that don't just revert to type.

It's hard to understate the pervading influence of our choices – from John Morgan and Peter Miles (culture and fashion's go-to art directors, respectively), to agency behemoths like Fabien Baron, graphic iconoclast Stefan Sagmeister, M/M Paris, Pentagram partner Paula Scher, North's Sean Perkins and Graphic Thought Facility – even when these practitioners tend to remain relatively anonymous compared to those working in other (glitzier) design disciplines.

But it's the subtlety of the work that tends to make it so groundbreaking. Typographical innovation – the sheer ubiquity of words making true innovation an even greater achievement – comes in the form of designers such as Alan Kitching, Erik Spiekermann and Cornel Windlin; while Anthony Burrill, Tony Brook, Philippe Apeloig, Simon Esterson and Jonathan Barnbrook lead the more abstract, editorial and pictorial vanguard.

The pioneering magazine designer Neville Brody and the bookish Irma Boom represent the best in print aesthetics, and Kenya Hara's spare, clean design and ascetic refinement brings a little minimalism to the list.

Finally, the prolific catalogue of Peter Saville highlights a near faultless career starting in record cover design – perhaps one of the most challenging, and certainly most under appreciated graphic forms – and leaving his louche mark on everything from cultural instititions to city councils.

See the Power 200 in full here 

INFORMATION

See the Power 200 in full