It’s exactly a decade since the epic foot-shooting exercise of Brexit was set in motion. A new design exhibition, ‘The Other Side: Ten Years after the Referendum’, features the work of ten creative practitioners, including graphic designers, type designers, artists, architects and product designers, offering up a graphic view of the current state of play.

Curated by GraphicDesign& and designed by LucienneRoberts+, a team consisting of Lucienne Roberts, John McGill, Rebecca Wright, the show is at Pentagram's Osh Gallery in London’s N1 until Friday 26 June 2026.

The raw material is of particular interest. As Lucienne Roberts explains, ‘In 2020, GraphicDesign& published The Other Side: An Emotional Map of Brexit Britain. The book reads ‘Remain’ in one direction, flip it over and the focus is ‘Leave’. Included are the voices of 26 Leave and 24 Remain voters from throughout the UK. Every MP received a copy.’

It’s safe to say the publication didn’t rock nearly enough boats. Hence the existence of a number of unsold copies. ‘Our distributors got in touch, asking if we would like the few remaining copies of the book pulped,’ Roberts continues. ‘[We decided] we’d like them to become something new. Here are the results of this decision. We sent ten designers, ten (or more) copies of the book, inviting them to make a personal response to this poignant anniversary. “Feel free to draw or write on them,” we said. “Do cut, shred or pulp them.” Here is what happened next.’

Here are the results, and the creatives’ personal insights on Britain ten years post-Brexit.

‘The Other Side: Ten Years after the Referendum’

Hugh Miller: The works draw on post-Brexit financial data, referendum statistics and political contradiction to explore the consequences of separation and nationalism. The paper suit is made in collaboration with Harris Elliott – it’s a symbolic stand-in and a surface for statistics, headlines and contradictory political narratives.

How do I feel about Brexit now? Brexit still feels like a bad dream come true. A decision shaped by false promises that left us worse off, still burdened by red tape. It exposed the corruption of those meant to serve us. In today’s political landscape, hope and optimism feel increasingly distant.

Michael Marriott: [My work is] a small side table for a cup of tea / glass of wine / etc. My first thought was how to make something useful, something that would extend the life of the book, too. A small side table seemed like a good idea. It’s made using offcuts that I had in the studio already, so it’s all 100 per cent recycled – which is more sensible than Brexit!

How do I feel about Brexit now? Still amazed it was seen as a reasonable thing to do. Still annoyed by the complete stupidness of it.

Stefanie Posavec: For Leavers, achieving Brexit must have felt like birthday and Christmas rolled into one. Riding high on hubris and fantasies of ‘British sovereignty’, everything seemed possible. Ten years on, reality has set in and the party’s over, leaving the rest of us (and future generations) to clean up the mess.

How do I feel about Brexit now? I became a UK citizen only four years before Brexit began. I still have a red EU passport (my first UK passport) and, when I look at it while waiting in long EU border queues, I feel both bereaved and cheated.

Lucienne Roberts, John McGill: Our ten books carry the message ‘HELLO HELL’, legible from both sides of the table. The incisions into each book reveal some of the more poignant pages within. Glimpses of Farage, Boris and an SOS projected onto the White Cliffs of Dover, trigger feelings as powerful now as they were then.

How do we feel about Brexit now? We felt sad then and even sadder now. In the book, writer on human behaviour Ian Leslie describes the vote as akin to a marital breakdown, with neither version of the UK hearing the other. Ten years later, no one is unscathed and, if anything, miscommunication prevails.

STORE: With this work, we represent those too young to vote in 2016. Facilitating in-depth conversations with other young people, we want to give them a voice. We are exploring paper pulping and paper pressing to construct spaces that can facilitate these conversations. Shown here are seats used to give voices and space to this overlooked group.

How do we feel about Brexit now? In the last ten years, three million people have become eligible to vote. We are three of those people. Our opinions weren’t sought at the time of the vote. Now, we face the repercussions of Brexit and the disproportionate effect it will have on our lives.

Sarah Boris: Remain Together is a series of ten artworks using the words ‘Remain’ and ‘Together’ found in the books. The pages are painted in colours from various European flags, leaving only the chosen words visible. These pieces act as tokens of hope in these divisive times.

How do I feel about Brexit now? I was born in London to French parents, so I feel European. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the EU stood for peace and togetherness. The UK left, nothing positive materialised, division grew. Now, we must listen to each other and vehemently oppose the far right.

Marianne Mueller, Mia Mueller Kneer: Eurotrash shows the five prime ministers connected with Brexit operating a standard office shredder. Like these pieces of legislation, The Other Side’s deliberation – to remain in or leave the EU – has become redundant in the face of ‘Brexit done’. Reduced to shreds, the remains of the books now lie discarded like trash on the gallery floor.

How do we feel about Brexit now? Brexit has affected us deeply, both personally and professionally. It has been a catalyst for many significant shifts, from becoming dual nationals to moving countries, opening a new office and shifting school systems to remain within the EU. For us, Britain was the ultimate model for a cosmopolitan society, a sentiment spoiled by Brexit.

Ella Krispel: I use weaving to reinsert what has been lost, or deliberately stripped away, from charged subjects like Brexit. For this project, I wanted to explore the aesthetic attributes of historical artefacts, of relics from another time. As it developed, I wanted to situate Brexit in history, to see it at a distance. The imperfect documentation, fragmented narratives and incomplete framing of the piece mirror the fragility of memory and knowledge over time.

How do I feel about Brexit now? I challenge people when they claim Britain has been harmed by immigration. The response is often, ‘But you're not an immigrant!’ They are unaware this reveals misguided beliefs about the identities of immigrants and definitions of immigration. Brexit didn’t create such views, but it did solidify them, with current media and policymakers deepening the damage.

Rebecca Wright: Using the cut-out letterforms from HELLO HELL, the companion piece by GraphicDesign&’s Lucienne Roberts with John McGill, I have sought to take something left behind and turn it into something hopeful. Brexit changed how I felt about and understood my sense of home. It shattered my belief that we were a country where all of us could feel welcome and where we were welcoming to others. But, ten years on, despite everything, a stubborn hope of home remains…

How do I feel about Brexit now? Still sad but also determined. I do not believe that Brexit accurately reflects or should define who we are as a nation, or our core values.

YiMiao Shih: I wrinkled pages [of the book] with watercolour – a literal soaking – as I depicted a variety of British scenes. Then I used torn pages to make paper pulp reliefs embedded with stitched imagery. In these, I revisited the fictionalised Rabbit Referendum of my project Rabbrexit Means Rabbrexit (2019), tiny embroideries that draw on myth.

How do I feel about Brexit now? My version of post-Brexit reality doesn’t scream positivity. In the aftermath, the right wing gathered traction. I fear they will continue to stoke division, while differing echo chambers deepen it further.

‘The Other Side’ runs until Friday 26 June 2026, 11am-4pm, Osh Gallery, The Old Sorting House, 46 Essex Road, London N1 8LN

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Our editor-picked collection of graphic design books spans the breadth of the medium – from the modernist optimism of postwar Britain to the forgotten vernacular of Italian print workshops; from Pentagram's half-century of brand identities to the artistry of crisp packets.

What unites these books is a conviction that we share at Wallpaper*: that design is everywhere – in football crests and fonts, Instagram posts and Cold War logos, and in the ephemera pinned to a studio wall. (Our edit of interior design books speaks to the same conviction.)

15 essential reads for graphic design lovers

The Constitution of the Czech Republic just got a contemporary makeover by graphic designer Ondřej Báchor, paper-craft specialist Matěj Činčera and typographer Jan Novák, who joined forces after winning the design competition for the commission.

Their collaborative work is based on the connection of historical tradition, book craft and contemporary technologies. 'We worked with paper that is associated with Czech book tradition, and at the same time carries civility and openness, which we perceive as close to democratic values,' says Báchor.

A new design for the Constitution of the Czech Republic

The main feature of the design is a motif of the country’s state emblem with a pair of two-tailed lions and a pair of eagles, each representing different Czech regions. The emblem became a structural part of the book and doubles as a symbolic shield of Czech democracy. 'We have [translated] the emblem into a relief [that combines] precision layering of paper with contemporary expression,' says Činčera.

The symbolic colours of the country – blue, red and white – are used throughout the design. A dominant role was given to the colour blue, which represents stability and dignity. The inner block of the book is designed to be easy to remove and replace in the event of an amendment to the constitution. On each sheet of paper, the authors created a relief background print of the emblem, which can be seen only from a certain angle.

The bespoke Democratia typeface was designed for the constitution. 'We were inspired by the calligraphic font from the 1920s constitution, from which we adopted the narrowed proportions and the high contrast of the strokes. The result is an easily readable, yet distinctive font that balances ceremonial and civil expression,' concludes Novák.

Designers are already planning to create a smaller, civil version of the ceremonial book for the general public. The overall result is a rare example of contemporary design used for such formal state purposes. It was also appreciated by the jury of the Czech Grand Design Award 2026, which recognised the designers in the category of graphic design.

Peter Saville was born in Manchester in October 1955. Over a career spanning half a century, Saville evolved into the quintessential contemporary graphic designer, a creative whose work was always greater than the sum of its parts, a branding specialist who could visually depict an inner truth about a band or company, and an artist who parlayed modesty and subtlety into the sumptuous and extravagant.

Peter Saville in the 1970s: first steps towards design and music

As a teenager, Saville attended a Roman Catholic grammar school, St Ambrose College, in Altrincham. It was here that he studied history of architecture alongside art classes, become well versed in the evolution of Victorian and twentieth century architecture, especially the modern movement. As he told the designer Vince Frost on the Design Your Life podcast, ‘the principles of design were illuminated to me through architecture.’

After going on to study graphic design at Manchester Polytechnic in 1975, Saville also found kinship in the music and style of 70s art pop and rock, citing Bowie, Roxy Music and Kraftwerk as key influences at this time. For many, it is the graphic identity of Factory Records, the label founded in 1978 by Alan Erasmus and Manchester grandee Anthony Wilson, that is their first introduction to Saville’s work.

Conjuring up a neo-modernist aesthetic infused with avant-garde typography, abstract art and modernist forms, Saville, along with producer Martin Hannett, was instrumental in shaping the public perception of Factory’s bands, not just in terms of their music but their image and attitude. It was post-punk, for sure, but still anti-establishment, aspiring to a form of idealised, artistic corporate identity that still preserved the identity of the individual without giving too much away. In an era when the image of musicians was largely governed by album art, Saville’s work helped define the image of an era.

The Factory work had evolved out of poster design, at a point when Saville cited the work of typographers like Jan Tschichold as major influences. The German designer (1902 – 1974) had pioneered what was described as ‘New Typography’, a break with established typographic traditions – and, for a while, the use of serif fonts – in favour of standardised, unified proportions. Tschichold went on to become a noted designer for Penguin Books.

Saville evolved a hands-off way of working that essentially treated music as a cultural commodity to be branded. ‘I never did covers about music,’ Saville has said, emphasising how visual imagery could be used to create preconceptions about how a band should sound. Working with artists like Joy Division, and then New Order following Ian Curtis’ death, Saville also had the luxury of a world with obvious cover stars or poster children, a genre that favoured abstract sound and visuals, introversion and introspection. ‘In a way, the image and identity of the group fell to me,’ he told Frost, ‘[the covers created] people’s imagined perception of New Order.’

It wasn’t long before the work of Peter Saville Associates began to attract attention of other bands. By this point, Saville was what he describes as a semiotician, someone who translates signs and codes. By combining a thorough understanding of context with a distinctive sense of style and presentation, Saville became a chameleon-like figure, working across cult acts and chart toppers alike.

The latter is epitomised by his work for Wham!, brought on board at the behest of George Michael. Looking back on his career, Saville described himself as ‘acting as the art director of the principal artist,’ with their level of engagement depending entirely on their own perceptions of art, culture and design.

Michael was hands-on, as were other clients like Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry and Jarvis Cocker, but others were happier for him to take the lead. For Wham!, Saville spliced an up-to-the-minute fashion magazine aesthetic for the band, extending to the use of a fashion photographer (Tony McGee) and even helping select clothes and hairstylists – even today, he describes himself as more of a stylist than a designer.

The full spectrum of Saville’s music work can be found online, many of which were designed with his long-term collaborator in Peter Saville Associates, Canadian graphic designer Brett Wickens. Without a website of his own, or even an official comprehensive archive, Saville himself references the impressive Peter Saville Sleeve Design website created by ‘tosq from Japan’ as a place to revisit the 300-odd records he has been involved in. These include artists as diverse as Martha and the Muffins, Ultravox, Nico, Roxy Music, Orchestral Moves in the Dark, Peter Gabriel, Depeche Mode, Goldie, Suede, Björk and many, many more.

1980s: joining Pentagram, art, fashion and more

Describing the output of his studio in the 80s as a ‘sort of fantasy art venture,’ one that eventually ran out of steam with the recession at the end of the decade. At this point, Saville joined Pentagram at the invitation of director John McConnell, not least because Peter Saville Associates was, by that point, ‘insolvent’, in Saville’s words. Pentagram proved educational, not least as an introduction to a broader design landscape than the album covers and cultural work that he had become known for.

Despite retaining a passion for music and close connections with the industry, Saville began weaning himself off over-reliance on the sector from the mid-80s onwards when he was approached by the then director of the Whitechapel Gallery, Nicholas Serrotta, to oversee a new identity for the iconic building, then in the midst of a substantial overhaul and expansion. At the same time, Saville also branched out into fashion, working with Nick Knight on a Yohji Yamamoto campaign.

Since then, he has worked with major brands across all sectors, from Kvadrat, and Chanel to Aston Martin, Uniqlo, and Tate Modern. Saville has also undertaken many projects with friend and photographer Nick Knight and Jony Ive, with whom he collaborated on LoveFrom, Serif.

A creative magpie

The scope of Saville’s work ethic is substantial, encompassing everything from football kits to glassware and textiles to being appointed Creative Director for Manchester. He is the co-founder, with Nick Knight, of SHOWstudio, and worked with Knight on Wallpaper*’s infamous sex issue in 2009, and is also a frequent collaborator with his partner, the artist Anna Blessmann. In 2020, he was appointed a CBE for his services to design.

Despite this monumental output, Saville very much works to live, occupying a sparsely furnished apartment in central London and able to choose the clients he wants to work with. Now 70, he shows no sign of abandoning his well-established role as a cultural and creative overseer.

Nothing beats the magic of receiving a handwritten card in the post – a fact that hasn’t gone unnoticed by Gabriella Marcella, founder of Glasgow print studio Risotto. Since 2017, Marcella and her team have been hand-printing, folding and posting artists’ postcards to people around the world. The lucky recipients are all members of the studio's much-loved Riso Club, a monthly analogue subscription that has persisted through Covid, Brexit turbulence, and all the usual pressures of running a small independent studio.

What began as a modest artist exchange has evolved into a community of more than 400 contributors spanning 40 countries, united by colour, process and a commitment to slow, human-centred communication.

The 100th issue, titled Risottopia, marks the project’s most ambitious edition yet. Instead of focusing on a single city or theme, Marcella has invited three of the most influential figures in modern design – Nathalie Du Pasquier, Peter Shire and Barbara Stauffacher Solomon – to contribute new artworks. These are designers who have profoundly shaped Marcella’s own practice, and whose impact stretches across movements, decades and continents. The result is a vivid visual conversation between Memphis, Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Glasgow: a utopian meeting place conjured through ink, shape and pattern.

For subscribers, Rottopia arrives as a limited-edition pack of hand-printed postcards, mailed exclusively throughout November. As ever, the process is defiantly analogue. 'Every month we print, fold and ship the work by hand,' says Marcella. 'It’s labour-intensive, but it’s an act of love – a reminder that design can still travel slowly, beautifully, and surprise.'

Alongside the anniversary edition, Risotto is planning a public retrospective for 2026 and will launch a digital Riso Club Atlas, mapping the project’s global reach and the hundreds of artworks produced so far. Together, these initiatives underscore the studio’s dedication to sustaining a print culture that values tactility, imperfection and exchange.

At a moment when digital images circulate effortlessly, Riso Club’s commitment to ink, postage stamps and physical connection feels almost radical. Its 100th issue is not only a celebration of print, but a reminder that correspondence – something shared, held and kept –will always have the power to move people.

Non-members have until 30th November to secure their pack at risottostudio.com

Yorgos Lanthimos' latest work, Bugonia, tells the story of two conspiracy-obsessed cousins (played by Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis) who kidnap a high-powered CEO (Emma Stone), convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth.

The name Bugonia signifies an ancient Greek belief that explains the birth of bees from dead cows, and it is the title chosen by Lanthimos for this psychological thriller that deals with modern climate anxiety, conspiracy and paranoia.

Long-term Lanthimos collaborator, Athens-based graphic designer Vasilis Marmatakis, has worked with the director since his 2009 debut with Dogtooth, crafting memorable designs for movies including The Lobster and Poor Things, and he was once again tasked with creating the posters and graphics for this latest film.

Bugonia posters: multilayered storytelling

Before working on a poster design, Marmatakis explores a movie's universe, from the script to the costumes to the aesthetics, going on set and then retreating to develop the ideas. 'I work to visually to reflect the film,' he told Wallpaper*. 'And design different to reflect different aspects of the story.'

For Bugonia, each poster has a multilayered approach, offering glimpses into the story while reflecting on a specific element. One design focused on Plemons' character's trauma and grief, one takes a more futuristic view, another hones in on Stone's kidnap. Clues are dotted throughout the poster series, from bees' wings to an almost sci-fi vision of planet Earth.

The series' most popular poster famously features Stone's head shaved, her face covered by layers of substances dripping on the surface. 'The idea is that you don't know if she's in desperation or if she's in awe,' says Marmatakis. 'And the layers represent nature, the world, and the body: you have blood and honey, and they are falling onto her; it's as if humanity and nature are attacking her.'

The Bugonia typeface: Churchward Roundsquare

The posters and the film are anchored by a visually arresting typeface: Marmatakis worked with Samoan graphic designer Joseph Churchward's Churchward Roundsquare. A fan of Churchward's typographic work since he discovered it during a research projectin The Netherlands, he found the 2002 design in the archives of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and asked the family for permission to digitize it.

'It has this sense of being futuristic, monumental, DIY and threatening, but at the same time it feels very brutalist: it has all the elements that I wanted,' he says. In the titles, the Churchward type is exaggerated, appearing on just a few letters and contrasting with the classic, quiet elegance of the Garamond italics, which enhances its visual power, making it more unsettling.

Even though he was working with a digitized typeface, Marmatakis used a completely analogue method. Each title was first printed, then brushed with water and then scanned back: the effect is slightly smudged, removing the sharpness of the type and adding to the visually jarring effect.

This method of working also echoed some of the movie's themes. 'I just wanted to show more like that kind of DIY approach, how it connected to conspiracy theories and a "print out myself at home" element.'

Reflecting on his role of a graphic designer working on movies, he enjoys creating work that frames the experience of a film, creating elements that welcome viewers and let them go at the end. 'I think film typography is a really interesting space to work in,' he adds. To make the most of these two moments, Marmatakis used the Churchward type in different ways at the beginning and at the end of the film.

For the movie's opening titles, the font appears on a single letter in each frame, like a small singularity that adds a sense of curiosity to the intro. At the end, however, the full strangeness of its brutalist forms is revealed, as the full cast and crew credits appear as a sequence, the bold, geometric letters raining down on the screen for a truly unsettling effect.

This is one of the most exciting spaces for Marmatakis to experiment: '[As a viewer], at the beginning you arrive and you're open to a two-hour experience, and at the end, just when the experience finishes, there is this in-between time – in those few minutes you can do a lot of interesting things with typography.'

It seems fitting that Irma Boom – a woman who has done more than perhaps any other living person to alert the world to the possibilities of the book as a desirable, cutting-edge medium for the transmission of knowledge, and whose very surname means ‘tree’ in her native Dutch – should seek to communicate via print, even in person.

‘Every year, it grows by three per cent, whether it’s produced or not,’ she says, laying out three tiny volumes of varying dimensions, each no bigger than a matchbox, on the kitchen table of her premises in Amsterdam’s Oud-Zuid district. These are successive editions of her signature ‘little red book’, cataloguing her life’s work in reverse chronological order with the designer’s ‘comments here and there’. The covers are emblazoned with BOOM in Flintstonian capitals. ‘It works super well in English, too,’ she says of her surname. ‘Because it’s also an explosion.’

Inside are the greatest hits of the so-called ‘Queen of Books’, from her Viktor & Rolf tome, a sort of anti-coffee table volume consisting entirely of dust jackets printed with imagery in inverted colours (if you want straightforward representations of their clothes, she reasons, you can Google them), to her Eileen Gray monograph published in conjunction with a Bard Graduate Center Gallery exhibition on the designer. Its edges resemble Gray’s geometric rugs; the texts and images inside are arranged ‘like architecture’.

These conceptually single-minded yet strangely flamboyant volumes change hands for great sums on the resale market. She has heard that the ink-free book she made in honour of Chanel No. 5, which, at Boom’s behest, originally retailed for $100, can fetch $18,000 secondhand. She disapproves. ‘That is not the idea. What I like about making books is that it is a democratic multiple. If you compare it to architecture, it’s more social housing than villas.’

All being well, the red catalogue will reach 21.92cm in length (roughly the size of a Moleskine notebook) by the time Boom, now 65, turns 100. Who can say how many new and fabulous projects will throng its pages by then? Certainly not Boom, who says she accepts commissions ‘on intuition’ without crunching the numbers or consulting her schedule.

She has two full-time assistants, reads non-fiction voraciously, even in her ‘free’ time, and says of her intensive working process, ‘the creation is solitary, the production is a collaboration’.

Boom remains the youngest ever recipient of the Gutenberg Prize for persons and institutions that have made outstanding contributions to the art of the book. Like her friend Rem Koolhaas – with whom she designed ‘Elements of Architecture’, an exhibition and encyclopaedic Taschen-published opus exploring the fundamental components of buildings for the 2014 Venice Biennale – she seems to straddle the boundary between individual and institution. It was her idea to clad Cuyperspassage, the Benthem Crouwel-designed bicycle and pedestrian tunnel at Amsterdam’s Centraal Station, with 80,000 hand-painted Delft blue tiles that took five years to produce, and she oversees all of the publications by the Rijksmuseum, whose logo she re-engineered to controversial effect.

Irma Elizabeth Francisca Maria Boom was born in 1960 in Lochem in Gelderland, the ‘spoiled’ youngest of nine children, and she continues to maintain a superstitious attachment to the number three and its multiples, which often feature in her work and guide her decision-making. She did not wear hand-me-downs, she notes, ‘but my sisters and I were always dressed the same, as if we were twins of different sizes’. Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, with its ever-curious heroine who grows in stature and confidence, was the formative book of her childhood. ‘It made such a big impression on me. I don’t know how many times I read it – maybe a hundred,’ she says.

Aspiring to be a painter, she studied at the AKI Academy of Art & Design in nearby Enschede, where the artist and typographer Abe Kuipers would visit every Wednesday with two suitcases full of notable books: atlases, dictionaries, volumes of poetry. On one occasion, he rhapsodised about Turkish Delight and Horrible Tango, novels by Dutch author Jan Wolkers with compellingly lurid cover typography by Jan Vermeulen that captured the intrigue within. ‘I knew immediately: this is what I want. To create something meaningful,’ Boom once told Dutch newspaper Het Parool. She never touched a paintbrush again.

After art school, Boom went to The Hague to work in the design department of the government’s publishing and printing office, where she fell for a handsome colleague, only to discover that he was Jan Vermeulen’s son, Julius. The pair were inseparable until Julius’ death from cancer in early 2024, and his portrait, by their longtime friend, photographer Rineke Dijkstra, dominates Boom’s white-walled studio. ‘He was my most important critic,’ she notes. ‘He always pushed me to my limits and would say, “That’s good, but can it be better?”’

She established Irma Boom Office in 1991, and her first major commission came from SHV Holdings, a privately owned Dutch multinational company whose request for a corporate history was an unlikely catalyst for the aesthetic riot that followed. ‘They don’t create, they only trade. There’s nothing sexy about it,’ she says of her erstwhile commissioner’s business activities. ‘But we turned it into something because they gave us a lot of freedom and trust.’

A 2,136-page medley of internal memos and contracts pertaining to liquid gas, printed on Bible paper and bound in shocking pink, with interstitial pages posing quasi-philosophical questions (‘Has change produced progress?’), this kaleidoscopic ‘think book’ remains, for many, Boom’s defining masterpiece. To see it, I go to the Special Collections unit of the University of Amsterdam, where print curator Mathieu Lommen removes it from its protective box and fans the fore-edge this way and that to reveal, variously, fields of tulips and hidden lines of poetry. ‘Her books are never run of the mill,’ he observes.

Boom’s refusal to see limitations in print’s material constraints has arguably protected her from the vicissitudes of less stable technologies. Had she embraced the SHV commission using the paraphernalia ‘of the day’ – a CD-ROM, say – it would have become obsolete within the five years of the think book’s genesis, she comments. Nevertheless, its numberless pages are inspired by the experience of ‘reading’ on the internet. ‘You really scroll through the book, and you come across things you weren’t looking for.’

The sheer unreasonableness of the project seems to have set the tone for all the relationships that followed. While traditional publishers scrimp on typesetting and license their cover art from Getty, Boom is busy commissioning bespoke paper, articulating spines and experimenting with obscure binding methods to set readers on a multisensory adventure. Don’t her patrons dread the spiralling costs, I ask. ‘If something is lousy, then no one wants to execute it,’ she replies. ‘But I think if you have a good idea, if you come with a good argument, then things work. And anything is possible.’

Adjoining Boom’s home, Irma Boom Office shares a front door with Julius Vermeulen’s fêted Eenwerk art gallery in a purpose-built glass, steel and basalt interruption to the red-brick townhouses on an arterial road in this manicured part of Amsterdam. It was designed by Barend Koolhaas (Rem’s nephew) and contains both a rooftop greenhouse and a glass garage in which a grey Porsche is charging for an imminent trip to Switzerland. Since Vermeulen’s death, Boom has taken over the running of the gallery, which has just played host to a solo exhibition of works by the late minimalist artist Corrie de Boer.

A dummy of the latest book with her long-term collaborator, the artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen, has just arrived from the printer and she fingers it with suspicion or reverence (it’s hard to tell which). Next year, she will reissue her red book in Japan, with a ‘Book Activist’ gloss, inspired by her admiration for the writer and Black Panther Angela Davis. To this end, she has just finished writing a text on Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book, although she claims not to have pondered this notorious Chinese antecedent to her BOOM book the first time around. Beyond that, Boom is looking forward to returning to Italy, where, in 2018, she began a design residency at the American Academy in Rome, and a course of study she had to abandon when Vermeulen became ill.

While in Rome, Boom sought access to the Vatican Apostolic Library, which is accessible only to those with ‘acceptable qualifications’. Despite her storied credentials in academia (Boom is an academy fellow at the Yale School of Art), she was subject to rigorous vetting before being granted ten of the coveted day passes. Inside, Boom found many pre-1501 early books, or incunabula, among the fragile bibliographic treasures. She describes her time there in terms of the proverbial candy store. ‘I had too many books open, books everywhere and I was so excited that I was running back and forward between the manoscritti and the stampati on the wooden floor. Can you imagine… in these clogs?’ She whips off her wooden-heeled garden centre mule and taps it on the table in demonstration.

Apparently some studious priests complained about the unholy din, and Boom was summoned to an audience with Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, who was, at the time, the librarian and archivist of the Holy Roman Church. Acquaintances were terrified on her behalf, she says. But the cardinal was intrigued and, instead of reprimanding her, invited her to stage an exhibition, ‘Book! Boom! The Vatican Apostolic Library meets Irma Boom’, for which there was a prosecco-soused opening.

It was here in the Vatican Library, amid some of the oldest printed matter on earth, that Boom says she became aware of something she had always known, albeit unconsciously. ‘What I realised is that you make books not for the past or for the present… but for the future.’

This article appears in the October 2025 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print and on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

This new book explores the fringes of experimental typography, taking into account the dynamic range that can be eked out of modern lettering when technology-induced variations are spliced with traditional techniques.

Alphabetical Playground has been created and designed by the typographer Nigel Cottier and published by German graphic specialist Slanted. Cottier describes it as an ‘investigation into how we can use the alphabet as a container for countless graphic systems, conceptual ideas, and endless play’.

Starting with a foreword by the designer Hamish Muir, one of the co-founders of 8vo and the agency MuirMcNeill, the new book follows on from Cottier’s 2021 publication, the monumental Letterform Variations (also published through Slanted).

Cottier, who also runs the excellent @Process.Pattern Instagram, is a designer and experimental typographer with a wide range of commercial experience as well as an ongoing interest in discovering patterns, forms and new approaches to type design via programming, code and formulae. His day job is design director at brand design agency Accept & Proceed, where he has overseen major projects for clients such as Nasa, Rapha, Apple, BMW, Google and Nike – an impressive array of creative early-21st-century mega-corps.

The new monograph is a chronicle of Cottier’s graphical experiments, starting with the basic building blocks of the alphabet filtered through the concept of variable type and idealised letterform typologies. The end result is a rich visual journey through the sheer diversity of creative expression designers have at their fingertips using a solely typographic approach.

‘Ultimately – although it may not always be immediately apparent – everything on these pages is language,’ Cottier writes. ‘This work demonstrates how text allows us to embed our thoughts, beliefs and systems within it: a code within a code, a game within a game, a system within a system.’

Alphabetical Playground, Nigel Cottier, Slanted Publishers, €35, AlphabeticalPlayground.com, @Process.Pattern, Slanted.de, @Slanted_Publishers

What began as The Manchester Modernist Society back in 2009 is now a nationwide force for celebration of classic twentieth century style and new architecture and design. Recent projects include the carchitectural landscape of A Time - A Place and the Society has a rich library of other publications.

Modernist Graphic Design in Britain 1945-1980 is a new book supported by the Society and written by Ian McLaren and Tony Pritchard. A visual journey through the best graphic work of the era, the book charts the reaction to a period of social, economic and cultural change.

For the most part, graphic design was held in high esteem, considered an integral part of the evolving welfare state and in the identity of Britain in what quickly became the post-colonial era. The book, which has been put together by two acclaimed designers and educators, has a special focus on key players, designers like the radical Robin Fior and Gerald Cinamon, who created many iconic book covers during his 20 years at Penguin and Pelican.

‘Time and again designers like Flor, Hollis and David King often slip from our collective consciousness whilst their innovative styles and flare remain around us whether it be in magazines, logos, or typography. Our work aims to rightly cement these Brits as the heroes of our visual culture they are,’ says Pritchard.

The book itself deploys the crisp sans-serif typography, grids and photographic simplicity of the era, providing a comprehensive overview of this still influential period of creative design. According to McLaren, ‘my and Tony’s work aims to take readers on a dive into the past and origins of British graphic design, in a period where new ideas and reconstruction ruled the land.’

Modernist Graphic Design in Britain 1945-1980, £45, Ian McLaren and Tony Pritchard, limited edition available from The-Modernist.org, @TheModernist

We have much to learn from ancient crafts and if we don't look after their history, we lose an important part of our past. Book designer and publisher Susan Shaw felt that way about the letterpress printing industry. A fierce and determined protector of all things type, in 1992, on hearing that the once-great Monotype Corporation was in danger of bankruptcy, she set about successfully rescuing its stock and using it to found the Type Museum (later the Type Archive) in Stockwell, in south London.

Over the next 30 years, the Type Archive would gradually bring together some eight million artefacts that told the story of typography and printing. Highlights of the collection, which sadly closed in 2023, included the ancient materials of Sheffield typefounders Stephenson Blake, the hot-metal technology of the Monotype Corporation, and the innovative wood type produced by the York factory of Robert DeLittle.

Now, for the first time, a new book by long-serving Type Archive volunteer Richard Ardagh sheds light on these extraordinary materials, celebrating their significance and importance to both the history of art and engineering.

Type Archived: an homage to typographic treasures

For more than 500 years, the printed word was the primary conveyor of information and revolutionised the way we communicate. Type Archived presents the typographic treasures that made this possible, from the engraved punches (master letters) and matrices (dies for casting) to the letterpress type and printing presses that put ink to paper. Inside the book, these items have been arranged into chapters by material: iron, steel, copper, brass, bronze, lead, wood and paper.

These artefacts are 'akin to industrial jewels, letterforms demonstrating the role that supreme mechanical engineering and type design have played, over six centuries, in the development of human communication throughout the Western World’, notes Type Archive chairman and eminent printing scholar Nicolas Barker OBE.

The project is funding now on Volume. Campaign rewards offer the chance to own a collector’s set (which also includes a letterpress-printed companion edition with dust jacket by Alan Kitching) and specially cast pieces of the Type Archive’s elephant logo. There is also the opportunity to join the author for a letterpress experience day featuring a guided tour of printing workshops and the historical typefounding materials held at the St Bride Library in London.

Type Archived: A Visual Journey through Typographic History is available to back on Volume

A cross, a serpent, a Union Jack, a cross-backslash – each of these symbols has its own loaded history, but in 1977 the graphic designer David King transformed them into the new, unified emblem for an alternative future, one built on the precepts of anarchism, pacifism and community-living. King made this symbol for Crass, an English band that created some of the most vitriolic and uncompromisingly radical music of the punk movement with songs about animal rights, anti-facism, feminism, and environmentalism delivered in ferocious English accents.

If one marker of genius is an ability to make complicated things simple, then King’s design is just that. With a few lines he was able to reconstitute thousands of years of history into a powerful new emblem, one that was simple enough to scrawl on walls, flyers, leather jackets as it was throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. A powerful and instantly legible marker that you not only supported the band, but the hard-line politics they promoted.

The Crass symbol was King’s best-known creation, and as it has become less well-known today, so too has King’s wider work. That, however, is something the San Francisco Center for the Book is hoping to change with its new exhibition, 'David King Publications 1977–2019', a retrospective of small press publishing projects, zines, and graphic design work that King produced throughout his lifetime. It is a showcase for the work of an underrated artist, as well as a visual history of alternative print media and a documentation of the bands and nightclubs that made up New York and San Francisco’s subculture in the later half of the 20th century, and a blueprint for how to live a creative life.

‘David King Publications 1977–2019’

King was born in Essex, UK, in 1948 and at 16 enrolled in art school in Dagenham to study graphic design. There he met Jeremy Ratter (aka Penny Rimbaud) and Gee Vaucher, who later went on to form Crass. After graduation, King spent ten years working for a succession of London advertising agencies, before abandoning the corporate world for Dial House, ‘a self-sustaining anarcho-pacifist open house’ founded by Rimbaud and Vaucher.

As Matt Borruso, the curator of the show writes of King’s radical reconstruction of his life, ‘it is not a stretch to compare King’s journey from advertising to punk, to that of the fictional character Don Draper from Mad Men – exiting Madison Avenue for the West Coast and Big Sur’s Esalen Institute.’ His suit in the garbage, King moved to New York in 1977, where he joined the punk band Arsenal and started making flyers for clubs like Danceteria, Pravda, and the Peppermint Lounge.

He also met his wife and future bandmate Dione King, who describes the creative ferment of the time as ‘a real downtown community – everyone lived within walking distance of each other and all of the shows were in the neighbourhood. The rent was super cheap (my loft was only $125 a month) and there was a lot of artists and musicians living there. It was a real boom time creatively – Philip Glass was performing in the streets, there were dance performances in empty lots – there was just a lot going on and it was before there were art galleries or much else commercially happening in SoHo.’

In 1980, King, his wife and the rest of the band moved to San Francisco, where he continued to live and work until the end of his life. There, he created collages and dozens of photocopied zines like Suburbs of Hell and Too Many Zombies. By the early 2000s, he started experimenting with new forms of desktop self-publishing and print-on-demand books through companies like Shutterfly, Blurb, and Apple.

Even though King continually changed the formats he worked in, the style of his work remained the same with its collages of advertisements, bold graphics and colourful drawings. Speaking about King’s influences, Dione says, ‘he grew up in England after the Second World War, playing in very grey and bleak bomb sites. He found inspiration in the colour of post-war culture, such as Carnaby Street, advertising, comics, serial films, and later in TV and movies. He loved shadows and I think it was reflective of the darkness of the time in England after the war and the idea of transformation or magic – of bringing colour and joy into that bleakness.’

Finding joy among bleakness and passion among adversity seem to be the defining themes of King’s oeuvre, and what make it so inspiring. ‘Dave had a playful approach to life that I think you can sense in his work,’ says Dione. ‘He was very politically motivated and believed in ethics and the importance of political change and activism but always sought to express that playfully instead of making speeches. He was very impassioned but not angry, which I think is pretty rare. I think you can really sense that passion in the show.’

davidanthonyking.com/

‘David King Publications 1977–2019’ is at the San Francisco Center for the Book, sfcb.org, until 22 December 2024

Lovers of the book-maker’s art should be eternally grateful to the artist, illustrator and writer Chris Ware, who has ensured that his meticulously drawn work always gets the print presentation it deserves. Ware has created over 30 covers for The New Yorker, as well as written, drawn and inked, precise but emotive graphic novels like Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (2001) and the award-winning Building Stories (Pantheon, 2012).

The latter consisted of a number of different-sized booklets with different bindings and paper types, all assembled in a large box and designed to give the reader a unique approach to the lives chronicled within. Ware’s singular vision and beautiful colour and line work relishes the power of print. On the page, his work arrives fully formed without any hint of hesitation.

New from Canadian publisher Drawn & Quarterly is this, the third and final volume in Ware’s assemblage of sketchbooks, page plans and notations. The Acme Novelty Datebook: Volume Three covers the years 2002 to 2023, with over 200 pages of artwork that goes beyond Ware's well-known style and encompasses pen portraits, private comic strips and works in progress. It provides a much sought-after insight into the artist's mind.

Some indication of that mind and how it works comes from the blurb: ‘After over 15 years’ deferral, delay and dawdling, the ink-and-paper cheerleader FC Ware finally succumbs to imaginary public pressure by concluding his tiresome experiment in reader trust with the third and final volume of secret notebooks and sketches spanning over 37 years of bus rides, airport delays and telephone hold music.’

At a time when art 'appreciation' seems to be relegated to hastily liked Instagram posts that are rarely revisited, having Ware’s unique handicraft presented in a handsome physical hardback volume feels like a real luxury. As well as a love of display art, old etchings and graphic design, Ware discovers characters, somehow managing to find the inner lives of his subjects, even if these flights of fancy are cut from whole cloth.

It’s all part of the process. As he says, ‘artisanal rewritings of personal conflict are scattered throughout comic strips unconsciously revealing private hostilities and unflattering portraits of public transportation riders, the whole carefully cleansed of any impugnable or litigious tracery’.

Chris Ware, The Acme Novelty Datebook: Volume Three, $49.95. A slipcase edition of all three volumes is available for $149.95, DrawnandQuarterly.com, @DrawnandQuarterly

Also available from Amazon and Waterstones

Aficionados of some of the most iconic and influential pieces of 21st century British graphic design should head over to Volume and support the crowdfunder for Unit Editions’ new monograph Margaret Calvert: Woman at Work, the definitive book on the life and output of Margaret Calvert. Edited by designer and educator Adrian Shaughnessy and designed by Calvert herself with Scott Williams and Henrik Kubel of A2/SW/HK, this 240-page hardback is being crowdfunded now.

Building on the 2020 Design Museum exhibition ‘Woman at Work’ – which unfortunately took place during the pandemic – this is the first ever book to focus on Calvert’s work. Described as a ‘pioneer of design for public service [and] a groundbreaking typographer’, Calvert (born 1936) received this year’s New York Type Directors Club Medal, showing just how venerated she is in graphic design circles.

Few designers can be said to have such an impact on a national character. Her long collaboration with her former Chelsea School of Art tutor Jock Kinneir started when Calvert was just 21 with work on new signage for Gatwick Airport. That led to a commission to create signage for the entire British road network, a typographic, pictographic and organisational feat that occupied the two for many years and is an acknowledged design classic can still be seen in use today.

Woman at Work charts the genesis and evolution of this lifetime of creativity, covering the iconic signage work with later projects for the British Rail and the British Airports Authority. There’s also the 1980 Tyne and Wear Metro identity (the typeface for which was available from Monotype as the Calvert typeface). Unseen archive imagery and preparatory sketches abound and there’s also a focus on Calvert’s role as an educator at the RCA in London and her later work as a solo typographer.

The late Phil Baines once noted in Eye Magazine that ‘Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert’s graphic design amounted to a house style for Britain, characterised by the use of sans serif alphabets with careful and sparing use of colour and a great attention to detail.’ Calvert was awarded the Lifetime Achievement London Design Medal in 2017.

As with all crowdfunded projects, there are multiple editions and rewards, including a slipcase, prints and a special signed ‘Woman at Work’ reflective road sign.

Margaret Calvert: Woman at Work, from £55, Unit Editions, available from Volume, Vol.co, @Vol.co

UnitEditions.com, A2SWHK.co.uk

This new exhibition at The Map House in London’s Knightsbridge focuses on the capital’s underground railway, the world’s first. ‘Mapping the Tube: 1863-2023’ (on view 25 October – 30 November 2024) chronicles 160 years of making cartographical sense of the tangle of lines, stations and interchanges that have been hollowed out of London’s clay, clawing their way to the surface and reaching deep into the capital’s suburbs, north, south, east and west.

Part urban history lesson, part celebration of London’s Tube system, the exhibition includes maps dating all the way back to the opening of the Metropolitan Line in 1863, an event that gave mapping-minded Victorians the chance to create new guides to the lines beneath their feet. Some of these chaotic but charming maps are on display, the vast majority of which tried to shoehorn the literal system diagram into something that was geographically accurate.

For admirers of early 20th-century design, the show’s major draw is the inclusion of key works by Harry Beck. It was Beck who shaped the Tube Map as we know it today, spending two years developing the map before it was first published in 1933; after many evolutions and revisions, it is still very much a part of the Tube’s aesthetic. Beck’s engineering background supposedly gave him the idea of abstracting the spaghetti tangle of lines, laying out everything as if it were a circuit diagram.

Imitators were legion (the 1939 Sydney Suburban and City Underground Railway Map is on display in the exhibition), right up to the present day. The abstraction gives little hint of the cityscape above, but Beck reasoned that the Tube’s passengers cared more for connections and routes, not their precise location. This mental shift arguably changed the perception of the city itself, not just the Underground.

On show are examples of Tube maps from 1863 to 2023, along with a collection of drawings and manuscripts belonging to Beck. These came from the collection of his friend and biographer, the late designer, writer and educator Ken Garland, and give a special insight into the design process, which Beck viewed as a complex puzzle to be endlessly tinkered with for decades to come.

Beck’s work, completed under the oversight of publicity manager Frank Pick and seen alongside the architecture of Charles Holden, gave London Underground what we’d now describe as a ‘corporate identity’, a unified design approach that embraced everything from stations to seating, fabrics, signage, typography and even the artworks that exhorted customers to visit London’s many attractions by Tube. It’s a cohesive approach that has survived right up to the Elizabeth Line.

The Map House gallery can trace its origins back to 1907, when it was a cartographic store and specialist publisher catering to explorers, travellers and the military. Located on Beauchamp Place since 1973, the gallery has recently restarted its publishing arm and holds frequent selling exhibitions. The works on display in ‘Mapping the Tube’ are all for sale, should you want your own piece of London’s transport history.

‘Mapping the Tube: 1863-2023’ is at The Map House, 54 Beauchamp Place, Knightsbridge, London, SW3 1NY, from 25 October – 30 November 2024, TheMapHouse.com, @themaphouse

A book for fans of instant graphic gratification, Graphic Classics brings together 500 key touchstones in the history of contemporary information design, typography, logos, identities, fonts, posters and more. Assembled by Phaidon’s crack editorial team, Graphic Classics is nothing if not plural, featuring work from the 14th century onwards.

With a high quality of reproduction and top-notch picture research, this 500-plus-page hardback functions as a ready reference work and source of inspiration for anyone with a passing interest in the art of graphic design. Arranged chronologically, the first section is given over to detailed reproductions of key works with more in-depth texts in the second half.

At times, this book feels like a well-curated Instagram account brought to life, with the sheer diversity of work on display illustrating the magpie mind of modern visual culture. There’s a wealth of trivia and insight here alongside the story of acknowledged classics, with everything from the crossword puzzle to the copyright symbol sitting alongside Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine, the Penguin paperback, the eye chart and many more.

Featured designers include Aleksandr Rodchenko, Paul Rand, Paula Scher, Otl Aicher, Alan Fletcher, GTF, Stefan Sagmeister, Jan Tschichold and many more. As an introduction to the pleasures of print and the importance of the physical over the digital, Graphic Classics is an excellent place to start.

Graphic Classics, Phaidon Editors, £69.95, ships 29 August 2024, available to pre-order at Phaidon.com and Amazon

After years of custom typographic creation for a variety of luxury, art, fashion, sports, media and automotive brands, Yorgo&Co has released Yota Fonts, a collection of four fonts: Nocturne, a monospace typewriter; Tuileries, a refined serif; Hypercube, a graphic sans-serif; and Lipslide, a bold titling typeface. 

They were developed by a team led by Yorgo Tloupas, the Parisian studio’s co-founder, and type designer Martin Pasquier. A former magazine creative director for the likes of Libération and Les Inrockuptibles, Tloupas is currently design director at Black Crows Skis and teaches at Lausanne’s ÉCAL. The logotype expert also recently created the visual identity for Maison Gainsbourg, the new museum dedicated to the legendary French singer Serge Gainsbourg.

Yota Fonts: type and objects by Yorgo&Co

The first font of the new collection, Nocturne, was actually designed for this museum, and is based on a sheet of paper with ‘Je t’aime, moi non plus’ typed by Gainsbourg in every font available on his IBM 6750-3 typewriter. ‘We based our design on the line written in Pica 72,’ writes Tloupas, ‘and to create the 45-degree angles at the junctions, we took inspiration from the shape of the black and white cabochon paving of his living room.’ 

As for Tuileries, it was originally designed for the reopening of Hotel de Crillon in Paris, and inspired by a 1909 invitation sourced in the hotel’s archives, where the team found an opened typeface reminiscent of the Caslon Open letters style, fashionable at the beginning of the 20th century. 

Finally, the narrow letters and contrasting counter and outer shapes of Hypercube echo of the singular architecture of the Grande Arche of La Défense, for which the font was originally created, while the heavy headline typeface Lipslide features shapes reminiscent of skateboarding obstacles and 1970s storefronts.

As well as designing custom fonts for brands, and creating and distributing retail fonts, Yota Fonts has also imagined a unique capsule collection of accessories to celebrate the launch of its new type foundry.

It includes a series of letter-objects, such as a A-shaped vase in Hypercube, a skateboard with a Lipslide graphic, and a G-shaped ashtray in Nocturne (an homage to the Gitanes-smoking singer), as well as wearable printed specimens. These range from a black and red bandana printed with a paisley pattern made out of Nocturne letters and numbers, to a T-shirt showcasing the various Tuilerie styles, and a Hypercube-branded cap.

These accessories are on show at Le Bon Marché until 21 April 2024 at the Yota Fonts pop-up store on the department store’s 2nd floor, as part of ‘Mise en Page’, an exhibition celebrating the art of printing.

yotafonts.com

Triennale posters are the subject of a new book, published by Marsilio Arte and titled Triennale. Cento anni di manifesti. Triennale held a triennial design exhibition from 1923, becoming a key cultural hub for the city of Milan and offering a diverse and thought-provoking series of design encounters. 

Over the course of the century, the visual identity of Triennale developed and set the tone for trends in visual communication and graphic design, also thanks to collaboration with the leading designers of their time. The book gathers works by Ettore Sottsass, Wim Crouwel, Massimo Vignelli, Anna Kulachek, Italo Lupi and many more, charting the history of the institution's approach to visual culture.

Curated by Mario Piazza, the book opens with an introduction by Triennale president, architect Stefano Boeri, and was designed by Swiss studio Norm. 'Triennale has always anticipated trends,' writes Boeri. 'It is (and has been) a place open to exchanges of ideas, a meeting points of different opinions and visions. Today, we aim at being a school to ponder on the big questions of contemporaneity.'

Boeri's vision for the institution has always been respectful of its stories and illustrious past, while ensuring it keeps asking the relevant questions for the future, through a varied programme that encourages exchanges and discovery. 

The book includes the posters from the triennial exhibitions as well as those for temporary design exhibitions held at the museum over the years, helping put together the pieces of its history. Each poster comes with a detailed analysis of its design, as well as extended materials that look at the context of the specific exhibition and moment in design history. 'Looking at our archives,' adds Boeri, 'allows us to explore the future of design while paying constant attention to our past.'

'Triennale. Cento anni di manifesti', published by Marsilio Arte

Available from Amazon

Anyone who has ever looked up and wondered about an inscription, sign, storefront or engraving on a building owes a debt to Professor Phil Baines, who has died at the age of 65. A talented graphic designer and typographer, Baines’ career combined teaching with a passion for chronicling the history of signage, in all its forms. For 32 years, Baines was a valued and inspirational teacher at Central Saint Martins (CSM), London, helping shape generations of young designers and inspire them to look to the art and craft of lettering, its history and evolution.

Remembering Phil Baines

Baines combined this educational career with a professional one, designing books for Thames & Hudson, Phaidon, Puffin and Penguin, as well as working with one of Wallpaper’s favourite letterpress-based print and design studios, the New North Press, to things as diverse as badge design for Stereohype and commissions from the Royal College of Art (RCA), the Crafts Council and many more. He was especially well-known for his passion for architectural lettering and signage, and was also responsible for designing wayfinding for many contemporary buildings, including the Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft, opened a decade ago after a refurbishment by Adam Richards Architects, and signage for CSM’s campus in King’s Cross, as well as a long-standing working relationship with Matt’s Gallery in Nine Elms. 

Baines authored several enduring design books, including Signs, lettering in the environment (Laurence King, 2003), written with long-time collaborator Dr Catherine Dixon, as well as co-writing one of the definitive texts of modern typography, Type & typography (Laurence King, 2001) with Andy Haslam. Together with Dixon, Baines was also responsible for curating CSM’s Central Lettering Record, a rich archive of typographic history held at the Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection.

Another passion was book cover design, and Baines published the definitive guide to seven decades of Penguin’s graphic output in 2005, a book that predated our current cultural fixation with all things retro. He followed it with a look at the cover art of Penguin’s publishing house for younger reader, Puffin, in 2010.

Phil Baines was born in Cumbria in 1958. His first chosen vocation was the priesthood, and although he never practised, the visual language of the church, along with its centuries-old association with printing, carving and detailing, all played a valuable role in shaping his interests. In 1980, he changed direction and undertook an art foundation course, going on to study graphic design at St Martin’s School of Art in 1982, followed by a master’s degree in Communication Arts and Design at the RCA.

In 1988, Baines returned to lecture at his alma mater, shortly before it became Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. From 1991 onwards, he led the typography department. Professionally, his work rose to prominence in the 1990s graphic design boom, a time when new digital processes coincided with a revival of interest in letterpress and historic styles. As his research and writings demonstrated, Baines viewed lettering as an inherently human activity, a thread that led from the embellished medieval manuscript to a modern street sign or manhole cover.   

As well as his books and teaching, Phil Baines worked on three important public commissions with Carmody Groarke, working with different materials and surfaces to create enduring memorials to the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and the 7 July 2005 London bombings. ‘The common ground in our collaboration with Phil Baines was based in a shared interest in the making of physical things,’ Kevin Carmody wrote, and this physicality extended to Baines’ interest in the pragmatic, the overlooked, and the taken for granted. Naturally, his work gravitated towards the printed word and typography in the built environment, rather than design for screens. ‘I take it for granted that other people will still want physical objects because I do,’ he once told Eye Magazine.

A retrospective exhibition, ‘Extol: Phil Baines celebrating letters’, was recently held at CSM’s Lethaby Gallery in London, while his website, Public Lettering, remains a valuable and inspirational resource. Elsewhere, you can explore his Instagram and Flickr feeds, both of which offer insights into his wide-ranging interests and influential teachings. He is survived by his wife, Jackie Baines, and their daughters Beth and Felicity.

publiclettering.org.uk

Few films carry more cultural gravity than Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. This pinnacle of the horror genre, adapted from Stephen King's novel of the same name, has been celebrated, sampled, conspiracy-theorised and dissected to saturation point. With a cult following, cultural impact and trove of symbolism this big, what’s left to say?

More than 40 years since The Shining first hit screens, a new design book published by Rough Trade Books is re-evaluating the film through contemporary music, art, fashion and gender, and overlooked perspectives. 

At first look, the 400-page book resembles the typed writing project that Jack – the film’s antagonist – pursues throughout the movie to increasing degrees of mania and destruction. But like the film’s symbolism-laden plot, there are layers to unpack. Within the box, loose-leaf pages erupt with original recollections (from lead actors Shelley Duvall and Danny Lloyd); contributions from cultural luminaries (including Cosey Fanni Tutti, Margaret Howell, Gavin Turk and John Grindrod); and new essays and printed ephemera that seek to re-examine all we think we know about this pillar of cinematic history. 

Craig Oldham, who edited and designed The Shining: a Visual and Cultural Haunting, admits he felt daunted, and somewhat paralysed, by the prospect of taking on such a titanic legacy. ‘People have applied an almost cosmic level of exegesis to the film’, he tells Wallpaper*. ‘There’s no point writing about something if it adds nothing new, let alone a book. But that’s ultimately where we were able to find our angle.’ 

Oldham began exploring not only what had been written about The Shining, but who had been writing about it. He found that an overwhelming proportion of critical analysis surrounding had originated from men. ‘Kubrick is a masculine director and made movies and stories fundamentally and primarily concerned with men,’ he says. ‘So we wanted to know what women might think about that. Or even men that didn’t necessarily fit the hyper-masculine boxes present in Kubrick’s films. I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the fact that I am indeed a white male editing this book, but the difference is that we want the book to be a platform to showcase unheard or ignored views.’

The result is as much an ode as a critique. The creators sought to readdress this apparent gap in critique from the perspectives of women, as well as those who have real-world experience in the more complex themes in the film such as domestic violence and mental health issues. ‘We felt it was pertinent to pick out the stories of domestic abuse and domestic violence, extrapolated beyond that “get out of jail free card” of it being a horror film,’ he says. ‘We wanted to look at isolation and mental health in the context of the closeness we now globally share with those themes after the Covid-19 pandemic.’ 

The book also sought to celebrate and reappraise Shelley Duvall and her ‘much-maligned performance’, which Oldham puts down to ‘consciously or unconsciously, misogynistic male viewpoints. She is an almost unwitting embodiment of all the film’s themes on- and off-screen given her apparent treatment on set and the legacy the film has had on her and he career,’ he says. The book features an interview with Duvall, in which she offers rare insight into her performance and experiences on set. 

For the design approach, creators sought to upend the ‘impenetrable academic analysis’ of the film to create something tactile, engaging and accessible. Conceived as a replica of Jack’s infamous typed manuscript, contributions are printed on yellow script paper in a bespoke typeface that has been coded using punches from the same Adler typewriter used by Kubrick’s character.

Presented entirely unbound, the book has no beginning or end. ‘You can edit it, add to it, and change it to make it mean what you want it to mean,’ Oldham explains. ‘The design is an extension and embodiment of the ideas of digesting a film in different ways, but for people who might just like the film rather than want to study a PhD in it.’

INFORMATION

The Shining: a Visual and Cultural Haunting will be published by Rough Trade Books on 10 October and is available to preorder now, £50. roughtradebooks.com

As a bastion of American design dating all the way back to 1905, Herman Miller's trove of furniture design classics from over the years needs little introduction. Today, another aspect of the company's legacy is set to capture the imagination – Herman Miller posters. The company has delved into its graphic art library to bring a selection of its greatest graphic design and illustrations back to life as a poster collection.

Starting with 15 designs that span a range of aesthetic and conceptual styles, the collection not only provides a look into Herman Miller's heavily guarded archive but shines a light on lesser known works by the company's most celebrated creative collaborators.

A graphic design heritage

'Reintroducing Herman Miller's archival graphics as a collection has been a longtime dream of the brand,' says Amy Auscherman, the company's director of global archives and brand heritage, who spearheaded the initiative. 'The posters and advertisements are always a favourite when we have them available for purchase, lend them to museums, and have visitors at our archive in West Michigan.' 

The inaugural offering includes designs from 1949 to 1979 that range from product advertisements to nostalgic brand ephemera. The poster series starts with a Hardware ad (1949) by Irving Harper, who was a member of George Nelson's specialised design team and was credited for creating the Herman Miller logo; it also includes one of Stephen Frykholm’s Corn Picnic posters (the first design from the famed series); as well as a 1969 illustration by the Swiss designer Armin Hofmann, which will be offered in a limited edition of 200. The series provides an illuminating view into the brand's history, particularly George Nelson's lasting influence on the company. Six poster designs in the collection are from the George Nelson & Associates team, and represent its iconic visual language.

Vintage Herman Miller posters

What’s more, the sizing and material composition of each poster design has been carefully selected to represent the vintage original as faithfully as possible. The assortment, which is now on sale at Herman Miller and Design Within Reach online stores, ranges from $475 to $1,125, with frames available in white, black or maple. 

‘We closely referenced examples from the Herman Miller Archives to faithfully recreate these iconic pieces of graphic design,' says Auscherman. 'From colour matching to paper selection, no detail was too small for consideration. It's exciting to have this work recontextualised as art objects and accessible to design fans everywhere.'

INFORMATION

store.hermanmiller.com
dwr.com

WINNER

Carácter antibacterial tiles, by Marazzi

A particularly timely product, Marazzi’s new Puro antibacterial technology for ceramic surfaces eliminates up to 99.9 per cent of bacteria and other harmful microorganisms. ‘Carácter’ is the first of three collections by the Italian tile manufacturer created using the innovative technology, a permanent treatment that provides continuous antibacterial protection throughout the life of the product surface, without the need for external activation agents such as UV radiation. Ideal for use in residential as well as commercial and public spaces, the stone-effect ‘Carácter’ tiles are suitable for indoor and outdoor floors and walls. In appealing natural tones, with a minimal or more pebbled appearance, the tiles are made from 40 per cent recycled materials, and come in a range of sizes. They also feature anti-slip technology called StepWise. Sophisticated design meets truly useful innovation in a product that will enhance any home.

marazzitile.co.uk; @marazziceramiche

SHORTLIST

As we are spending more time than ever at home, we seek comfort in the shape of pure sound (that also looks good to the eye), technological innovation to keep us safe and a bit of beauty to accompany our everyday habits – be them hand-washing or pouring the perfect cocktail

Beogram 4000c turntable, by Bang & Olufsen

Pioneering Danish electronics brand Bang & Olufsen has revived its iconic 1970s Beogram 4000c turntable. The first of a new initiative to reimagine classic products, the turntable is a testament to Bang & Olufsen’s capabilities in sound, design and craftsmanship as well as its commitment to product longevity. Having sourced 95 original turntables, the Bang & Olufsen engineers worked their magic in the same facility where the models were first created nearly five decades ago. They disassembled and cleaned the vintage designs, then upgraded some of the components, adding a touch-sensitive control panel and RIAA phono pre-amplifiers so that the turntables could be connected to modern speakers. The appearance too has been refreshed while maintaining the essence of the original model: the aluminium element has been polished in a warmer champagne tone, and the turntable now sports a hand-crafted wooden frame and a new cover.

bang-olufsen.com; @bangolufsen

JS50 and JS30 speakers, by Georg Jensen and Philips

For their second creative collaboration, classic Danish brand Georg Jensen and Dutch electronics powerhouse Philips have released a new collection of beautifully crafted audio products. The range includes a pair of pebble-shaped portable Bluetooth speakers, featuring Georg Jensen’s signature highly polished ‘slate blue’ steel and a luxurious, acoustically transparent blue-grey Kvadrat fabric, as well as wireless Bluetooth headphones and a wireless power bank in dark leather. ‘Collaborating with Philips on this new collection has been an exciting challenge for us - it has guided us to design for technology in new ways, but it also has taught us how many of our iconic expressions can rise to the occasion of new frontiers,’ says Georg Jensen chief creative officer Nicholas Manville. 

georgjensen.com; @georgjensen

‘Midnight' cocktail cabinet, by Armani/Dada 

Produced in collaboration by fashion supremo Giorgio Armani and leading Italian furniture brand Molteni&C, the ‘Midnight’ cocktail cabinet goes well beyond the simple drinks trolley: the good-sized bar comes with a sink, practical sliding trays and plenty of storage – including space for an integrated wine cellar. The perfectly functional offering is partially hidden behind a pair of fully retractable Japanese-inspired gilded doors, with vertical walnut rod inserts and champagne satin aluminium details. The unit also features a Rosa Portogallo marble countertop that includes accessories for cocktail making, such as ice-holder and cutting board. An optional LED lighting structure creates a frame for the marble back, which features a wooden shelf with built-in LED lights and golden metal wine glass holders.

armanidada.com

‘Aura’ and ‘Astro’ bathroom sinks, by Marco Piva, for Antonio Lupi 

Resembling slowly melting ice-cubes, Marco Piva’s free-standing bathroom sinks are made of a smooth eco-sustainable resin, Cristalmood, that is manually poured into moulds. Once the resin has solidified, they are sanded and polished to remove imperfections and add brightness. The Milanese designer has equipped both sinks with LED lighting, available in 13 Cristalmood colours, making them rich in light and reflections. The drain and siphon are hidden from view, giving the designs a sculptural presence. ‘Resistant like stone, transparent like crystal, this resin has allowed Antonio Lupi to develop shapes that would have been unthinkable with any other material,’ explains the company’s art director, Andrea Lupi.

antoniolupi.it; @antoniolupidesign

Swedish furniture company Hem unveiled a new brand identity created in collaboration with London-based creative practice Made Thought. Founded by Petrus Palmer in 2014, Hem has quickly established a reputation as a brand for contemporary classics by the likes of Anderssen & Voll, Lars Beller Fjetland and Max Lamb among others. 

The new development in the brand’s short history comes as the peak of a year of growth for Hem, which recently expanded into the United States with the opening of a second studio location in New York’s SoHo. Its motto, ‘imaginative designs of obsessive quality’, is at the heart of the new branding, which visually represents the company's values.

‘We want Hem to be a platform for progressive thinking, inspiring the creative community through collaboration, innovation and experimentation, and we wanted our new visual identity to reflect this playfulness while also signalling the obsessive quality we are known for,’ says Palmer. ‘We've taken the time necessary to verbalise and internally align on a clear raison d'être. From that point, we've let a personality evolve.’

The brand’s newly-developed personality includes a distinctively enthusiastic colour palette featuring primary shades and silhouettes of the most iconic furniture designs, as well as new typeface, aptly named Hem Sans, created by leading Swedish typographer Göran Söderström of Letters from Sweden. The new typeface in particular is inspired by Geometric Sans Serif, and pays homage to the geometric language of design and architecture, infused with Hem’s optimistic creativity. 

As the company unveils their new brand aesthetic, they also continue to launch new pieces by international collaborators. The latest launch, a chair by Faye Toogood, features a metal frame supporting  an oversized duvet-like element, the first of a new series of pieces by the British designer that affirms Hem's quest to expand their product offering by working with avant-garde creatives and European artisans. 

‘The team at Hem have a very clear understanding of who they are and what they stand for, comments Garrett Duncan, Made Thought’s Strategy Director. ‘They also have an exciting vision for their future, pushing the boundaries of a conventional design or furniture brand: our job was to articulate a brand strategy that would help bring that collective vision to life.’ Made Thought’s design is a celebration of an ‘eclectic, tactile and creative world full of energy and play’, but also a reflection of the commitment to design, quality and expertise at the heart of the brand. 

INFORMATION

For more information, visit hem.com

Micah BarrettYale School of Art, US

Barrett’s variable font experiments explore text’s relationship to imagery, in an attempt ‘to infuse graphic design’s legacy of “text as image” into a contemporary digital environment’.

Hugo Dumont and Anthony VernereyENSAD, France

The French duo devoted their joint project to the world of Instagram, using graphic design to imagine alternative futures. ‘We questioned the fact that this social network could create a fake world where appearance takes over from content.’

Aurelia PeterZurich University of the Arts, Switzerland

‘My interest in ritual masks was the starting point of this project,’ says Peter of her work, Through the Mask, which embraces graphic and textile design. It includes a scarf that is designed to swathe and conceal or open up the wearer to the world in a ‘graphic transition’.

Maximilian HaslauerABK Stuttgart, Germany

Haslauer’s vibrant poster designs splice the aesthetics and sensibilities of pop and jazz using only typography. ‘Niklaus Troxler is definitely an inspiration; he taught at ABK and is the number one poster designer when you think about jazz,’ he says.

Sapir ZivCentral Saint Martins, UK

Ziv’s ‘Dynamic Grid’ uses random forms to change typography and layouts. ‘I was prompted to think about systems to manipulate and defamiliarise existing letterforms.’ Ziv’s 26 booklets take you through the alphabet, with each letter altered by a machine-generated code.

Dávid MolnárÉCAL, Switzerland

Molnár’s typographic work explores an early family of serif typefaces named Didot, after French printer and type pioneer Firmin Didot. Molnár’s own take on Didot reinterprets the history for modern mediums and needs.

Tania Alvarez ZaldivarYale School of Art, US

Focusing on the Japanese philosopher Kitarō Nishida’s aesthetics of nothingness, this compilation includes texts by the likes of Kengo Kuma and Richard Neutra. Alvarez Zaldivar illustrated the essays with dense drawings of interpolated lines that evolve through the book.

Vitek SkopUMPRUM, Czech Republic

Written, illustrated and typeset by Skop, Madame Monsieur is a limited-edition novella set in Lyon and focusing on the ‘changing roles of men and women in society’. The Czech designer, who has owed text around the bold graphic illustrations, ‘wanted to create a graphic novel’.

Laura CsocsanMoholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Hungary

Csocsan describes Zorn as ‘a typeface that I had not planned to design’. The letterforms were shaped by the desire to capture the dynamic feel and contrast of sketches. ‘The contrast is not always consistent, so the letters have this somewhat odd feel to them,’ she says.

Chacón is fascinated by the intersection of lo-fi tech and visual expectation, as well as colour and how it gives shape to form. His publication Colour conjures polychromy onto the page. Dream collaborator: Sound artist Ryoji Ikeda.

danielh.info

As the visual communication industry grows ever more sophisticated and complex, each year, our graduate selection is gets harder to narrow down. Here’s our pick of the most promising graduate illustrators, typographers and graphic artists

Writer: Jonathan Bell

The 360° Alphabet places letterforms in three-dimensional space, rotated and skewed to create depth and disorientation depending on the viewer’s position. Intended for interactive installations, Oh was partly inspired by the sculpture of Kendall Buster and Vito Acconci’s ‘City of Words’. Dream collaborator: new media artist Zach Lieberman or light artist Anthony McCall.

jinhwaoh.com

Faltys’ Lexicon of this World is part of a project exploring ‘religion, mythology and folklore’. Based on the designer’s imagined creed, this section features a custom typeface and dense collages. Dream collaborator: Gerhard Richter.

danielfaltys.com

Marom’s A Time and A Place is a graphic travelogue comprising eight colourful flags. ‘The flags are inspired by the essence of each place I’ve ever lived in,’ she says. Dream collaborator: Graphic designer Kristine Kawakubo.

ruthmarom.com

Kelly’s Experiments in Time 2 deals with the relationship between machine and the human mind. ‘The swirl is a generative 3D element that alludes to string theory in software,’ the designer says. Dream collaborator: Bureau Borsche.

michaelkelly.studio

Blending influences from JRR Tolkien to Esperanto, Keysell has created a virtual reality script that ‘combines a mysterious, fictional territory with the utopian idea of universal communication’. Dream collaborator: Space10 in Copenhagen.

lukaskeysell.com

Using collage, paint, drawing and animation, Kerr’s Reverie illustrations evoke a sense of ‘moments half remembered’ and ‘that feeling of being lost in your own thoughts’, she says. Dream collaborator: David Byrne.

cargocollective.com/colettekerr

Hørup’s graphic rendering of the poems of R Broby-Johansen (1900-1987) is an English translation of the Danish originals and includes Johannes Schwartz’s photographs of the poet’s archive. Dream collaborator: Poet Susan Howe.

linegryhorup.dk 07

‘I have been susceptible to Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response my whole life,’ Nystrand says, ‘and Synthetic Triggers examines whether animated graphic objects can trigger it.’ Dream collaborator: ‘Someone who has been into space.’

marcusnystrand.se

Grunewald’s typographic experiment adds an extra dimension to type design: time. ‘Each shape is designed as a number of different steps, from the structure to the animation of a particular scene,’ he explains. Dream collaborator: Ed Ruscha.

eliottgrunewald.com

Michel’s project focuses on the role of the US president, breaking down 164 performances into six typologies (Hero, Father and Husband, Villain, Alien, Lover, and Clown) to ‘explore how fiction becomes our reality’. Dream collaborator: Artist Camille Henrot.

ho-mi.ch

Zieher’s work combines ‘the reduced colour palette and imperfections‘ of screen-printing with the possibilities of motion graphics. Dream collaborator: ‘Anyone who values good design and is brave enough to create something extraordinary.’

jonaszieher.de

‘I am interested in the absurd and uncanny created by automated processes,’ says Tong, whose illustrations, using image recognition software, forge a bold new abstract language. Dream collaborator: Kabosu the Shiba Inu, of Doge meme fame.

dustintong.com

A worker intently studies an aluminium suitcase on the assembly line at the Rimowa factory in Cologne. He opens and closes it repeatedly, lays it flat, pounds a hinge with his mallet, stands it on its wheels and starts over again. Until this bag is perfectly balanced, it will not leave the factory. Such labour-intensive quality has been in Rimowa’s DNA since Paul Morszeck founded it in Cologne in 1898.

With its immediately recognisable aluminium cases and grooved design, Rimowa is a cult brand, the type that bonds owners in a kind of unspoken club. The German company turns 120 this year, but there will be no one special event, says Alexandre Arnault, the new 25-year-old CEO, who finds the idea of a party ‘outdated’. Rather, it will be a whole year of celebration, of taking a fresh look at the suitcase brand that pioneered aluminium and polycarbonate, and finding ‘a cool way to remind people who we are’.

Tall, poised and impeccably dressed, fluent in French, English and German, Arnault is the third child of LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault and it was his idea that the luxury goods conglomerate acquire Rimowa. He had been using a matte black ‘Salsa’ model since age 17 or 18, when he moved to New York for an internship. ‘My family wasn’t too happy when I travelled with it,’ he recalls. ‘But when they looked at it carefully, they understood the beauty of the product, the craft behind it.’ The family operation has high-profile luggage brands of its own, of course, but when Louis Vuitton started to modernize its suitcase line with lighter and four-wheeled models, Rimowa’s particular set of skills became clear.

LVMH bought Rimowa in January 2017, after two years of negotiation, and Arnault was appointed CEO alongside Dieter Morszeck. He has been actively shepherding the brand ever since, with collaborations, new stores, a pop-up, and no sign of slowing down. ‘What I’ve learned from growing up in my family and seeing other CEOs is that you have to be involved in the product on every single level,’ he says.

In June he hired Hector Muelas, formerly of Apple and DKNY, as Rimowa’s chief brand officer. Early this year they unveiled a new visual identity, a collaboration with Munich-based Bureau Borsche and London-based Commission Studio. The pill-shaped frame and rounded letters of the previous logo have been replaced with an understated design, with a refined sans serif font that ‘encapsulates the timeless and considered nature of the brand’, says Muelas. The colour blue has disappeared in favour of neutral shades – black, white and grey.

The team also designed a new monogram inspired by Rimowa’s original from 1898. It features sharpened vertices like the spires of Cologne’s famous cathedral, intertwined with angular curves that mirror the industrial forms of contemporary Rimowa suitcases.

Both the logo and monogram appear on a redesigned range of packaging. Once an afterthought, Rimowa’s packaging now aspires to be as pleasing as that of an iPhone. There are dust bags, shopping bags with straps held in place by rivets, and gift boxes for carry-ons. Demonstrating a price tag that slides out of a little folder, Muelas says, ‘With every single piece of design, we put a lot of consideration into how it would make people feel. When you buy Rimowa it’s a magic moment. It’s got to have a ritual.’

Paper accessories such as an owner’s manual and notebooks are embossed with fine parallel lines to mirror the suitcases’ grooves. Geographic coordinates appear here and there, making oblique reference to meaningful locations for the company, such as the factory where each case was produced.

The number of meaningful locations is increasing, as last year saw a slew of new store openings in cities such as Paris, Frankfurt and Tokyo. Arnault wants each one to give customers an experience, and he plans to hire in-country architects to design individual stores for different markets. Beyond suitcases, customers in larger cities will discover unique lifestyle products made by local talents especially for the brand. In Paris, for example, the new flagship is selling chocolate bars by Patrick Roger, available until mid-February.

Arnault is also excited about the pop-up concept, having launched the company’s first in Beverly Hills last December, built to look like a luggage conveyor belt and selling products such as fresh juice and travel and design books, as well as aluminium pens by Kaweco and T-shirts by German brand Merz b Schwanen. ‘A pop-up in a new place for six months allows us to try a new store concept, a new design. If it works, great, we learn from it. If it doesn’t work, we also learn from it.’

As for collaborations, Rimowa teamed up with Fendi for a limited-edition suitcase with a belt, leather handles and the double F logo melded onto the aluminium surface. Also launched last December, the cases came with a price tag of €1,700 and sold out within a week. While more such team-ups are on the horizon, Arnault is keeping the details to himself. What he does admit to is his dream collaboration, with Nasa. He plans to contact them soon.

This goal reflects Arnault’s love of technology (he’s a graduate of Paris’ prestigious École Polytechnique). In 2016, Rimowa introduced electronic luggage tags, and the young CEO is considering what other digital innovations might add value for the customer. Nothing gimmicky, he insists. A suitcase with an integrated battery charger would be heavy and unnecessary, while one with its own scale seems practical.

For the 80th anniversary of its signature aluminium suitcase last year, the house produced a fully digital campaign – portraits of Rimowa cases belonging to Karl Lagerfeld, Martha Stewart and the Italian chef Massimo Bottura, among others. Reached at his recent Gucci Garden restaurant opening in Florence, Bottura recalls, ‘I bought my first Rimowa after years of luggage envy, watching other travellers wheel their metal cases around with ease. In particular I was fascinated by the Rimowa photography cases, these big aluminium boxes that protected fragile equipment. Finally, a wheel broke on a black plastic trolley I had and I bought a Rimowa silver bullet trolley at the airport to replace it. And that was the beginning of the obsession.’

At a time when many brands talk about storytelling, suitcases are natural vehicles for it. ‘They’re travel companions,’ notes Muelas, witnesses to the experiences and memories that mark a journey. Indeed, when LVMH announced the acquisition, Arnault received notes from people around the world telling him their Rimowa stories. He says, ‘There’s an amount of love that exists out there for this product that I’ve rarely seen before, and I think it’s linked to this relationship of trust. Our suitcases are so robust that people trust us with their most personal belongings, their most valuable things.’

As originally featured in the March 2018 issue of Wallpaper* (W*228)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Rimowa website

Thomas Le Provost’s Intramonde is a graphic-led exploration of quantum physics, using an algorithm to generate different layouts for every copy.

Would most like to work with: Anyone from scientific institutions to high fashion brands

The visual communication industry is larger and more complex than ever, and each year, our graduate selection is getting harder and harder to narrow down. Here’s our pick of the very best graduate illustrators, typographers and graphic artists

Interstellar communication is the underlying theme of Ben Hutchings’ Processes of Translation. The graphic elements are distillations of complex messages into otherworldly forms.

Would most like to work with: Elon Musk

Barbara Nassisi’s Common Places project, a multi- layered, semi-translucent book inspired by the work of Irma Boom, is intended as a mediation on inhabiting space.

Would most like to work with: Fraser Muggeridge Studio

Inspired by Kafka’s The Trial, Grace Heejung Kim brings a richly textured minimalism and a love of storytelling to her imagery, which is designed to work best on a book cover.

Would most like to work with: Penguin Random House

Franci Virgili’s It’s a toy for make believe brought her interest in stage acting, and the act of slipping into another character, to the page. The result is a collection of ambiguous short stories.

Would most like to work with: Robot cat Doraemon

Molly Fairhurst’s Kick, Don’t Twist series explores the physicality of emotion with bold, deliberately exaggerated forms.

Would most like to work with: Someone who could take my work away from the flat, still surface

Inspired by concrete poets such as Augusto de Campos, Dan Romanoski breaks down texts with typography. Letterforms jostle for attention as phrases and idioms are set down in dynamic ways.

Would most like to work with: Friends

Lucy Grainge’s Dyslexia project derives from first hand, and personal, experiences of the condition. ‘It aims to celebrate its diversity rather than see it as a disability,’ she says.

Would most like to work with: Leanne Shapton

A space frozen in a moment in time forms the basis of Vera Kaspar’s Persephone project, an abstract photographic journey through a series of dream-like sets and stills.

Would most like to work with: Kim Gordon

Linnéa Carlson’s project is a visual biography of her great-grandmother, Swedish sculptor Ninnan Santesson, exploring the roots of creativity and process through gender.

Would most like to work with: Blok Design

Hannah Enderby raises questions about the ethics of photography with this children’s blanket featuring a pattern derived from Twitter data about the drowned Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi.

Would most like to work with: Unicef, Raw Color

Fabian Fohrer’s Quo-vadis.otf font explores the aesthetic potential of OpenType 1.8, a new standard from Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Adobe that allows dynamic, variable online fonts.

Would most like to work with: Tyler, the Creator

Hjertstedt takes a very digital approach to composition. ‘These pieces are mostly an experimentation with 3D software – all fairly quick.’ The swiftly rendered abstract forms combine uncanny architecture and still life. fssssssk.tumblr.com

Our pick of the designers, illustrators and typographers breaking the multidisciplinary mould of visual language

Writers: Jonathan Bell and Sam Rogers

Laar’s design approach is based on the ‘cycle of creating’ and is set out in his final manifesto-like project, a series of abstract forms that can be arranged to create letters – ‘the font will vary each time it is realised’. He now has his own studio.

Celas communicates the idea of home and place through her hand-drawn series Private Landscapes, conjuring up elaborate, imaginary spaces. Celas hopes to continue to experiment with medium, format and subject.

Kubski’s master’s at ÉCAL saw the designer create a magazine, Domesticate, exploring human-animal interactions – from owls for rent to wildlife photography. ‘It allowed me to mix photography, design, illustration and editorial,’ she says.

For his take on Russian Constructivism, Sebei used architectural imagery of contemporary Moscow. ‘I considered photography as graphic shapes, mixed with type to create hybrid images.’ He is now studying art direction at ÉCAL.

In Basterfield’s hands, the ballet The Four Temperaments is represented by colour, space and form in a series of meticulously planned geometric screenprints, ‘situated on that blurry line between art and design’.

Martyniuk’s ‘Nice Posters’ series explores typography and graphic form, while the designer’s conceptual social media project, ‘Stroll’, brings digital connectivity to the pleasures of taking a walk.

Illustrator Douglas brings a fine art sensibility to his vibrant collages, such as the Risograph-printed Collector. ‘By using collage I am trying to flatten everything I encounter around me into a concise whole,’ he explains.

Music is the generative force in Fiant’s Face B project. Making use of the Processing programming language, she translated sound into visual design. ‘It’s a new way to listen to music,’ she says.

It is a widely recognised truth that the print medium is in decline, so why create a project dedicated to it? ‘Because it is worth saving,’ says Sara Sturges. With Printernet, Sturges brings the best of both the digital and physical worlds together. Her innovative publishing concept allows users to curate their own newsfeeds, transforming them into unique, printed publications. ‘I believe that there is immense value in offering consumers the ability to have their own internet content, well designed in a considered way and presented in a tangible, simple and easy to read format,’ she explains.

Using a fragmentary process of image-making, Christmann created a book of collaged chapters, faking film stills and mixing them with originals to create a narrative of idleness. She currently runs Studio Pandan with Ann Richter.

Andreasson uses bold, flat colour and minimal detailing to create characterful portraits, here of the Eameses, and images. ‘I sometimes refer to historical artworks, juxtaposing them with more contemporary phenomena,’ she says.

After graduating with an MFA from Yale, Nelson set up his own book design studio, Making Known, in Minneapolis, pushing graphics into experimental new realms with self-generated publications and design exercises.

MacKenzie used her observational approach to create the ‘Walk to School’ project. ‘I was interested in the notion that when something becomes familiar it is often ignored,’ she says. Her imagery plays with composition, texture and form. tessamackenzie.com

Today's graphics graduates are faced with the daunting task of finding their feet in a field that has expanded way beyond the tactility of two-dimensional media into a digital realm of virtual space and interactivity.

Writer: Jonathan Bell

An illustrator who believes in translating her life into her imagery, Kolodziey says she usually dances when she’s working. Her collaged pieces use melted plastic, creating a mix of graphics and sculpture. nadinekolodziey.com

‘I read a lot,’ says Ferrol, who mentions Michel Foucault in the same breath as 1980s postmodern design. His geometrically rigorous ‘1984’ project sets out a fictional exhibition, featuring a mix of the past and the present. ricardoferrol.com

Knight’s work taps into the UK’s social disillusionment. His ‘Flags for the Forgotten’ were, he says, ‘designed in direct collaboration with individuals belonging to social groups who have felt continuously marginalised and forgotten about’. will-knight.com

Donne-Davis is inspired by found objects and ‘information which often goes unnoticed’. His screenprint melds aircraft registrations from British Airways’ fleet, creating a graphic and dynamic illustration of its variety of planes. alexdonnedavis.com

Chung’s imagery is built on mathematics, with computer-generated mono-colour images created out of half-tones. Colour is introduced with moiré patterns. ‘Designing with computer code is an intelligible process of imagining forms,’ he says. rca.ac.uk/students/ingee-chung

Grossenbacher’s vividly textured style is perfect for her work on sport visualisations. Citing the fashion of Rei Kawakubo and the art of Gerhard Richter as influences, her series builds ‘a new aesthetic’ code  for sporting design. kathringrossenbacher.ch

Bold tranches of colour and form characterise Abbiss Smith's illsutrations. 'I simply enjoy observing and experiencing things,' he says. His one-off screenprints and digital collages were create to accompany the works of Franz Kafka. tomabbissmithart.com

‘I’m inspired by the contrast of the analogue and the digital,’ says Kozma. His ‘Bartók’ project combines magnetic fields, sound waves and cosmic alignments to create 
a unique way of digitally visualising music. behance.net/danielkozma

‘My work is an attempt to reimagine the familiar,’ says Grundy. His innate curiosity led to the ‘Play’ series, which pushed his college’s technicians and their methods, creating imagery exhibited (and commented upon) in his old primary school. harrygrundy.com

Steindl cites the uncompromising forms of Anish Kapoor and Tadao Ando as creative inspiration. The work of the latter is melded with the theories of Jan Tschichold to create a fictional volume infused with the architect’s approach. felixsteindl.com

Oelmann’s architectural inspiration comes via artist MC Escher, designer Robert Beatty and, of course, Lego. Showing patterns of scale and form in New York tenements, his illustrations intrigue with their crisp  world-building. harryoelmann.tumblr.com

Melcher’s inspiration comes via the Eameses and Experimental Jetset. ‘I admire designers that incorporate writing and education in their practice,’ he says. The ‘Airport’ project reworks the banal Arrivals board into a visual plaything. gabrielmelcher.com

Sci-fi fan Rennie has a long list of influences, from modern manga to his contemporaries. His posters emerged from an anime screening series he organised. ‘The aim was to try to make messes that also kept a strict structure and balance.’ rafrennie.com

‘My work is inspired by everyday life,’ says Wolewinski. Her multimedia ‘Hymn to the Mundane’ project included performances exploring familiarity and subtle disruptions. The resulting book is a database of daily life. carolinewolewinski.info

Stahle uses graphic design to ‘criticise economic and political power’. His ‘Pocket Atlas of In-betweenia’ charts the ‘unclaimed spaces of the world’ – the expanses of ocean between nation states – providing names, flags and coats of arms. knutstahle.com

Inspired by dynamic typography, Eggenhuizen explores the intersection between print and digital media. ‘It’s an attempt at presenting an alternative publication by combining the digital platform with good old printed matter,’ he says. luceggenhuizen.com

Pernoux approaches design like it’s a puzzle, comprised of the various stages from concept to production. ‘They need to be logically put together to be able to be read as a whole,’ he says. These silkscreen posters use varied inks to create layers of information. lorispernoux.fr

Historical allusion and handmade materials aren’t exactly distinct or rare processes in many design practices. And yet, Dimore Studio seems to have the reputation of 'doing something different', as both industry insiders and lifestyle conglomerates – from Hermès and Bottega Veneta to Ian Schrager Company – all agree. 'We wanted to do something different because it didn’t make sense to compete with the big names. If everybody had been using white, we would have been using green or purple,' says Britt Moran, one half the duo behind the Milan-based interiors firm, which opened in 2003 and has since become a cult studio for its ultra-luxe bricolage of design’s past top notes. A little bit of Stilnovo, a dash of 19th century marquetry, a pinch of Italian renaissance – but as Moran says, 'we just source tons of antiques together and mix them with contemporary design'.

Moran and Emiliano Salci, his platonic intellectual paramour and studio partner of 15-years-plus, haven’t ventured much into the commercial gallery world. Their interiors are best found in-situ – such as the Pump Room in Chicago, Ceresio 7 above the DSquared2 boutique in Milan, or even their 18th century Porta Nuova palazzo workspace-cum-design showroom. Despite selling Gio Ponti chairs and Hans Agne Jakobsson chandeliers to clients and antiques aficionados, their own work has never been been available for public consumption. Until now.

And where better to start but The Future Perfect, which has the world’s first public offering, so to speak, of Dimore’s designs. The collection includes the solar system chandelier 'Lampada 061', a slew of shaggy rugs and intricately fabricated sofas that 'everybody thinks look painted', says The Future Perfect’s indefatigable David Alhadeff, whose design sense is almost Svengali-like.

'We have known each other for four or five years, [but] at the beginning we were not ready. It was not a real collection, so this year when he came, he said "We have to do something". We had matured, so I said "Let’s try it!",' explains Moran of the move. 'The courtship was very nice so I’m sure the marriage will be too.' Thus, Alhadeff and Dimore joined forces to present a 'best of' collection.

Also involved in the collaboration was Brooklyn's Yolande Batteau of Callidus Guild, who provided a host of hand-painted wallpapers, and mirrors, a hand-painted threshold and paintings (all in 24K gold). 'There were more connections between our work than both David and I initially thought,' Batteau explains. 'This show is about elevating the design, and I just don’t see this in galleries. There’s so much life in here.'

INFORMATION

For more information, visit The Future Perfect website

The medical realm is – by nature and definition – a clinical one. Long words, complicated chemistry, microscopic organisms responsible for pain and destruction, small white pills capable of healing and providing relief. With the exception of Damien Hirst's pharmaceutical-inspired art and its many incarnations, this is a world of graphically-challenged anticeptic identities, until now that is. Lisbon-based graphic design Studio AH-HA has created a visual identity for Biocol, breaking the scientific mould in the most spectacular way.

Biocol is a Portuguese medical lab known for championing the chemical-free approach to healing – 'free of nonsense' as they like to call it. Thus, their prescriptions take an uncommon starting point: natural ingredients. That proved to be the same starting point for Studio AH-HA's founding members Catarina Carreiras and Carolina Cantante. 'The colour palette we took from Biocol's ingredient list,' explains Carreiras. 'They only use natural ingredients – from vegetables like artichokes to minerals – which made the palette easy to balance.'

By balance of course, she means pop; simple images jump out against bright backdrops of solid colours. 'The crucial aspect was to simplify the medicine's message, not only in words but in visuals as well.' Striking a balance between artistic endeavour and the creation of a universal language, combining their playful typographic sensibilities with still-life images, the identity they produced is as powerful as it is playful. 'We wanted to make sure that everyone was able to understand it [the medicine] in one glance,' she adds.

Thus the instantly recognisable McDonalds chip holder is filled with asparagus; a cheese plant leaf stands tall in a glass of ice water; a blister pack contains small blossoms instead of pills. These unexpected twists all aim to communicate the function behind the Biocol remedy or potion in question; recovering from a food coma, rehydrating after a night of boozing or easing a cold with the power of nature.

As part of the visual overhaul, Studio AH-HA also created the company's entire branding, down to the envelopes, business cards and stationery. The logo – a simple dot, representative of pills – appears in various guises throughout; puncturing business cards and as the dot of the 'i' in the brand name itself.

Turns out there really is no better source of inspiration than nature.

With Team GB neck-and-neck with China and closing in on the USA's enviable overall lead (maybe), the only things tearing us away from the Rio 2016 Olympic medal table this summer are the medals themselves.

The Olympic Organising Comittee design team has enlisted the help of the Royal Brazilian Mint (who produced medals for the 2011 Military World Games and 2007 Pan-American Games, both held in Rio) to craft the 5,130 Olympic and Paralymic medals needed for the 2016 games.

Sports fans like us will have noticed many athlete's podium-side comments on the weight and size of their new neckware. Each medal (whether gold, silver or bronze) weighs a hefty 500g, and is over 1cm thick in the middle. The 2016 medals are domed, thinning to 6mm at the edges – the first Olympic medals to taper in this way. Despite this, there's still plenty of space around the rim of each medal for the all-important discipline to be laser-embossed.

Rio 2016 is keen to be seen as the 'sustainability games', and the medal-making has been held to strict environmental criteria. All the gold used in production is entirely free of mercury, and is traceable from extraction to refining. The silver model is made from 30 per cent recycled materials, and 40 per cent of the bronze medal started life as industrial waste.

As far as the engraving designs go, the reverse remains unchanged since the Athens Olympics in 2004, when Greek couture jeweller Elena Votsi chose Nike, the winged godess of victory, to be the carved on the back. Flip it over and the simple Rio 2016 logo (which is markedly less contentious than the London 2012 one) is suspended between figurative, interlinking laurel leaves.

The Paralympic medals, although no different in materials and design, feature an additional innovation. Each medal has a device inside, filled with steel balls, which vibrate, making a noise when the medal is shaken, allowing visually impaired athletes to recognise whether they're gold, silver or bronze (gold has the loudest noise, bronze the quietest).

Sustainability, materials, craft and design all factor in making these medals the most exclusive pendants on the planet. But they're more than mere baubles – they are symbols of otherwoldly sporting achievement, worthy of the goddess depicted on the reverse. As Brazilian Mint's Lara Amorelli concludes, 'These medals represent the high point of the career of an athelete who is dedicated to reach the podium. When this happens, it is only fair that the medal symbolises their achievement, and for this reason, we seek to produce pieces of rare artistic beauty.'

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Rio 2016 website

Photography courtesy Royal Brazilian Mint

'Good design,' said Dieter Rams, 'is as little design as possible.' A good point well made, but one that perhaps belies the current state of affairs. Successful design is not simply about form and function; there are patents and trademarks, copyrights and rights proceedings to take into account.

In an unprecedented move, over 100 design luminaries – including Rams himself, Louis Vuitton artistic director Nicolas Ghesquière, Sir Terence Conran, Lord Norman Foster, Jasper Morrison and Sir Paul Smith – have come together to pledge their support to design and its protection.

Catalysed by the long-fought patent battle between Apple and Samsung, the document – or amici curiae, to be technical – was compiled by Charles Mauro, president and founder of MauroNewMedia and presented by legal firm Orrick. Those who have signed the 62-page document are in no way party to the litigations at hand, wherein the US Supreme Court has been asked to reject Samsung’s appeal in the Apple v. Samsung case. This document is only meant to advise proceedings. 

The crux of the argument is that, as industrial design has segued from a purely utilitarian to an aesthetic industry, form has become as important as function. And this, in the eyes of design's game changers, is what needs protecting.

To that end, the document includes a brief history of the ethics and aesthetics of industrial design, including a look back at Raymond Loewy, who would become the father of American industrial design. Loewy's lasting legacy was his ability to take existing products and redesign them with a fresh, appealing aesthetic. Sigmund Gestetner's 'duplicating machine' was the first to receive the Loewy treatment, a slick redesign which resulted in soaring sales. The Roebuck & Co 'Coldspot' refrigerator followed suit, as did many other appliances and objects not mentioned in the amicus.

The now iconic Coca-Cola bottle comes into consideration as an example of how a product's visual design becomes the product itself in the minds of consumers. So too do American automobiles, including Henry Ford's Model T and General Motors' bold and bright Chevrolet. 'History,' summarises Mauro, 'teaches that visual design is the way to package, market and sell technological innovation, manufacturing knowhow, product reliability and performance expectations. Appearance becomes identified with the underlying functional features and with a particular level of product quality and safety.'
 
Intellectual property and protecting design patent rights against infringement are increasingly important subjects. It is not without reason that 111 renown and respected names in the design world – including Konstantin Grcic, Calvin Klein and Alber Elbaz, as well as Sir John Sorrell, Microsoft's executive creative director Raymond Riley and Bentley's director of design Stefan Sielaff – have given their support to this cause.
 
Form might not always follow function, but it will always be the gateway to user experience. It's all very well shrugging our collective shoulders and hoping that the dark arts of branding and marketing will ultimately prevail. But for the legions of skilled designers – whatever their field – the need for greater protection against shameless aping, lazy copying and outright theft has never been more apparent.

In line with the much anticipated Herzog & de Meuron extension (itself celebrated with the graphic representation by Peter Saville with Paul Hetherington and Morph,) Tate has given its logo, online branding and merchandising a rejuvenating lick of paint.

Tate Design Studio enlisted the help of London-based branding specialists North to reconfigure the museum's typographic expression. North decided early on that starting from scratch simply wasn't necessary. Jeremy Coysten, North partner explains, 'For us to propose getting rid of the identity system entirely would be irresponsible and a selfish act as designers. Instead, we built on the existing brand equity, refreshed and strengthened what was working well.'

Tate's highly recognisable logo was one of those branding aspects that 'just worked.' After looking into implementing an alternative, North decided to retain the logo's custom typeface, 'Tate Pro', but to control its usage more carefully.

Previously, Tate employed multiple versions of the logo, including both lower-case and capital letter options, along with versions with multiple font weights, aiming to visually promote the museum's 'Look again, Think again' philosophy. However, the new, streamlined system makes use of just one, consolidated logo, that succeeds across print, digital media and merchandising. This new concept also hopes to unify all four Tate locations (Tate Britain, Liverpool, St Ives, as well as Tate Modern).

We've already seen this new, colourful branding in full swing in Switch House's UXUS-designed Tate Modern shop. The vibrant, largely primary palette was chosen from the Tate Members commission by artist Martin Creed. These colourways will be refreshed every few years in collaboration with a new artist. So, just like the adaptable, modular retail experience, the updated visual identity has the capacity to evolve with the museum.

At such an exciting, busy time for the organisation, Tate's CMO Rob Baker took time to add, 'What North have created has allowed us to realise the potential of the current identity, ensuring it can exist seamlessly across all platforms in a confident and expressive way.' Confident is right. The new look is bravely simple, subtly achieved and quietly effective – it sees in the monumental Switch House opening with characteristic Tate class.

Jeremy Coysten, North partner explains, 'For us to propose getting rid of the identity system entirely would be irresponsible and a selfish act as designers. Instead, we built on the existing brand equity, refreshed and strengthened what was working well'

INFORMATION

For more information, visit Tate’s website

Photography: North

Antwerp's deSingel Arts Campus reveals their new architecturally-inspired graphics, designed by Why Not Associates

Last year, pioneering Belgian Arts Institution deSingel commissioned graphic design agency Why Not Associates to overhaul their campus’ visual identity, integrating its striking architecture into the new identity.

Creating branding based on a building is far from a new concept, but DeSingel’s Antwerp campus comprises a range of architectural styles, motifs and personalities, which complicates things somewhat. The original campus was designed by modernist architect Léon Stynen in the 60s and 70s, and a new, idiosyncratic building by Stéphane Beel was added in 2010. The branding would also need to unify the campus' diverse range of events. DeSingel is renowned for it's avante-garde programming, as well as being home to a music and drama college, the Flemish Architecture Institute and Radio 2 Antwerp. 

Why Not tackled the brief by ‘sending photographer Robbie Depuydt around the campus, asking him to find the most interesting angles and shapes,’ explains Why Not’s Andy Altmann. Depuydt returned with snapshots of the signature areas: the ‘blob’ shaped windows and the iconic Beel roofing. But he also returned with pictures of less recognisable spaces – the staircase in the atrium, for example, which turned out to be ‘just as interesting’, graphically.

By utilising the campus' hallmark features, alongside the less pronounced ones, the final concept was born. For the posters and advertising materials, outlines of these archictural details are used to crop press images, providing a distinct, vibrant border.

If the colour scheme looks random, that’s because it is. Altmann notes that finding a colour that would work alongside an ‘image of a solo violinist, as well as a performance-art troupe who dance around naked’ – is a bit of a challenge. Flexibly, DeSingel’s internal design team, have free-reign to pick whichever border colour fits with the individual artist being advertised.

The result is contemporary and forward-thinking, so it might come as a surprise that the new logo’s typeface was created by Herbert Binneweg back in 1979. It is the same typography seen to this day on the enormous signage pinned to Stynen’s building. Altmann notes that returning to the original lettering was ‘a bit of a brave move’. Indeed, there were initially ‘raised eyebrows’ from deSingel, who were attached to their interim logo. But, with the boundary-testing Why Not attitude firmly in place, Altmann won them round to the idea, stating, ‘It’s really quite nice, why not make use of it?’

INFORMATION

For more information, visit deSingel’s wesbite

Photography courtesy of Why Not Associates

ADDRESS

Desguinlei 25, 2018 Antwerpen, Belgium

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Alice Tye filters 'big M' Modernism with painterly approach to add another layer of texture and memory. As well as creating a 4m concertina book of paintings from a virtual stroll down La Jolla Road in Palm Springs, Tye has turned her eye to the cinematic depiction of Californian modernism. 'I want to communicate the sunny skies, swimming pools and palm trees,' she says, 'and also something darker hidden beneath the façade, the "dark underbelly of suburbia".' www.alicetye.com

Today's graphics graduates are faced with the daunting task of making their mark in a field that has expanded beyond the tactility of two-dimensional media into a digital realm of virtual space and interactivity

Writer: Jonathan Bell

Charlie Bakker's playful imagery combines photography, design and an architectural approach to space. 'I want to see how our perception of an object is influenced by its surroundings,' she explains. 'I'm playing with the fact that when we perceive our surroundings, object and space become inseparable.' Bakker's exploration has resulted in a series of exploded-imagery, skew-whiff perspectives that draw in the viewer. 'I believe it's important to question the daily and banal to create a greater understanding of who we are.' www.charliebakker.com

Russian designer Dmitry Bukreev draws a direct line between his portfolio work and Soviet Constructivist art and design of the 1920s. 'I used the model of Constructivism and updated it through a fashion catalogue of an imaginary designer named Varst,' he says, describing how his alter ego exists in a world of strict lines and geometric shapes. 'It's a work of art direction, styling and visual experiments,' he says. dbukreev.tumblr.com

Herman has developed a calm yet authoritative aesthetic for his short films and graphics. The 'observational collage' shown here illustrates his obsessive deconstruction of stock suburban imagery, enhanced through the serene but menacing grey palette and subtle animation. It was created as part of 'Meeting Place', a short animation exploring the realm of the social network via the work of influential technologist Sherry Turkle. 'Homes are collected in a huddle, yet the inhabitants are hopelessly distant from one another, restricted by walls and hypnotised by their screens,' he says. www.harveyherman.co.uk

Berlin Between is the identity for a documentary film charting the city's early post-reunification years. 'The inspirations were the urban forms and DIY visuals of the Berlin subculture at the time,' says Seiffert, who created a handmade letterset for the project. Seiffert has always taken a socially conscious approach; her Twitter Compendium is a 600 page volume that attempts to contextualise the flurry of one-liner political debate about the new digital future. www.isabelseiffert.net

Deconstruction, image and intention all play a part in the work of Kieran Startup, who creates architectural imagery blended through the unholy lens of Photoshop filters, which degrade, corrupt and otherwise interfere with the clean lines of Mies van der Rohe. He pairs his Deconstructed Architecture series with Deconstructed Hockney, shown here, in an 'experimental attempt to remove the splash from the image in a systematic and incremental way.' www.kieranstartup.co.uk

Students on ÉCAL's newly minted 'art direction' degree, Michal Florence Schorro and Prune Simon-Vermot work together to shape experimental compositions forming from strange constellations of everyday objects. 'Our main interest lies in taking 3D objects and translating them into abstract compositions of texture, colour, and light,' says Schorro. The course enables the collaborative duo to shape an emerging aesthetic that is fresh, unconventional and truly unique. www.prune-michal.ch

In creating the identity for Stockholm's Museum of Dance, Moa Wilking drew a new language of physical movement, partly inspired by the collections at the museum and at Les Archives International de la Danse. For the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week print shown here, she interpreted work by Beckmans fashion students in photography, exploring how each particular piece came about. Wiking ultimately hopes to head for a more multidisciplinary future. www.moawiking.com

Ryan Neil's geometric imagery is based on the simple architectural structure of his college degree show, which used minimal materials in order to maximise display space. 'The idea was to provide a neutral space for student work while letting us build a richer spatial environment for visitors,' says Neil, who presented his organisation diagram as a strong graphic identity. Now Tokyo-based, Neil is looking to strike out with his own set of cross-pollinating studios, keeping the collaborative process alive. www.ryan-neil.com

Another designer with an architectural approach, Thorsteinsson builds 3D models of vanished structures and laboriously constructed posters for a college lecture series. Taking as a starting point the typographic inscription on the cenotaph in front of Yale's Beinecke Library, Thorsteinsson has delved into typeface design for the posters, creating an evolutionary model that develops over the year, 'appropriate to the content of the lecture.' His future work will expand this fusion of graphics with built environments. www.stefanthorsteinsson.dk

Benjamin Muzzin's 'Full Turn' video makes use of a unique way of displaying image - a spinning flat screen that gives the impression of a solid 3D object. 'I wanted to explore the notion of the third dimension,' says Muzzin, 'to try to get out of the usual frame of a flat screen.' Sticking two screens back to back and spinning them at high speeds builds a picture of a dancing 'kinetic light sculpture'. www.benjaminmuzzin.ch

Bold text and bold statements give Maryam Fanni's unmissable visuals instant recognition factor. Creator of several works examining the effects of ongoing privatisation, state-sponsored nostalgia and the politics of identity, Fanni is overtly political in her work. 'My practice requires never-ending collective and collaborative research and organisation to form resistance against neoliberal and fascist tendencies,' she says. Her idealist aesthetic is sharply formed to support progressive causes. www.maryamfanni.se

'As a graphic design student, the very basic thing you learn is typography and typefaces,' says Calvin Kwok, lamenting that there are few contemporary guides to using Chinese characters. 'I intend to develop a style guide containing basic Chinese typography knowledge, which will be distributed in print and available online.' His research has taken him deep into orthographic territory as he 'searches for new possibilities in Chinese typography from the root of Chinese characters and calligraphy.' cargocollective.com/cliko

Jessica Svendsen's series of lecture posters makes subtle allusions to the work of visiting artists. For example, the laser-cut stencil used to make the poster for photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia evokes a 1978 photograph taken while diCorcia was at Yale himself. 'The lecture poster for photographer Todd Hido uses a projected grid of light photographs to reference the light sources in his colour prints,' she explains. While in her poster for Leo Rubinfien she uses 'undulating letterforms and colours' reminiscent of the photographs in his series A Map of the East. www.jessicasvendsen.com

'3D is such an amazing tool with endless possibilities. Only your imagination is the limit,' says Dominic Plaza. Taking inspiration from futuristic technologies and abstract art, Plaza builds slick, intricate films that create order from chaos. 'All my projects are small learning steps in the process of creating, and also a bridge to bigger, more challenging projects.' He hopes for a future in the VFX industry or his own motion design studio. behance.com/dominicplaza

Hugh Cowling describes his cover for the eighth edition of Falmouth's portfolio publication, Illustrated Quotes and Sayings, as 'bold and fairly impartial.' 'I didn't want it to be biased towards one particular area,' he says. He draws inspiration from Reid Miles's Blue Note record covers and Milton Glaser, and his portfolio includes a suite of illustrations for the poems of Gillian Clarke, including this image of a beetroot, rendered in watercolour and pencil. Cowling is already working on book covers for Bloomsbury. www.hughcowling.co.uk

Jyotish Sonowal's diploma project resulted in the creation of a Bengali typeface, developed in collaboration with the Indian Type Foundry. 'I was unhappy at the lack of weights in current Bengali fonts, which forced newspaper designers to use several typography malpractices [stretching, force bold, forced italics],' he explains. Using traditional calligraphy as a starting point, he came up with five different weights, designed for many applications. Sonowal continues to work on Indic typefaces. behance.net/jyotish13

Min Ji Lee has created an interactive typeface called 'Transtype'. 'It changes its form from abstract shapes to black letters in response to sound,' she says, explaining how the letterforms derive from technical construction processes. Her other project explores the concept of neutrality in typeface design, creating Caslon5 Grotesk through the addition of 'unfamiliar elements' to a face inspired by William Caslon. www.minjilee.com

'Nordic by Noma' was a collaboration between Morten Rosendal, Emil Bjerregaard Juul and Hans Pelle Jart. Together they designed a series of events for the restaurant Noma. 'The seven events will take place in nature and get you close to the ingredients that have been used in the dinner,' says Rosendal. 'It's an attempt to improve our understanding of food.' Their site is refreshingly clean, typographically driven and rich with natural imagery. studentshow.com/gallery/Nordic-by-noma/7951157

Nikolas Brückmann and Yuriy Matveev collaborate under the banner of Sure.Is on graphics and motion imagery, making them the perfect choice to create an identity for the B3 Moving Image Biennial at Hochschule für Gestaltung. By adapting old fractal generating software, they created a rich blast of psychedelic imagery. 'We were aiming for a visually strong analogy that goes beyond the visual and also plays with the viewer's perception,' they explain. 'We generated a huge variety of fractals and went with three final key visuals. It was great fun to look at those hypnotising images for days.' sure.is

Illustrator Tamsin Nagel undertakes detailed studies of what she calls 'natural forms and mundane objects,' closely observing texture, colour and line. 'I'm inspired by stories, films, nature and anything that's a bit "off'",' she says, ' things that seem ordinarily beautiful on the surface but are actually dark or unsettling the closer you look.' She captures this sense of unease in her work. 'I love a good pencil,' she says. 'The plan is to continue drawing and being inspired by my strange, sometimes mundane surroundings.' tamsin-nagel.tumblr.com

The Fox is a publication without barriers, designed by Mathew Whittington as an exploration of printing as a new form of public space. 'I'm interested in the way users who experience these systems renegotiate the objects and spaces in ways that deviate from the primary directives of the designer,' says Whittington. www.mathewwhittington.com

For the second time this month, the Islington-based design store  Twentytwentyone has paid tribute to the centenary of the birth of Robin Day, this time with the production of the ‘Robin Day 100 Designs’ poster.

Designed by Studio Fernando Gutierrez and launched with the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation – set up in 2012 by the couple’s daughter Paula – the poster features images of 100 of Day's seminal designs, as well as a wealth of portraiture; many of the images are drawn from the Foundation’s archive and have never been seen before.

Day, who died in 2010, was one of 20th century British furniture design's most lauded practitioners. He received his big break in 1948, when he and fellow designer Clive Latimer won the International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), an accolade that kickstarted an estimable 70 year career that saw Day design the Royal Festival Hall’s seating for the Festival of Britain in 1951 and produce a prolific body of work for clients such as Hille (in particular the hugely successful 1963 'Polypropylene Chair'), Pye, BOAC and the Barbican. He was awarded the OBE in 1983. 

Day’s meticulous approach to furniture design was both practically and philosophically driven. As well as stating that 'a good design should fulfil its purpose well, be soundly constructed and should express in its design this purpose and construction', the designer also maintained an earnest belief in the power of design to fundamentally improve the lives of those around him. 

Pictured left: Robin Day working on the 'Q-stak Chair', 1953 – a one-piece moulded design with economy in mind. Courtesy of the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation. Pictured right: Day in his studio, c. 1949. Courtesy of the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation

Left: 'Polypropylene Chair' mark II, 1964 and 'Polypropylene Armchair', 1967. Day and Hille pioneered the use of the material for seating. Courtesy of the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation. Pictured right: Day designed signage, such as this example, for the Festival of Britain, 1951, as well as furniture. Courtesy of Design Research Unit

Robin and Lucienne Day worked as joint design consultants to John Lewis from 1962 – 1987. Pictured is Robin with a model of the John Lewis Oxford Street restaurant, c. 1973. Courtesy of the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation

Left: Day designed a number of radios and television sets for electronics firm Pye. Photography: Mann Bros. Courtesy of the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation. Pictured right: Day's original 'Reclining Chair', 1952 – now rebooted as a centenary edition by Twentytwentyone. Courtesy of the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation

Robin Day designed all the seating for the Royal Festival Hall, the first major new modern building after the Second World War. Pictured is the 'Lounge Chair' he created for the space in 1951. Courtesy of twentytwentyone

ADDRESS

Twentytwentyone
274 – 275 Upper Street
London, N1 2UA

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Tokyo-based design firm E&Y’s 'Tube Map Radio' – a collaboration with the Japanese designer Yuri Suzuki – attempts to bridge the gap between the ever increasing complexities of modern technology and the needs of its users. The radio is devoid of any casing, so the operator has to interact directly with the exposed circuit board which, as the name indicates, is inspired by Harry Beck's original 1933 London Tube map. Fittingly, Beck – a technical draughtsman – initially had the idea for his map when working on a circuit diagram, but it was Suzuki who came up with the idea of turning the tube lines into conductive tracks and stations into circuit vias and other components necessary to building a simple FM/AM radio. 

Thus, an antenna extends from the Metropolitan Line's Watford station, the tuner dial can be found on the Central Line at White City and the volume control is located at Liverpool Street station; charmingly, a speaker is installed near Marble Arch (at Speaker's Corner, natch) and a battery represents Battersea Power Station. 

Suzuki originally came up with the idea for a commission by the London Design Museum (where he was designer in residence in 2012). He wanted to make consumer electronics more comprehensible; printed circuit boards used to be rather simple affairs but with today's electronic 'black-boxes' it is hard to get one's head around what goes on inside an iPad or laptop. By bringing the components into the open and using the familiar Tube map as the conductor, Suzuki and E&Y hope to dispel some of the complexities of the electronics and them more accessible. We also think it would look great on any wall. 

When Karl Zahn debuted his ‘Momentum’ collection of mobiles and stabiles during last year's NYCxDesign week, it was pretty much love at first sight. This year, the young designer has come back with an assortment of new additions to the series that are installed in the showroom windows of custom hardware manufacturer ER Butler & Co in New York. Hung in four large ornamental vitrines, Zahn’s new pieces expand on the ideas of movement and balance that he so poetically addressed last year.

This year’s objects expose an even more refined way about things than their predecessors. 'I wanted to clarify some of the concepts and make things clean, work well and try some different compositions and scales,' explains Zahn. Simple hanging pieces, such as a pair of flat wooden semi-circles, take on a noble aura thanks to the fine, near-invisible chains that connect them as they suspend in the air. In another vitrine, a hammered brass ellipse floats under a smooth, wafer plate of brass, exuding a jewellery-like preciousness just on a larger scale.

More than just beautiful objects in space, the unseen appeal of Zahn’s pieces lies in the fact that when touched, the ornamental sculptures take on a life of their own. Polished brass wings teeter on top of wooden teardrop forms, while a larger scale variation of ‘The Trees and the Clouds’ from last year is comprised of wood pendulums which are encircled by plates of metal that hover closely, but never touch. Some even reveal characters, with their stoic rocking or graceful turns.

Still an active designer in Lindsey Adelman’s studio, Zahn’s self-motivated 16-piece collection includes several spherical lights of his own creation. Many of the works also toy with the ideas of light and reflections. 'Playing with polished surfaces, you get a liveliness just by the reflective quality of the light. They activate a room by flickering all over the ceiling. It’s a different way of making things move, without actually making things move.'

Lighting designer by day and artist by night, Karl Zahn is just the kind of double act we like to see.

ADDRESS

55 Prince Street
New York, 10012

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When Charles Dickens' Mr. Brownlow tells Oliver Twist, 'There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best part,' he was clearly referring to lousy writing and not decorative value. That line, however, assumes new meaning upon entering the Sonia Rykiel flagship at 175 Boulevard Saint-Germain, where 50,000 books comprise a novel pop-up store concept.

Conceived by Julie de Libran, the brand's artistic director, in collaboration with publisher-director Thomas Lenthal and artist André Saraïva, the renovated space reads as an 'exaggeration' that makes an impact on many levels.

Purely in visual terms, the repetition of the pale wood shelving from floor to ceiling becomes a dimensional nod to the signature Rykiel stripes. If the arrangement of paperbacks seems more random than a rainbow gradient or author's last name, it's also more deliberate than the average home bookcase. Here, the titles seem to advance and recede like ridged patterning. Along corners, the covers face outward as if following the curvature of the artisan-built library.

For those who have not spent enough time on the Left Bank, this famed pocket of Paris is best known for its rich history and backdrop for writers, artists, auteurs and their overlapping social circles. Ms. de Libran, who has seamlessly settled into her role since her arrival last June, sought to reframe the golden age of Saint-Germain as it relates back to the brand circa 2015. 'It wasn't just about clothes but about the atmosphere and being able to spend some time to enjoy,' she told Wallpaper*. 'I thought it was important to come back to the universe of Sonia Rykiel.'

Hence the carpet designed by Saraïva leading up to the mezzanine with its motif of sassy lips, cigarettes, books and pencils (last year, he created a rather risqué floor covering for the nightclub Castel.) Framed in high-gloss red, this upper space feels part-boudoir, part-lounge-and appropriate setting for the eveningwear. Large format catalogues, many out of print and originating from London's Idea Books, become art accents instead of an all-over statement.

Back downstairs, a woven and striped fur throw adds a characteristically insouciant vibe to the vintage black leather sofa with its more masculine, Mies-ian look. From there, you notice that certain patterns emerge when scanning: the majority of titles were published in the 1960s-70s, exactly the period when Sonia Rykiel emerged as a key figure in Parisian ready-to-wear. Beyond those defining years - whether in fiction or fashion - the selection includes a respectable portion of the French canon: Emile Zola, Victor Hugo, Stendhal, Colette, Simone de Beauvoir and more.

Lest this start to sound too erudite, the overall environment emanates with lively plot twists. In the windows facing out to the street, video screens project a larger-than-life virtual tableau of characters sitting outside a café-reading, drinking wine and yes, even smoking. Among the group: Madame Rykiel's daughter Nathalie and granddaughter Lola. During one visit, the background music cycled through Donna Summer. Sneak a peak at the upstairs dressing rooms where a small selection of tomes might make you blush. Ms. de Libran's friend, well-known perfumer Daniela Andrier, developed an enveloping, in-store scent. 'I didn't want it to feel like an aged library; I wanted a feminine space that was very fresh and clean,' de Libran says of her directive, citing notes of vetiver and iris flower and hinting that it may serve as a starting point for an eventual perfume.

But as a concept, the store also presents a salient commentary on what's happening around it, namely, that the venerable booksellers of the area are gradually disappearing.

'We need the history as much as we need the fashion,' she says. 'I don't want to say that the [area] has turned to fashion shops but it's important that we respect that. It's always been part of the culture here… I'm not saying we open a library but maybe there are ways to mix these ideas together.'

While a similar book theme will soon be repeated at the Aoyama location (end of April) and then London (mid-May), Libran reminds that it is a not a permanent strategy (admittedly, it's not the easiest idea to replicate across all locations)-although she is certain that elements will remain.'

And if you were curious, the books are there for perusing. Ms. de Libran even tells the story of a friend who confessed to taking one home, too engrossed to leave it behind. Her response: 'I'd love if you bring it back but then you can take another book.' Needless to say, the same policy does not extend to the clothes.

We’d like you to meet Wallpaper* blue, the new colour developed by creative director Sarah Douglas during a fruitful year-long collaboration with one of the UK’s oldest paper companies, James Cropper.

The new hue – an unusual dark petrol blue – first made its appearance in a slightly different form when Douglas specified a palette of 12 new colours as part of Wallpaper’s 2013 redesign. ‘I wanted to develop it further,’ she explains, ‘and the opportunity to work with James Cropper came at just the right time.’

The family-owned company, founded in 1845 and based in the Lake District village of Burneside, is one of the world’s leading producers of coloured and specialist papers, and works with many of the biggest brands in fashion and design – but this is the first time it has developed a bespoke paper for a magazine. ‘It’s been a really fruitful collaboration,’ Douglas says, ‘and I’ve loved meeting people who are so passionate about what they do.’

The making of Wallpaper* Blue: watch the film

Working closely with current chairman Mark Cropper and his colour specialists, Douglas explored the possibilities of the existing blue, and ended up taking it in a subtly new direction. As she says, ‘The new Wallpaper* paper colour may look at first glance like a dark, almost navy blue, but it also contains a surprising amount of yellow, which gives it added richness and warmth. It feels modern and has a certain austerity, but it’s also a strong colour that to me feels very Wallpaper* and really reflects the strength of the brand.’ 

The new paper colour is already being used for all Wallpaper* stationery, but there are also plans afoot to launch a range of Wallpaper* notebooks in the same hue: watch this space.

jamescropper.com

Sunny Park’s playful portfolio revelled in the display and concealment of information, experimenting with the risograph printer to develop posters that transcend its technical limitations. ‘The sense of not knowing the final output is something I tried to achieve throughout the program, and now,’ she says. Large-scale prints were achieved through folding paper and reprinting, while information is concealed within the folds of her densely layered posters.

Today's graphics graduates are faced with the daunting task of finding their feet in a field that has expanded way beyond the tactility of two-dimensional media into a digital realm of virtual space and interactivity.

Writer: Jonathan Bell

Working with fellow student Koos Breen, Suzanne Bakkum created a vibrant poster based on collaboration, rules and creative freedom. ‘It’s exciting to let the pattern overrule conventional rules of typography,’ she says.

Angela Hadrill’s Vivarium is a self-published book on the theme of rich, all-enveloping nature and humankind’s imagined place within it. The illustrator’s technique combines watercolour and gouache, carefully layered to evoke lush landscapes. She’s currently working on more book illustrations for both children and adults.

Filiation is a personal project about the designer’s late mother, comprising a knitted canvas that marks feelings and the passage of time. Victoire Coyon drew inspiration from Sheila Hicks, Sophie Calle and the simplicity of the Bauhaus and Swiss school.

Marina Muun constructs richly atmospheric worlds with her simple, pared back illustrations. She also prints onto silk; these pieces feature geometric arrangements and abstracted colours. ‘Silk is a more tactile, less precious but still luxurious method of creating a print,’ she says.

Daniel Frota’s In Praise Of Opacity is a detailed graphic treatment of the trials and quirks of translating texts. The language- obsessed designer likens his role to that of a translator seeking authorship.

‘I’m influenced by the theme of the urban environment,’ says Brian Lo, whose detailed illustrations chronicle the intricacies and inconsistencies of the architecture that surrounds us. His technical style creates a tantalisingly precise vision of the world.

Inspired by authors such as Italo Calvino, Tom Radclyffe uses Sharpie pens on paper to assemble layered cityscapes. Of Blue Cities for Crystal Globes, he says ‘each drawing was produced organically with no plan, almost as if discovering the landscape.’

Jasper Fitzgerald’s woven print experiments draw on religious art and artefacts. ‘How can geometric form and repetitive pattern allude to something grandiose?’ he asks. The illustrator works with intricately cut paper, collages and 3D constructions.

Designer/typographer Emilie Benvegnin explores the role of heraldry, focusing on symbols of Swiss Cantons. Her Dictionnaire Héraldique features coats of arms as still-life photographs, creating a publication that brings this ancient art up to date.

Jingjing Shen's work has already garnered acclaim - she won a 2014 Adobe Design Achievement Award. Working exclusively with photographic processes spliced with physical deconstruction of the image, she draws inspiration from 'artists who produce new visual experience and new forms of communication and interaction.' Her technique of folding, creasing and ripping her finished prints adds another layer of meaning and intrigue.

Maxime Ravisy’s Postcard series plays with a full deck of technology to reinvigorate this timeless form of communication. ‘The postcard is an emotional object, that tells us a story, is accessible and universal,’ he says. His research took her deep into the heart of cliché and immersion in tourist culture, but the end results play with postal art, interaction and satellite imagery. ‘I feel motivated to create useful and poetic things that connect people.’

Arun Gogna’s Let the sample be your guide uses visual quotations to tell the story of (aural) sampling culture. ‘It plays with reproduction, repetition and the consequence of degraded imagery, turning the book into a visual interpretation of sampling and the processes within it,’ the designer explains, ‘the book is experimental and abstracted in design but structured and stripped down in content.’ Drawing inspiration from correlations between objects, places and stories, Gogna’s work takes a walk through modern visual culture.

Remind me to forget is Johanne Roten’s visual essay on the process of remembering. The graphic design student has developed a sparse graphical style, full of geometric symbolism and bold blocks of colour. ‘I like a strange and Surrealist atmosphere,’ she says, citing Magritte and Miró as particular favourites.

Together with Phaedra Longhurst, Robbie Blundell developed the branding for Brighton’s graduate shows, illustrating the sense of progression and evolution over the three-year course. ‘I’m interested in how design can concern itself with current socio-political issues and reflect these in an essential manner,’ he says, and projects like Under the Pavement are explicitly political in the way they present information (in this case the Snowden case) to a ‘largely apathetic audience.’ Big data, bad debts and the power of print come together.

Houman Momtazian’s poster project was generated from a workshop by Urs Lehni and Lex Trüb and uses elements of the designers’ work. Each poster incorporates a name, printing using a risograph printer as a small-scale publishing venture. In the future, Momtazian hopes to blend graphic design with programming – ‘the ‘screen’ has become the default way in which we experience and perceive the world.’

Graphic designer Blam - of Print-process and Blanka - recently tapped 100 design luminaries to render Bowie’s name in a typeface of their choosing or creation. The results have been gathered onto a limited release print in anticipation of the impending 'David Bowie is' retrospective at the V&A, opening on 23 March.

‘The changing faces of Bowie’ poster features contributions from the likes of Pentagram, Trevor Jackson, Anthony Burrill, Stockholm Design Lab and Wallpaper*, the fonts as stylistically eclectic as the musician they pay tribute to. The prints will be available to buy from the museum’s shop, priced at £45. Each artwork comes with a certificate and an insert with insights from the contributors on their submissions.

Here's something to perplex the tourists amid the slew of London-themed paraphernalia emerging this summer. Graphic designer Melissa Price has produced a set of two maps of the city; but instead of featuring its streets, the focus is on its underlying geographic features.

Price, who works for graphic design consultants, Cartlidge Levene, has stripped back the built environment to reveal the lie of the land beneath, showing how the Thames and its tributaries have shaped the city's topography.

Based on Ordnance Survey's DTM (Digital Terrain Model) dataset, the River and tributaries poster shows the small rivers, streams and brooks that feed into the Thames as it snakes its way through London. Many of these are now trapped under ground or have been channelled into the sewer system.

The Hills and valleys poster, meanwhile, shows how London neighbourhoods have taken their names from their geographic location, such as Kensal Rise and Muswell Hill.

Price's alternative portraits of the city come screen-printed in metallic silver with blue and green on GF Smith Naturalis Absolute Matt White 160gsm paper.

If the last few months has proven anything, it's that no one is safe; even the high and mighty can fall. IT Factory, a Danish internet superbrand was very suddenly declared bankrupt in late 2008. Days later the CEO went missing in Dubai, only to turn up a few weeks after that in LA and so unfolded a $170 million fraud investigation.

One of the less-documented but saddest things, in our eyes, was the fact that Jacob Jensen Design, barely minutes before the bankruptcy was announced, had completed a brilliant new corporate identity for the brand.

Advocates of the waste not, want not approach though, the completed corporate identity of IT Factory has been snapped up by Denmark’s Kunst Industri Museet.

Everything from the early sketches to the stationary, office interior design to the website proposals are now on display and make for a neat insight into how the process of corporate identity is developed.

‘Rarely have we worked with a more quality orientated company’, said Timothy Jacob Jensen. ‘It was shock and sadness for us that the company went bankrupt in such a dramatic and sudden way. We strongly hope this exhibition will be visited for its professional appeal and not only to see “the palace after the revolution”.’

ADDRESS

Kunstindustrimuseet
Bredgade 68
1260 Copenhagen

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As Quantum of Solace gets ready to roll out, there’s the usual glut of derisory articles about the extreme levels of product placement in the film.

There are few surprises when it comes to the big brands starring alongside Daniel Craig (Virgin Atlantic, Aston Martin, Sony, Omega, Ford and Coca Cola Zero to name a handful) but what caught our attention was the inclusion of a few design companies in there too, principally B&B Italia.

Click here to read our Q&A with Quantum of Solace set decorator Anna Pinnock

Unlike say Coca Cola or Sony’s instantly recognisable presence, even the most die hard design enthusiast would be pushed to spot a B&B Italia bed if Bond (or one of his ladies) was cavorting over it in a state of undress.

So we took the opportunity to track down the film’s set decorator, Anna Pinnock, to find out exactly what a brand like B&B Italia stands to gain from getting in on the product placement act, and while we’re at it, how one goes about ‘decorating’ a film set across five countries.

She took us through her job from mood board to post-production furniture sale and told us how the film has taken a leaf out of the seminal Ken Adams sets of the 1960s and 1970s. All of which seemed like a good excuse, were one needed, to revisit some of our favourite Adams sets from the past.

Click here to see highlights from the Ken Adams' Bond era