Rick Poynor

A rare example of a book about graphic design—in this case roadside signs and lettering—where the investigation is conducted visually by means of photographs, diagrams, and annotation, as well as in longer texts. In a typical spread about the formal etymology of a motel sign in Amarillo, Texas, each part of the sign is explained in words and pictures. Representing eight years of research, Mahar’s 2002 study is an obvious descendant of Learning from Las Vegas. Its exceptionally detailed and cleverly sustained analysis is more illuminating than a purely text-led discussion would be, making it a paradigm for future visually inventive design studies.

When it appeared in the mid-1990s, Lupton and Miller’s highly original collection of essays had a tremendous impact on a generation of young designers committed to critical reflection and writing. Informed but never overburdened by critical theory, its topics include deconstruction, modern hieroglyphs, the relationship of “low” and “high” visual culture, and the visual representation of African Americans. The authors designed their own text and the book remains unusual to this day—one has to wonder why—for taking such a highly visual approach to design criticism. (Full disclosure: I wrote the book’s introduction.)

I reviewed this book for Design Observer when it appeared in 2008, in a long dialogue with a colleague, and expressed some misgivings. It’s an important intervention in the history of graphic design, however, that places much more emphasis on the social factors and forces that shape the practice, and on the conditions of production, than had been seen in earlier histories. Aimed primarily at student readers—it’s well illustrated, but has a textbook feel—this critical guide is also an essential read for anyone who seeks a more rounded understanding of how graphic design has operated in post-industrial societies.

In 1988, when this arrestingly titled book came out, Brody was a phenomenon: admired, envied and resented for his precocious success—a retrospective at one of the world’s major museums and a career monograph for a designer barely into his 30s. Twenty-three years later, the book is still in print and Brody, after a long period of working quietly, is once again in the public eye. The book remains a unique graphic document of its moment in the postmodern 1980s when design and style were inseparably linked and a new kind of graphic design star was emerging. There is rich material here—both images and text—for critical reevaluation.

I could hardly leave this title out. It was the first graphic design book I owned, a groundbreaking attempt at synthesis in its time, and an exciting window opening on to what was, for me, a previously unknown realm of visual history. I still have a fondness for that first 1983 edition, but readers interested in the evolution of the late Philip Meggs’s perspectives on graphic design history should seek out the third edition (1998). Since that volume appeared, design historian Alston Purvis has updated the book again. It’s probably best consulted now in combination with other revisionist histories (see Drucker and McVarish, Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide).

Glaser was the first graphic designer I knew by name, while still in high school—I saw his signature on a book cover and it stuck because I liked his art. He is one of the most important and inspirational designer/image-makers of the past 50 years. Art is Work (2000) is highly recommended, but I opt here for his first monograph from 1973 because of the immense chutzpah, visual energy, and style with which it captured its era. Look at what’s possible when a designer can draw. Milton Glaser: Graphic Design is a book that anyone working in the field ought to know.

The designer monograph is too often an unambitious genre that doesn’t set out to do any more than enshrine and celebrate its subject. This book about the French designer Pierre Bernard, co-founder of Grapus, shows what can happen when the writer has a clearly developed critical point of view. Hugues Boekraad, its Dutch author, is one of the most insightful critics of graphic design in the field today—his writing deserves to be better known outside the Netherlands. Unusually for a designer monograph, the pages are designed to be read with ease.

Another title that can justly be termed a classic. A critical influence on at least two generations of graphic designers, Pioneers was one of the first surveys to introduce the work of modernist typographers—Lissitzky, Van Doesburg, Schwitters, Werkman, Zwart, Schuitema, Rodchenko, Moholy-Nagy, Bayer, Tschichold—to a wider audience, and it’s certainly the best known. Spencer’s first edition (1969) is still collected as a beautiful object in its own right. A reformatted edition appeared in 1982 and this was reissued in 2004 (I contributed a foreword). Spencer’s introductory survey was long ago superseded as a history, but it remains a key text in the historiography of graphic design.

This monograph is another highly personal choice. Kalman was the most inspirational graphic designer I have met, a dynamo who made the entire activity seem more exciting, risky, and relevant. Perverse Optimist, published in 1998, performs a subtle kind of ventriloquism. Kalman handed over responsibility for both the editing and design—he was by that time ill—yet his voice, attitude, humor, and spirit resonate through the project, which opens with a characteristic, Colors-like visual essay. The book assembles a crowd of witnesses to speak about the man and his work (here again, I must own up to being one of them) while displaying his visual thinking in the strongest light.