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Rick Poynor
Recent Essays | Biography | About | Books | Other Essays | Public Speaking | Uncanny | Other Exhibitions | Contact

Archive: June 2012


What Does Critical Writing Look Like?

 The first cohort of students graduating from the Royal College of Art’s two-year Critical Writing in Art & Design MA have presented their final projects at an evening symposium and in a degree-show display. It was an opportunity to see early signs of the direction this unique course, open to writers coming from art or design or both, is taking. Their work is a reminder that design and production are inextricably linked to writing.

READ MORE | COMMENTS (1)

Updating the Maps of Graphic Design History

 The appearance of Occasional Papers’ Graphic Design: History in the Writing, edited by Belgian designer Sara De Bondt and French design historian Catherine de Smet, is a heartening sign that the project of graphic design history is being taken up by new hands — as it must be if it’s going to develop. The field needs to inspire an inquisitive new generation of map-makers to enter this still only patchily charted terrain.

READ MORE | COMMENTS

On My Shelf: A History of the Machine

 Erik Nitsche’s A History of the Machine is one of the most beautifully measured and visually lucid books I own. It belongs to a highly collectable series of 24 volumes titled The New Illustrated Library of Science and Invention, launched in 1962 in Geneva by his company, Erik Nitsche International. The books are landmarks of modern, low-cost, mass-market, educational publication design that have rarely been surpassed.

READ MORE | COMMENTS (1)
Rick Poynor is a writer, critic, lecturer and curator, specialising in design, media and visual culture. He founded Eye, co-founded Design Observer, and contributes columns to Eye and Print. His latest book is Uncanny: Surrealism and Graphic Design.


Recent Book


Uncanny Surrealism and Graphic Design
Uncanny: Surrealism and Graphic Design
Rick Poynor
Moravian Gallery, 2010
More books by Rick Poynor >>


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DESIGN OBSERVER JOBS








BLOGROLL


Ballardian
Bldgblog (Geoff Manaugh)
Book Works
David Byrne
Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacies
Click Opera (Momus)
Creative Review
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Sit Down Man, You’re a Bloody Tragedy (Owen Hatherley)
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21C The Future is Here
UbuWeb
Wellcome Collection

RICK POYNOR: RECOMMENDED BOOKS


Shoot! Existential Photography
Clément Chéroux, editor

Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change
Philip Brookman

What is Contemporary Art?
e-flux Journal

Iaspis Forum on Design and Critical Practice: The Reader
Martin Frostner & Magnus Ericson et al., editors

Volume: Writings on Graphic Design, Music, Art, and Culture
Kenneth FitzGerald & Rudy VanderLans

Song and Circumstance: The Work of David Byrne from Talking Heads to the Present
Sytze Steenstra

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
Mark Fisher

No Return: Journeys in the Holocaust
Romek Marber

Turning Pages: Editorial Design for Print Media
Robert Klanten et al., editors

Remainder
Tom McCarthy

RICK POYNOR: OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS


Inside Job
Charles Ferguson

Blow Out
Brian De Palma

Songs from the Second Floor
Roy Andersson

Red Desert
Michelangelo Antonioni

MisinforMation
COI/Mordant Music

Ace in the Hole
Billy Wilder

The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema
Slavoj Žižek