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

Archive: August 2012


The Never-ending Struggle against Clutter

 Anything can become clutter, including books. I took this picture a few weeks ago in a used bookstore in Nice. In the cavernous space, more like some mad entropic warehouse than a shop, the books rose from the floor in great looming cliffs of paper. This impenetrable grotto of print didn't look remotely like a functioning shop. It was an extreme public example of the condition of compulsive hoarding that afflicts many of us now.

READ MORE | COMMENTS (3)

On My Shelf: André Breton's Nadja

 Soon after he started designing book covers for Le Livre de poche, Pierre Faucheux learned that the imprint planned to issue a pocket edition of Nadja by André Breton. The memoir, published in 1928, is a classic of Surrealist literature often thought to be the text that best expresses the Surrealist mentality. Faucheux knew Breton and called him. The Livre de poche edition remains the best visual interpretation of the book.

READ MORE | COMMENTS (4)

Sending Signals about Political Graphics

 I can’t think of any other design or visual arts publication quite like Signal in form and content. “Journal” is exactly the right word here because Signal is half way between a magazine and a book in appearance and tone. Its dinky size, combined with astutely pitched, matt-laminated cover designs, make it immediately intriguing and attractive. Everything about its presentation says: read this (because it will be a pleasure).

READ MORE | COMMENTS
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
D-Crit
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Eye
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Frieze
Guardian: Art & Design
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Strange Harvest (Sam Jacob)
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