Graphic design

Graphic design

It's easy, for me at least, to be cynical about the state of design. Our visual environment can feel bland, everything from brands to buildings homogenized around similar styles. The ever-impending AI takeover can make the future of this work uncertain. My reading around design this year tended to focus on two things: looking back and looking ahead. In looking through design history, I was looking for glimpses of alternative ways of designing: the experimental, the absurd, the weird.

Barbara is an RC6300. Born in 1993, she's relatively old for a Risograph printing machine. She lived in a church basement in Beaverton until she was sold for $50 at an estate sale in 2013. A few years later, Barbara landed in the Kerns neighborhood at the Risograph print shop and studio Outlet-the shop's first, though Outlet founder Kate Bingaman-Burt has since added three Riso sisters to the family: Janet, Corita, and Lil' Tina.

Though best known for his psychologically intense " Übermahlungen," or overpaintings, Rainer's experiments touched on Surrealism, minimalism, and Abstract Expressionism, among other genres; throughout, he remained firm in his conviction that art should confront pain, suffering, and violence. Process, which he viewed as a meditative practice, was of tremendous import to him, and he frequently pushed himself to exhaustion to achieve the state in which he could best express himself.

She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in medical textbooks, says David Crowley, curator of a new retrospective of Schubert's work at Muzeum Susch, in eastern Switzerland. She was right in the middle of that practice She was totally unfazed about being in dissections. Her anatomical drawings, notes Marika Kuzmicz, the museum's curator, are still published in handbooks for medical students in Croatia today.

Minard would likely be unknown today, if Marey had not so aptly said his flow map of Napoleon's March on Moscow "defied the pen of the historian by its brutal eloquence." Funkhouser picked this up, and then Tufte anointed it as "the greatest graphic ever drawn". But in his time, Minard was just an engineer working for the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees (School of Bridges and Roads) in Paris. The corpus of his work lay buried in the archives of the ENPC.

Circa 1450, the creative community was jolted. The printing press had just been invented in Europe. Scribes, typically monks who had spent lifetimes perfecting the spiritual art of hand-copying manuscripts, saw their specialized skills suddenly rendered obsolete. Yet in short order, the disruptive innovation democratized knowledge, enabled the Renaissance, and created entirely new creative roles for editors, typesetters, printmakers, and illustrators.

Rea Irvin, the magazine's first art editor, is best known for creating Eustace Tilley, the monocled dandy whose upturned nose has graced our pages for a hundred years. Irvin established the stylish and refined look of The New Yorker, brought in countless new artists, and also penned many early covers that display his graphic mastery.

I'm a newly minted RISOTTO fan, completely charmed by their paper goods - like their adorable Risograph calendar and their delightfully graphic prints. Their subscription, Riso Club, has been going strong since 2017, sending monthly artist-collab postcards to members. Now they're celebrating a huge milestone: the 100th issue! To mark the moment, they're publishing RISOTTOPIA, featuring work from Nathalie Du Pasquier, Peter Shire, and Barbara Stauffacher Solomon. A very fun celebration for a very joyful print community.

The British painter William Nicholson (1872-1949) has featured in several exhibitions at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, West Sussex, in recent years. His complicated, much misunderstood, relationship with his eldest son formed the prologue to Ben Nicholson: From the Studio in 2021; four of his spare depictions of the South Downs were included in the gallery's 2022 survey of Sussex landscapes; and his shimmering The Silver Casket and Red Leather Box (1920) was a highlight of last year's anthology of Modern British still lifes.

The projects that Brodie takes on are created with a mix of digital and physical - his work shouts that hands are at work. Lady Gaga is stretched and made viscous for the cover of Mayhem, her sixth solo studio album, for which Brodie provided art direction and design, with creative direction from Mel Roy of mtla studio and Todd Tourso of Iconoclast.

When Otto Neurath died in Oxford some 80 years ago, far away from his native Vienna, he was still finding his feet in exile. Like many a Jewish refugee, the economist, philosopher and sociologist had been interned as a suspected enemy alien on the Isle of Man, along with his third wife and close collaborator Marie Reidemeister, having chanced a last-minute life-saving escape from their interim hideout in the Netherlands across the Channel in a rickety boat in 1940.

Twenty-five or so years ago, one day after school I went to visit my dad at his office. We didn't have a computer at home at the time so whenever I was around his, I would beg him to let me use it to play with MS Paint. I was probably around 7 or 8, and my go-to artwork was a portrait of my him made with the spray tool - perfect to recreate his short, spiky hair and stubble -

"So much of the work from this era is playful, stylish and full of personality. Despite printing constraints, artists still found ways to create illustrations full of wit and charm," says Zara. "The cheerful optimism and embrace of character, combined with individuality and modernist values, led to impactful, vibrant designs that still resonate today. According to the illustrator, its influence may be much more far reaching than we think: "Even illustrators who've never seen these originals are working in traditions these artists established."

This incredible lineup of creative contributors began as a call-out to friends and colleagues of Aya's amongst her work as a cultural strategist, producer and curator for grassroots initiatives and non-profits, before it snowballed into something with a much wider remit. It was important to the book's editor to have a range of figures to contribute across disciplines. "Many of the book's contributors are Palestinian," she says, "the rest are steadfast allies."

The duo behind the bilingual agency have carved an identity and magazine inspired by the forces "behind design" - art, literature, film and music. In sabukaru, Lena platforms those influences, as well as niche subcultures and creativity across borders. The first issue highlights Tokyo's rich culture, particularly focusing on the legendary filmmaker Takeshi Kitano as the cover star, as well as featuring collaborators such as Thaiboy Digital, graphic designers Tim Lindacher and Mike Sunday, and producer/artist Palmistry.

Because fragments vary in size, shape, and color, the final design is nearly impossible to replicate. The second is quality. Many fragments, especially those sourced from demolition sites, come with flaws. Rather than see these issues as limitations, van Dievoet embraces them, allowing constraints to shape the work. "Creating from materials that have already been used forces me to take into account their shape, thickness, and any breaks," she explains.

Positioned on either side of the main lobby entrance, the walls measure six meters in height and nine meters in length, creating a sculptural threshold between the exterior and interior. The project draws from the movement of the nearby Gulf, translating the dynamics of water into a series of fluid, wave-like forms. Each surface is composed of thousands of flowing lines that shift in density and depth, producing a tactile gradient that interacts with natural and artificial light throughout the day.

Format is a specialized online portfolio platform for creatives. With more than 50,000 industry leading illustrators, artists and designers having chosen Format as the place for their work, it's easy to find inspiration looking through their international roster. As part of our partnership for the 2025 Illustration Awards, Booooooom worked with our friends at Format to choose some of the best, most renowned illustrators we feel are leading the industry.

At this month's event, you can expect talks from Mouthwash Studio, an LA based design agency influencing culture at-large from within, as well as talks from Clay Hickson, the small press legend behind publishing house Tan & Loose Books as well as the monthly Risograph printed newspaper The Smudge. You'll also get to hear from James Junk, the popular designer and content creator who, when he isn't actively being "the only graphic designer in Los Angeles", is creating intelligent and thought provoking visual essays.

Design concepts live in that fascinating space between "what if" and "why not," where the constraints of manufacturing budgets and market research haven't yet trimmed away the boldest ideas. While finished products get the spotlight and the sales figures, concepts represent design thinking at its most uninhibited, tackling problems we didn't even know we had and proposing solutions that make us wonder why nobody thought of this sooner.

When we consider the subway, it's often for reasons that have to do with decay and deterioration. The switches are outdated. The elevators are broken. The train is late (again). Of course it could be better, but rarely do we pause to take in what the system does right. Its 25 lines, 472 stations, and 665 miles of track traverse the city and offer a tremendous amount of mobility.

For more than two decades, French street artist Invader-born Franck Slama-has turned city streets into digital landscapes, reimagining the urban environment as a living arcade. His iconic 8-bit mosaics have quietly infiltrated skylines and alleyways in over 79 cities across 20 countries, transforming the familiar into something playful, subversive, and undeniably his. Now, in an unexpected yet fitting next move, Invader is bringing his unmistakable pixel art to the heart of Music City with his first-ever Nashville "invasion."

In anticipation of the inevitable robot invasion, I always make sure to remember my Ps and Qs when consulting AI chatbots, but according to KitKat, I could be doing more harm than good. In a playful new campaign, the chocolate connoisseurs tell us to 'Take a Break' from being so polite, all in the name of environmental good. With its ingenious billboard ads and clever copy, KitKat expertly evolves its iconic slogan for a contemporary audience, proving the timelessness of its brand.

Nordic noir. Wasn't that a genre that had people abuzz back in the 00s? Its revival by the British Museum's prints and drawings department as a title for an exhibition of modern and contemporary Scandinavian graphic art seems desperate. Forget our oldies like Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Durer, Leonardo da Vinci we're all about new stuff by hot young Scandi artists! Maybe it's understandable;

13 years later, we have two issues of Pencil Magazine, a hybrid text-image publication that includes drawings, comics, essays, poems, diagrams, and other experiments - all created with graphite pencils. Inspired by her teenage phase of drawing still lifes in graphite, the first issue of the mag took form of a tribute to that younger self. "Over time, the project has come to represent more than just graphite; it's a kind of resistance to the fragmented attention of digital media."