We are lucky that Warren Lehrer didn’t heed his Queens College Art School drawing instructor’s advice that words and images operate in two different languages and hemispheres of the brain, so don’t combine them. Instead, Lehrer took from that his mission in life.

He doesn’t see himself as a designer or author in the traditional sense. But with his background in visual arts, words on the page have always married with the content. Steven Heller described Lehrer’s aptitude as performative design—creating stages for text to play.

And what gorgeous stages Jericho’s Daughter and Riveted in the Word are! The double release was serendipitous rather than planned. Both projects are based on short stories, have bifurcated formats (that dichotomy again), are led by visuals, and illuminate women whose lives have been torn apart and have to start over from scratch.

Our conversation was full of design geekery, like Do Si Do bindings, translating the reading experience into coding language, and storyboarding. There was also a rich discussion of the collaboration behind both books: Lehrer’s process with artist Sharon Horvath for Jericho’s Daughter and how words came together with music (composer Andrew Griffin) in the interface (designed by creative technologist  Artemio Morales) in Riveted in the Word.

Both books are available for presale. Riveted in the Word is sold through the Apple App Store (searchable under ‘book apps’). You can purchase Jericho’s Daughter through Earsay Publishing.

There are a bunch of upcoming book launch events (more info on Warren Lehrer’s website). If you are in NYC, you are invited to the May 31 double book launch at the Center for Book Arts.

Register here to watch the entire discussion.

For more, listen to Debbie’s 2019 Design Matters interview with Warren Lehrer.

Hello, hello. So the big news: I managed to escape to London for a day. Have to go down and refill the tanks every now and then. Thanks to some very intense and regimented planning, I managed to fit in a lot of art: the recently made-over National Portrait Gallery; the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize at the Photographers’ Gallery; the World Photography Awards at Somerset House; and Richard Serra’s six large drawings at David Zwirner. But the highlight of the day was this errant cardboard box that slowly and flamboyantly drifted down James Street to the delight of everyone.

In between all that frolicking about, I did manage to grab something to eat at the fantastic Lina Stores on Greek Street – sat next to Ruth Bloody Wilson. I was very cool about this, of course. I pushed the boundaries of nonchalance so far I think she actually ended up being starstruck by me.

Back in the real world of the internet, I got a little bit lost in the Rural Indexing Project, photographically documenting the architecture of America. Fascinating to see the buildings grouped by tags – I had no idea there were a number of uniform Post Office designs, for example.

Only a few days left for Unit Editions/Volume’s Anita Klinz monograph Seeking Beauty to hit its funding target. It looks absolutely lovely, but at fifty quid a pop, I can see why it might be some way off. I would imagine students/young designers are a huge section of the target readership for this sort of book, and that price tag is a heck of a barrier, but it now seems like the norm. There’s definitely a market for smaller, simpler design books at a lower price point.

I’ve finally switched to Chrome, and a big thank you to Alex for recommending the Control Panel for Twitter extension. It’s basically resets the design and usability back ten years – which is of course a very good thing.

… and then I immediately went a bit viral with a dumb bit of photoshopping. Kind of tangentially related: “Planet of the Apes” Goes to a ’70s Mall, an excellent find from the LIFE archive.

Hanging Stones, a five hour circular walk of abandoned buildings in the North York Moors, all housing Andy Goldsworthy artworks. Yes please.

Elsewhere across the newslettiverse: Animation Obsessive on how Ghost in the Shell was deliberately engineered for western audiences; Owen D. Pomery examines a particularly fine Tintin spread; Nick Asbury launched his new book The Road to Hell.

And finally a quick affiliate plug for Freeagent, without which my business would pretty much collapse into a void of unutterable fiscal despair. With this here link you get a 30-day free trial plus 10% off your subscription, which is nice.

That is all.

This was originally posted on Meanwhile, a Substack dedicated to inspiration, fascination, and procrastination from the desk of designer Daniel Benneworth-Gray.

Header photo courtesy the author.

Lowrider culture is far from specific to Los Angeles, with vibrant pockets represented around the country. The nonprofit lowrider organization Slow & Low recently published a retrospective book of the same title, the first formal documentation of the lowrider community in Chicago. In partnership with Nick Adam’s team at the design studio Span, Slow & Low was created with the utmost thought and care to showcase the photographic archive of twelve years of the nonprofit’s events and festivals. In addition to its gorgeous and vibrant imagery, the book features essays from Slow & Low co-founder and curator Lauren M. Pacheco and ethnographer, cultural critic, and professor Dr. Ben Chappell.

Span took on the design of Slow & Low with the imperative that every detail and aspect of the book must somehow reflect lowrider culture. They worked closely with Pacheco and her co-founder, Peter Kepha, to ensure they achieved this, from the editorial considerations to the page layouts and materials.

The book’s grid, for example, creates an elaborate page sequencing system that balances variation and repetition, creating perspective shifts and contextual relationships. From page to page, the photo compositions create a filmic cadence where motion, zooming, and surrounding angles evoke the sensation of cruising.

Lowrider culture is about far more than cars, and Slow & Low aptly reflects that. Beloved community photographers shot the 112-page photo archive presented throughout the book with a firsthand understanding of the culture, offering an intimate and authentic insider’s perspective. The range of photos depicts lowriding as a way for individuals and the community to have a voice of creativity and pride, featuring waving Mexican flags, airbrushed Aztec symbols, and folklórico performances in the background, to name a few.

The photos have been curated and sequenced by Span and then printed in full color with a spot gloss varnish on high-gloss coated paper. This meticulous process better reflects the look of the candy-colored cars on display, a nod to the vibrant aesthetics of lowrider culture. The effect also feels like a family photo album. The book’s front and back are printed with silver ink on natural paper to contrast the glossiness of the photos. The silver ink has a reflective quality inspired by the engraved chrome of lowrider cars and viclas.

The book’s body copy is set in Canela, designed by Miguel Reyes at Commercial Type. Each column of the Canela text baselines to the bottom of the page and rises to hit different heights meant to represent the hydraulic bounce of a lowrider. The display type is Respira, designed by Lucas Sharp with Wei Huang at Sharp Type. Respira was inspired by blackletter, which is a signature lettering style in lowrider and Chicano cultures.

Meanwhile, the Slow & Low front and back covers also feature the blackletter style, stamped in white foil on a black textile texture. The form is reminiscent of the letter-based tattoos that read top-to-bottom on many forearms within the lowrider community. This style also pays homage to the way churches often depict text, given the importance of faith within those in the lowrider community.

The book is stitched with myth-sewn binding to open flat, allowing you to immerse yourself in each photo fully. It concludes with a series of 360 silver ink photo booth photos featuring over 1,000 members of Chicago’s lowrider community, all taken at the 2022 Slow & Low festival at Navy Pier.

Concept, Design Direction, Design, Content Collection & Curation: Nick Adam

Design: Grace Song and Cheryl Kao

Printing: OGM

Writers: Lauren M. Pacheco and Dr. Ben Chappell

Curators: Lauren M. Pacheco, Peter Kepha, and Edward Magico Calderon

Photographers: Carmen Ordonez, Carolina Sánchez, Don’t Get Shot, Edward Magico Calderon, Fernando Ruiz, Katrina Nelken, Manuel Lagunas, Manuel Velasco, Max Herman, Mike Pocious, Nick Lipton, Peter Kepha, Sebastián Hildalgo, and Nick Adam

Schubert’s talents are new to me. She is, in fact, one of the industry’s best-kept secrets, having worked with Matthew Barney, Pope L., The New York City Ballet, Dev Hynes, Laurie Anderson, former president Bill Clinton, and SOPHIE.

Edited by Claire Marie Healy (who worked on A24’s dazzling look at cinematic dance), photographed by Jason Al-Taan, and designed by Wkshps, the book includes mini essays and photo tutorials on beauty makeup, special effects makeup and makeup for the screen—a unique talent that demands flawlessness. Ultimately, Beauty of the Beast redefines the stereotype of the gendered “powder puff girl” diminutive used against women makeup artists, and the masculine world of horror makeup by mixing the two approaches in a hybrid style.

It’s a two-fer at our next PRINT Book Club! Warren Lehrer, winner of the Ladislav Sutnar Prize for his pioneering work and lifetime achievement in Visual Literature and Design, will be on hand to preview two new books: the beautifully conceived Jericho’s Daughter and Riveted in the Word, a new kind of ebook.

Debbie Millman and Steven Heller will chat with Lehrer about these gorgeous stories, both told with bifurcated structures revealing lives torn apart and beginning anew.

Jericho’s Daughter is an anti-war, feminist reimagining of the biblical tale of Rahab, the Canaanite “harlot” who lived in a mud hut inside the outer brick wall of Jericho. One of only a few characters who appear in the Old and New Testaments, Rahab is lauded by both Jews and Christians as a reformed sinner and a symbol of faith. Lehrer places Rahab center stage, revealing a very different perspective of the enigmatic character and the meaning of her story. The beautifully produced, full-color book is illuminated with original images and objects created by Sharon Horvath. Given the horrific situation in Israel and Gaza, Rahab’s call to end the cycle of war and death takes on important urgency. A percentage of the proceeds from Jericho’s Daughter will go to Women Wage Peace, the largest grassroots peace movement in Israel.

EarSay is publishing Jericho’s Daughter simultaneously with Lehrer’s first fully electronic book, Riveted in the Word, inspired by the true story of a writer’s hard-fought battle to regain language after a devastating stroke. Written and designed by Warren Lehrer, this multimedia book app places the reader inside the mind of a retired history professor as she recalls her journey with Broca Aphasia. The custom interface toggles between columns of text that readers navigate at their own pace, and animated sections that evoke gaps between perceptions (thoughts, memories, desires) and the words needed to communicate. This deeply moving story about overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles is told in a dynamic new way, with kinetic typography and an original soundtrack by composer, multi-instrumentalist Andrew Griffin, programmed by Artemio Morales.

Warren Lehrer is a writer, lecturer, publisher, and speaker. His essays on design authorship, visual literature, and design education have been widely reproduced. He has been written about in scores of books and in many feature articles and reviews in print and broadcast media. Lehrer is a founding faculty member of the Designer As Author & Entrepreneur MFA program at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in NYC, and Professor Emeritus at the School of Art+Design at Purchase College, SUNY, where he Chaired the Design program for many years.

Over the last few years, Lehrer has been setting stories and text into animation, video, and interactive media. He’s also been collaborating with select poets visualizing their writing into books, animation, and live performance events.

Don’t miss our conversation with Warren Lehrer on Thursday, May 16 at 4 PM ET. Register for the live stream discussion. Links to buy Jericho’s Daughter and Riveted in the Word coming soon!

Compiled by the award-winning typographer and graphic designer David Jury for Merrell Publishers, Mid-Century Type offers a visual exploration of the rise of the typographer after World War II, between 1945 and 1965. With advancements in printing came booms within the magazine and book industries, and further technological breakthroughs led to an elevated era of film and television title sequences. Coupled with a thriving travel economy which saw an increased need for signage and advertising, the golden age of the typographer came to the fore. 

Each chapter of the compendium is dedicated to a particular sect of design in which typography has played a significant role. These chapters range from categories like Posters and Corporate Identity to Transport to Film & Television. Jury provides insights into European and American typographers within these fields, accompanied by over 500 illustrations of typefaces, advertisements, book covers, specialist journals, posters, and more.

If you’re a type lover or even if you’re just type-curious, Mid-Century Type is absolutely essential for understanding the history of the art form.

For Charlene Prempeh, author of Now You See Me! An Introduction to 100 Years of Black Design, it became clear that Black creatives weren’t getting their due. Her book researches the contributions of Black thinkers and creatives across the fashion, architecture, and graphic design industries—hoping to open up a more nuanced and layered conversation about them rather than the typically quick mention in Black History Month lists.

The book covers a century’s worth of creative innovation, and for Prempeh, every single story came with an “a-ha moment.” Not only did she learn about people she hadn’t heard of before, but she also revisited the prevailing narratives about familiar names. 

“What I thought I knew about them wasn’t necessarily right, or did not have the depth required to understand their journeys or practices properly,” said Prempeh. She gives the example of Zelda Wynn Valdes, who often gets mistakenly credited with designing the Playboy bunny costume. In her research, Prempeh found Valdes sewed the costumes rather than designing them; that experience points to “how surface our information is about these individuals.” In 2019, The New York Times published Valdes’ obituary as part of the “Overlooked” project, which featured “remarkable Black men and women” that “never received obituaries in The New York Times — until now.” Valdes passed away in 2001.

Left: Joyce Bryant in a figure-hugging gown by Zelda Wynn Valdes, 1953; Right: Joyce Bryant wearing one of the “tight-tight” gowns designed for her by Zelda Wynn Valdes, 1953 – Images © Van Vechten Trust

Now You See Me incorporates significant materials that help tell each person’s story, such as a letter by Ann Lowe to First Lady Jackie Kennedy, whose wedding dress she designed. Lowe read an article featuring Mrs. Kennedy in the Ladies Home Journal, which referred to her as a “colored woman dressmaker,” diminishing her identity as a designer. While many texts about Lowe’s life focus on her connection to Mrs. Kennedy, Prempeh sees her story differently. Lowe was “this woman who was brave enough to stand up for herself in a moment where it would have been much easier just to cower.”

Left: Ann Lowe with the “First Lady” doll from the Evyan Collection, 1966; Center: Ann Lowe, Ebony Magazine, 1966; Right: Ann Lowe fitting a dress to a mannequin, 1966 – © Johnson Publishing Company Archive. Courtesy J.Paul Getty Trust & Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture

“As a Black woman, or as a woman [in general], knowing that someone else did that at that moment in history gives me a sense that I can do that, too,” said Prempeh. “That if something is not right, [I can] stand up and say so.”

Yet, Prempeh emphasizes that writing about these makers means including their shortcomings as well.

“We sometimes struggle to be critical where it’s actually completely fair to be critical and where there’s an important lesson to learn in that criticism,” said Prempeh.   

Now You See Me also weaves in Prempeh’s own upbringing and career trajectory, showing how her background shaped her perspective of the people she researched. Prempeh is the founder of the creative studio and consultancy agency A Vibe Called Tech; meeting business mentors is one of the challenges she has faced and continues to experience. Prempeh emphasized that it’s important for her agency to be “rooted in this idea of intersectionality and cultural storytelling,” and she hasn’t met many leaders who have done this while also ensuring their agency is a household name with a long-term history. 

Regarding the next generation of makers, Prempeh says we need better support systems, not just one-time accolades or grants. It takes considerable time “to build up a body of work and to feel confident in your work,” and many artists need financial support to create that space. In researching the creators featured in Now You See Me, Prempeh stressed that while short-term help isn’t insignificant, we still need to do more.

“How can we create creative support that allows people that time to develop?” said Prempeh.
“Because my experience is [that] without that structure and support, it’s impossible to keep going. There’ll be some mavericks in between who make it quickly and don’t need that support. Obviously, I love that for them. But I worry about who we miss out on because the structures aren’t in place to let them thrive.”

Left: Grace Jones wearing a black leather jacket and Eiffel Tower hat designed by Patrick Kelly, 1989, © Gilles Decamps. Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Janet & Gary Calderwood, & Gilles Decamps, 2014; Center: Outfit from Bianca Saunders’s Spring/Summer 2021collection, “The Ideal Man,” Photo, Silvia Draz; Right: Sketch by LaQuan Smith of a jacket and jumpsuit outfit inspired by the Black Panther film, 2018, © LaQuan Smith

Prempeh worked with graphic design studio Polymode to bring Now You See Me to life. Some of the major visual decisions in the book, explained Prempeh, involved not using photography on the cover or in the section introductions.

We were really clear that we didn’t want to say that any one story or any one image is the most important part of the book. We needed to have some visual language that spoke to all of the different stories.

Charlene Prempeh

Left: Interior of Gando Primary School, Photo, Siméon Duchoud; Right: Paul R. Williams standing in front of The Theme Building, LAX, 1965, Photo, Julius Shulman © J. Paul Getty Trust, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10).

The book uses a bold typeface: Jaamal Benjamin’s Harlemecc, inspired by the commercial lettering of Harlem Renaissance artist and painter Aaron Douglas. The book’s title, Prempeh explains, plays with the versatility of meanings: “Now you see me” as both a statement and a question that implies these Black creatives have always been important. The fonts VTC Spike, VTC Tre, and The Neu Black—designed by Tre Seals—appear in the subheadlines of the book, while the book copy uses Halyard, designed by Joshua Darden Studios.  

“We also really wanted the Blackness of it to come out in the colors,” said Prempeh. Polymode created an overall look that incorporated “African fabric and cloth block colors,” as described on the studio’s website.

Left: Emmett McBain, 1968. Reproduced with kind permission of Letta McBain. Courtesy of University of Illinois Chicago, Special Collections and University Archives; Center: Emmett McBain, 1972. Reproduced with kind permission of Letta McBain. Courtesy of the Emmett McBain Afro-American Advertising Poster Collection, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution; Emmett McBain 1973. Reproduced with kind permission of Letta McBain. Courtesy of the Emmett McBain Afro-American Advertising Poster Collection, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.

While the book contains numerous stories and spans many eras, its design and size make it easy to carry in a bag—a contrast from some larger, coffee-table-style books often published about histories like these.

“As much as the book is beautiful and the pictures are really, really beautiful, we wanted to make sure people took the stories home with them,” said Prempeh.

Calligraphy has always enthralled me, but until working at Shorthand, I had merely been a passive admirer. I leaped to invest in my own nibs and inks and fell down many a calligraphic rabbit hole on Instagram. While online art-making resources are wonderful, there’s still nothing quite like an actual instructional book you can keep on your shelf as a resource. Professional calligrapher, author, and educator Margaret Shepherd understands this all too well as the author of 20 titles geared toward teaching calligraphy.

Shepherd has been a professional calligrapher for 55 years, with her work currently housed at the Smithsonian Museum and the Rare Books Department of the Boston Public Library. She’s conducted freelance work for colleges and law firms and has taught workshops and given calligraphy demonstrations around the world. Her latest book focuses on the history and depiction of American calligraphy, specifically, aptly titled Learn American Calligraphy. The book takes readers on a visual trip around the United States, learning how to calligraph in multiple styles along the way.

As a somewhat novice calligrapher, I reached out to Shepherd to learn more about her love of the art form and what her new book offers. Her responses are below!

(Conversation has been edited for length and clarity).

It’s a lofty question, but why do you love calligraphy so much? What is it about the art form that compels you to dedicate so much of your life to it?  

It’s a good question. Basically, I flunked the transition from simple “manuscript” letters we learned in first grade to loopy, arbitrary “cursive” script that was forced on us in third grade. I ended up with terrible handwriting—a sort of hurried printing—until ten years later when a friend gave me an Italic pen. This opened up a whole new world; the problem wasn’t me; it was the limitations of cursive script. I gather that calligraphy offers a second chance to all those Americans who couldn’t learn script or were never taught—and there are many of us!  

I was lucky to have the right teacher (Norberto Chiesa, a former student of Paul Standard) at the right time (my early twenties) and in the right place (Sarah Lawrence College). The course in calligraphy was only offered once. Two students took it. We spent months on the Roman capitals, starting with weeks learning the letter O.

I’m convinced that calligraphy is just intrinsically appealing to everyone, from non-specialists to hobbyists and professionals, because it engages both sides of the brain.

I noticed that after every campus event, people saved the name tags I’d lettered and posted them on their dorm room doors. I’m convinced that calligraphy is just intrinsically appealing to everyone, from non-specialists to hobbyists and professionals, because it engages both sides of the brain. Scientists have determined that one side reads the words, and the other side sees the abstract shapes. Put them together and it creates a rich, satisfying experience for both writer and reader.

I love calligraphy because it lets me spend my days turning wonderful texts into visual art.  

Do you feel a responsibility to help keep calligraphy alive in our hyper-digital world? Why is it  important to keep teaching calligraphy? 

For decades, whenever I mentioned my profession, people would automatically comment, “Oh, that’s a dying art!” or some other off-the-wall comment. When I began teaching high-school art teachers, I found that the low profile of calligraphy meant that very few how-to-do-it books were available. So, I turned my teaching materials into a basic textbook, the first of 20 books I’ve written about aspects of the field. That book, Learn Calligraphy, is still in print, introducing beginners to the basics. 

That’s how calligraphy will continue to survive and thrive— by joining the culture in every country where it takes root.  

But calligraphy has changed in the 50 years since I thought I had summed it all up; America has finally declared its independence from Old World alphabet styles. The definition of calligraphy got bigger, stretchier, and livelier. Now, any survey must acknowledge the influence of sign painting, graffiti writing, Native American images, folk art, protest placards, penmanship instruction, cattle brands, and even the letters imagined by retro-futurists. My new book, Learn American Calligraphy, celebrates the New World’s stylistic independence from the Old World. That’s how calligraphy will continue to survive and thrive— by joining the culture in every country where it takes root. 

Postscript: I’m doing my part to resist the hyper-digital world, by being pretty inept at its processes.  

What do you hope readers take away from Learn American Calligraphy? What sort of  experience do you hope they have engaging with the book?  

I hope readers can enjoy learning about the rich variety of alphabet styles invented here or modified to suit American purposes. Readers can appreciate the letters around them and understand why they look the way they do long before they pick up a pen. Even beginners don’t have to limit themselves to historic calligraphy from Europe and England centuries ago. 

After waiting decades for someone else to write a book about American calligraphy, I have put together my own introduction. With every alphabet I included, I asked myself, “What makes it American?” and “What makes it calligraphy?” Each alphabet offers a back story, an explanation of how it relates to other American arts and simple instructions for how to write it. Readers will learn what, how, who, and most of all, why American calligraphy matters. I hope they will feel like Michael Sull, one of the early reviewers, whose review started out, “Finally!”

Joshua works at Pratt Institute, and her illustration has been featured in Buzzfeed, NPR, New York Magazine, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Our conversation examines the struggle to heal the heart and mind through intimate narrative and raw images.

What prompted you to write and illustrate a book devoted to your mother’s mental illness?
My book is about faith, the preciousness of life and unconditional love. The book discusses the reality of our situation living with a parent with a mental illness, so I break that down in various chapters, but that is not solely our experience. This book is dedicated to freedoms in our childhood and our earliest and most precious memories. Not only that, the book is about our journey together, so it’s written to share the perspectives from my brothers and my mom. Our life wasn’t just about my mother’s mental illness. I wanted to encapsulate our livelihood and the joys we experienced together.

Was this book a hard sell on your part?
The publisher reached out to me, admiring my illustration style, and they wanted to work with me on a project, whether that was a book cover or graphic novel. After a few meetings, I decided to pitch the idea of making a book devoted to my family and our journey together. The publisher was all for the idea, so it wasn’t a hard sell at all. Everything was very seamless.

Your provocative title suggests that you are working out the very question I would ask about how to make such difficult memories become an engagingly universal story. How did you do it?
I wouldn’t consider the title of my memoir provocative. While thinking of title ideas, I was literally asking myself how I was going to do all of this—draw and write not only my memories, but my family’s memories. And, how was I going to marry everything together with prose, drawings, comics? And photographs? I decided the title should be the very question I was asking myself.

There are many of us who have relatives, loved ones or friends whose suffering is deeply felt by all around. How did you address the angers, resentments and fears in relation to the love and empathy for your mom?
This book became a healing journey for me. From the start of the book I navigated fear, particularly fear of perception. But as I continued to move through the process and have conversations with loved ones and conversations with myself, I learned parts of their experience I either forgot or didn’t know and I gained perspective. Any animosity I carried in childhood and young adulthood I was able to let go of after having honest conversations with my loved ones and with my mom.

What about your experiences determined where you went in terms of form and design?
I knew I wanted this book to be a collaboration, and I didn’t want this book to follow a traditional comic style that is a graphic novel. I wanted it to literally feel like a scrapbook, so that meant combining spreads dedicated to photos, spreads that felt like a vivid dreamscape through illustrated flashbacks, and some to be dedicated as prose chapters. I wanted to really delve into prose without leaning on imagery necessarily. I love the art of writing, so writing out certain chapters to channel the memory was really fun and beautiful.

How has your family responded to the book?
My family loves the book! They were my biggest cheerleaders through the process and I am forever grateful to them for giving me the space to write this book and share our story! I’m looking forward to celebrating with my family in the next few weeks. I’m glad I was able to make this book come to life, not only for myself, but for my family as well. As I mention in the book, our journey together is what got us through, and for anyone going through a difficult time, remember that it’s OK to lean into your support system, whether that is your biological family, extended family, or chosen family. We have to lift each other up to get through difficult times.

How cathartic was it for you to relive your “living” past?
This book was a beautiful journey for me. I gained perspective, I healed old wounds and I made a lot of discoveries about life and the connection between things along the way. I could never have imagined where I would be today when I started this process, but I’m so happy I went on the journey to write this book. Reliving my past made me reflect on everything from my childhood, especially the joys that I experienced even when things were difficult. Writing also helped me unpack more about mental health and the conversations I never had with my mom until going through the writing process. Having these conversations that are revealed in the book really helped build our relationship outside of this written time capsule.

Is there more you’d like to say and show, or have you put your memories in their place?
I think there will always be more that I want to say, so I think of this book as a catalyst for the work I’ll do moving forward. I want to do more community work as it relates to the arts. I’d love to act on some of the things that I touch on toward the end of the book, which is being a mentor and creating workshops and programs to help the youth explore their creativity.

What do you want the audience to take away?
I want the audience to know they’re not alone in their journey. I want them to know that mental illness is serious, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of, whether it’s what you are directly going through or a loved one is going through. Lean into your community and public resources. I mention some of the resources in the book, like “A Place for Mom.” As I discuss in the book, I wasn’t just raised by my parents, I was raised by my maternal and paternal grandparents, and I had an incredible support system. Not only that, I want readers to reflect on the good in their life. Trauma can consume us, but one small thing that can help is to reflect on the joys of life and reflect on who and what you love. That’s why I write about the joys of my childhood and the moments we had together as a family. That’s why I write about love in so many different ways. Love is what carried us through our journey.

The Two Type System, like the studio’s other parametric typefaces, pushes the shapes and relationships of letters to the precise point where they obstruct or deny the reading process while still conforming to the conventional arrangements of language, illustrating the idea that form and content interconnect like muscle and bone.

Muir and McNeil see ideas as the results of discovery rather than invention and consider themselves graphic designers who create type, rather than traditional type designers. Using the options available through the mathematical algorithms of digital design, they continue historical typographic experimentation as has always existed, enabled by the technology of the moment. For instance, designers printing with metal type used multiple passes through the press to play with composition, layering, and legibility. When phototypesetting was introduced, everybody pulled and distorted the type negative as it was exposed to light to create weird, funky, one-of-a-kind effects. The 1990 typeface Beowulf, by Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum, swapped the PostScript programming commands “lineto” and “curveto” with a new command “freakto,” to generate letterforms with spontaneously random outlines.

We prefer finding new forms and outputs by building extensive root-and-branch systems rather than working within the limits of short-term individual expressions. For us, the notion of individual creativity tends to emphasize the maker rather than the form.

Hamish Muir

What if … ? is one of the most powerful questions in design because it’s directed towards unknown possibilities. By systematically adjusting individual conditions within a defined design space—progressively resetting components, positions, colors, angles, and so forth—the designers exerted a sort of calibrated prescience to the process while embracing errors that led in unexpectedly fruitful directions. While many forms are highly abstract, others are completely legible; the Type Two System is not just a laboratory experiment. MuirMcNeil used it for the flexible but instantly recognizable identity for TypeCon2016, expressed in black and a stunning neon green, lending a future-forward look to the event.

The Two Type System’s systemic yet unexpected results require a willingness to cede control that can be scary for designers, especially if they feel their creative agency diminished. It’s difficult for many to let go of the decision-making so crucial to design and open themselves to chance. Still, trusting in the process can yield delightful and pleasing results. Muir says, “We prefer finding new forms and outputs by building extensive root-and-branch systems rather than working within the limits of short-term individual expressions. For us, the notion of individual creativity tends to emphasize the maker rather than the form.”

The saying “Printing is always a surprise” is a solid truth, in that unplanned (often unwanted) outcomes can and frequently do happen on press. System Process Form is a beautifully printed and thoughtfully planned volume using spot colors overlaid atop one another rather than the more typical four-color printing process. Print designers know that spot colors are impossible to preview accurately on monitors during the design process or even as prepress proofs, yet a vital component of the Two Type System’s DNA is the element of chance. This leads a viewer to wonder how the authors handled that aspect of the completed book in advance—were there any hitches in the print production? Was this, perhaps, the one place where surprises were not embraced but instead methodically eliminated? Surprisingly, no.

McNeil says, “We knew that overprinting three neon inks would be risky and early digital proof simulations proved to be uninformative. Test prints made on production offset-litho machines revealed a vivid new palette – in particular, a ‘neon eggplant’ color made by overprinting neon pink, yellow and blue. It was a totally unexpected result of the process and a very pleasing one.” An admirably bold move! Surprise for the win.

All photography © MuirMcNeil.

Universal Principles of Typography (UPoT), a new book by Elliot Jay Stocks —published by Quarto and out today— answers this and so much more. The book’s 100 principles cover everything from the tactical to the compositional, sometimes pausing for the philosophical.

In the foreword by Ellen Lupton, author of the book on type, (and our guest for the next PRINT Book Club), we love how she explains the breadth of what Stocks has endeavored to do with UPoT:

“Typographic knowledge is an awkward mix of science (how people read), technology (what fonts can do), superstition (what folks believe on faith), hard-and-fast-rules (what editors and publishers have codified over time), and unspoken body language (how designers wiggle and fidget inside the rules, inventing new styles and mannerisms). Elliot explores all these forms of knowledge with pictures and words, helping designers navigate the facts and the fictions, and build their own typographic confidence.”

Stocks is a designer, writer, speaker, and musician living in Bristol, UK. He’s a former creative director for Adobe Typekit, creator of two printed publications (8 Faces and Lagom), and, in 2020, he teamed up with Google Fonts to create Google Fonts Knowledge.

To celebrate the launch of Universal Principles of Typography, Stocks indulged me by answering several type-related questions. Read the Q&A below.

Of all the principles of typography, what is your favorite, the one that you can’t unsee, the one that brings you joy when you see it in action?

There’s a chapter very early on in the book called “Avoid faux (or synthesised) styles” and that might be one of my favourites, purely because the web (and, to a lesser extent, print) is littered with faux italics and the like. As it says in the book, “sure, a faux italic never killed anyone, but it will certainly make you or your client look like you don’t care about doing things properly — and that’s rarely a message clients want to send.” I feel like that could be applied to typography as a whole: these things might seem pedantic at times, but cutting corners is ultimately going to have a negative impact on the end result.

Similarly, of all the principles of typography you laid out, what is one or two that have the power to change the way graphic designers view and compose their work (not just text)?

Probably the principle called “Balance distinction & harmony” because it can be applied to typography, or to design as a whole, or to pretty much any creative output. It’s important to remember that when we change something (a font weight, a column width, a note in a song), we’ve got to make sure that it’s distinct from the element it sits next to — the end user has to recognise it as a something different and then, having observed that, infer meaning from it; a meaning such as hierarchy, or perhaps just a feeling. But at the same time we need to ensure that the change we’re making still plays nicely with the other elements. So in typography, for instance, we might use a scale to define our different font sizes, but of course we also use scales in music. The idea is the same: make it obvious that there’s been a change, but give the user some context so that the change is a harmonious one.

We’ve been enjoying Elle Cordova’s anthropomorphic font videos. So, I’m curious: if you were personified by a typeface, which one would it be and why?

Oh, the number of non-type friends who sent me those videos! If I was a typeface, I’d probably be the recently released Bricolage Grotesque, designed by Mathieu Triay. It’s capable of some solid, useful work, but generally doesn’t take itself too seriously because it knows that having fun with the work is more important.

Given AI’s presence in our conversations about what graphic design and art-making will be in the future, do you have a 101st principle to offer on that topic as it relates to typography’s role or responsibility?

As with almost anything AI is touching right now, there’s the potential for it to make our lives easier — imagine a typographic AI assistant to help you pair type, perhaps working in the same way GitHub Copilot might help engineers code. But also there’s the potential for it to make poor decisions and then use its own poor decisions as reference points, flooding the internet with bad type and worse typography. My good friend Jamie Clarke recently wrote an article about this, and argued for us designers acting as tastemakers to help steer AI development in the right direction. Personally, I still flip-flop daily between being for or against AI, but ultimately it’s too huge a development to simplify in that way. It’s a bit like being for or against the internet. It’s going to change our life and work radically; as creatives and as humans, we need to position ourselves as best we can to benefit from its promises and help reduce the potential for its misuse.

Want more? Elliot Jay Stocks shares his love of all things typography as host of the podcast, Hello, type friends! and author of the newsletter, Typographic & Sporadic.

At our next PRINT Book Club, Debbie Millman and Steven Heller will chat with beloved design educator Ellen Lupton about the new edition of her seminal book, Thinking With Type.

Lupton’s bestselling book is an essential guide to using typography in visual communication for everyone: designers, writers, editors, students, anyone who works with words on page or screen, and enthusiasts of type and lettering. Now in it’s third edition (March 2024), Thinking With Type has been expanded to include:

• More fonts: old fonts, new fonts, weird fonts, libre fonts, Google fonts, Adobe fonts, fonts from independent foundries, and fonts and lettering by women and BIPOC designers
• Introductions to diverse writing systems, contributed by expert typographers from around the world
• Demonstrations of basic design principles, such as visual balance, Gestalt grouping, and responsive layout
• Current approaches to typeface design, including, variable fonts and optical sizes and tips for readability, legibility, and accessibility
• Stunning reproductions from the Letterform Archive

Thinking with Type is to typography what Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time is to physics.

I Love Typography

Ellen Lupton is a designer, writer, and educator. In addition to Thinking With Type, her other books include Design Is Storytelling, Graphic Design Thinking, Health Design Thinking, and Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-Racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers. She teaches in the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (MICA), where she serves as the Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair. She is Curator Emerita at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, where her exhibitions included Herbert Bayer: Bauhaus Master and The Senses: Design Beyond Vision.

Don’t miss our conversation with Ellen Lupton, hosted by Debbie Millman and Steven Heller, on Thursday, April 25 at 4 PM ET! Register for the live stream discussion and visit our Bookshop.org shop to buy your copy of Thinking With Type.

Allen Ginsberg was one of the foremost minds of his generation. He was also a prolific collector. From his extensive archives at Standford, Pat Thomas worked with Peter Hale of Ginsberg’s estate to pull nearly ten thousand items for consideration. From this, Thomas narrowed it to 1,000 items encompassing Material Wealth: Mining the Personal Archive of Allen Ginsberg.

The three most remarkable pieces, according to Thomas, are a satire of Ginsberg’s Howl written by screenwriter Terry Southern (below); a transcript of a call between Ginsberg and Henry Kissinger about ending the war in Vietnam, one in which the famously exhibitionist Ginsberg suggests they discuss the issue naked on national television (below); and (not pictured), a letter from the American Nazi Party to Ginsberg about all the reasons they wanted to assassinate him: likely a “commie,” possibly gay, definitely a Jew.

The book is a collection of 600,000 words and 300 pages, yet it is also light (uncoated paper!). Andy Outis took us through the myriad of design decisions that give this book its singular aesthetics. He began the project by reading Howl aloud to internalize it (during the pandemic). Outis leaned heavily on 90s graphic design, specifically deconstruction, for inspiration in creating a book that was more than just the sum of its artifacts—the unique open spine, the leveraging of low-resolution scans with all the original scratches, dirt, and flaws, and the use of color. Outis also typeset the accompanying text on an Underwood 315 typewriter. From there, he scanned it, making the book’s pages look very much like archival material they hold.

Ginsberg was neither conventional nor conservative. So, Andy went for it …
It’s a work of art.

Pat Thomas on collaborating with Andy Outis, designer of Material Wealth

For those who find the intersection of history fascinating, Thomas has a beautiful sentiment about this very thing as it relates to Allen Ginsberg, Stonewall, and The Beatles about 38 minutes in. You’ll also hear a surprising admission from Steven Heller, who, as a young Ginsberg fan, stole a copy of Howl from Doubleday Book Shop (eventually returning it to the shelves after he read it).

Our conversation wound from music to poetry to design to politics to culture, so there’s something for everyone. Register here to watch the discussion.

Don’t own a copy of Material Wealth: Mining the Personal Archive of Allen Ginsberg? You can order one here.

Coffeehaus at COLLINS hosts a monthly communal gathering for people from all walks of life who share the goal of simply showing up to experience creative community. March’s event featured a conversation, book signing, cocktails, and treats with the illustrious Craig Frazier, who discussed his newly released book Drawn, a compendium of his illustrations for prominent publications and businesses around the globe.

An internationally renowned illustrator with a career spanning since 1978, Frazier’s illustrations are celebrated for their wit, optimism, and simplicity.

His creative contributions have appeared in the New York Times, Time Magazine, Fortune, Bloomberg Business Week, Harvard Business Review, and The Wall Street Journal. Frazier has an impressive roster of blue-chip clients, including Adobe, American Express, Boeing, Chevrolet, Deloitte, MasterCard, Mohawk Paper, Navigant, The Royal Mail, U.S. Postal Service, and United Airlines.

He has also designed eight postage stamps, including the beloved 2006 Love stamp and the commemorative Scouting stamps in 2010/11.

Frazier’s artistry goes beyond fulfilling client requests; he illustrates what he feels will make people stop, look, and think. Coffeehaus at COLLINS was a packed event, buzzing with creative energy from like-minded folks. I was fortunate to connect with Frazier at the event and followed up with some questions about his process and the importance of work that invites people in.

(Interview edited for clarity and length).

During your talk, you emphasized the importance of creating an approachable book with meaningful stories rather than just a visually striking but weighty coffee table book. What is the significance of incorporating narrative elements, and how does this approach enhance the reader’s experience? Additionally, how did you strike a balance between narrative and visuals?

It’s not unlike my work. You must invite people in and make them feel welcome. Physically, I wanted the book to have weight yet a manageable footprint. I wanted it to be functional on a desk, in your lap, or on a plane (thus the slightly smaller dimension than many monographs). I wanted it to feel useable, not monumental. There is something intimidating about an oeuvre of someone’s lifetime of work—so I wanted to soften the barrier. The scale of the book, the use of Garamond, and the size and pacing of each illustration contribute to its approachability. My amberliths, sketches, and sketchbooks demystify the process and invite the reader backstage. The idea of narratives woven throughout the book breaks the rhythm and reminds the reader that the illustrations are the products of a greater effort—both conceptually and professionally.

My life experience and my choices inform my work—the two are inextricably connected. I have found the result immeasurably rewarding and hope the work reflects that. This is the part of work life that I wanted to reveal. Things happen. We can’t control everything, but we can lend a guiding hand.  

This book is for the curious. Whether you are a designer or not, revealing the ‘whys’ of my work will alter your understanding of it. My intention is to allow people to see parallels to their own lives and careers, regardless of their profession. We all make choices that shape how we feel about our jobs. I’m curious how creative people make their work and connect their life stories to it. Asking those questions leads to a deeper appreciation and a chance to learn something. I want that experience available to the readers of Drawn.

It is predominantly a visual book, no question. One can enjoy it on that level alone. The written content is micro-dosed to not compete with the visuals but complement and contribute depth.

I draw elements that support the story, not decorate it.

Your work is celebrated for its visual riddles and graphic wit, often embodying both simplicity and depth. How do you balance clarity and complexity in your work, especially when dealing with abstract concepts or visual puzzles?

Simplicity is a guiding principle in all of my work—design or illustration. I subscribe to both the aesthetic and conceptual orientation, so it’s easy to abide by. It works—simplicity serves comprehension in its elegance and functionality. Simplicity is necessary now more than ever when we are all operating at the edge of our visual threshold—it becomes an attractor because it asks less of us. When we overload our messaging (or visuals), it’s at the risk of getting passed by. I stick with singular messaging, which makes for singular illustrations. I draw elements that support the story, not decorate it. Simplicity equals clarity. The more abstract, the simpler the equation must be. If done right, there is beauty in simplicity. Embedding riddles and wit in the illustration brings a smile to the mind. The illustration’s depth is in the reader’s mind—it’s the place the illustration takes them.

When discussing your creative process, you mentioned taking something to the brink and then stepping it back. How do you recognize when you’ve reached that edge, and what factors influence your decision to pull back or further refine your idea?

This question is challenging because I don’t have a specific formula for it—it’s intuitive. The best way to describe it is to say that when I think I have found an angle to tell the story—I then attempt to regulate how the reader discovers the answer within. It’s a matter of leaving breadcrumbs rather than the whole loaf. It’s always a matter of leaving room for a reader to invest time (often only seconds) and mental energy to understand the message. Breadcrumbs also leave room for interpretation, crucial in talking to a larger audience. I’ve learned that people are smarter than we often give them credit for. Clients always want to make sure their readers get it, but in doing so, they often eliminate the fun by over-explaining it. It’s a delicate balance, and I stand my ground with clients. I’ve got a good instinct for it by now.

There is a lot of attention to creativity, how we do it, and the secrets to turning it on. I’ve never paid much attention to that and tried to develop good habits and a problem-solving discipline. If you sign up to be a designer, your job can’t wait until the muse shows up.

Drawn delves into curiosity, self-doubt, and confidence, all of which are common experiences for creatives. How have these themes influenced your journey as a creative? Can you share any personal anecdotes or pivotal moments where you’ve grappled with self-doubt and how you overcame it to push your creative boundaries?

Curiosity is key. We must be curious about what others make and how to inform and inspire our own creativity. We also must be curious about the oddities around us. These are the fuel for ideas. Self-doubt and confidence are opposites, yet both motivate us. Both are necessary to keep the other in check. Self-doubt—however uncomfortable it is—is critical to doing good work and growing. The better our judgment, the easier it is to become complacent and make safe work. I find my own self-doubt to be often an indicator that I’m breaking new ground. We all experience self-doubt because creativity isn’t science—it’s experimental by design. The good news is that with experience, self-doubt wanes and gives way to confidence, and if we are lucky, humility lies right in between both—the most essential element of personal growth.

I frequently have doubts about my work particularly when I’m sketching on assignment. When I give it a little time to breathe and look at the work with fresh eyes, the doubt often subsides. I remind myself that new is often uncomfortable and these are the chances we must take.

There is a lot of attention to creativity, how we do it, and the secrets to turning it on. I’ve never paid much attention to that and tried to develop good habits and a problem-solving discipline. If you sign up to be a designer, your job can’t wait until the muse shows up. Though she does make appearances, we must operate in an ‘always go’ position.

As it relates to ideas, my solution is to keep sketching. It is the cheapest and fastest prototyping method out there. It is a discipline that I have practiced my entire career, and it never fails. Every sketch I make is an experience of seeing something and understanding it better. I have far more unsuccessful sketches than successful ones, but they are not mutually exclusive. You must turn over rocks until you find what you are looking for. I have a confidence in process—the more you produce, the better the chances are of arriving at something new—it’s that simple.

Your work has inspired many aspiring illustrators and designers. You offered the valuable insight that “style comes just as much from your deficiencies as well as your expertise.” Could you elaborate on this concept and explain how embracing one’s shortcomings can contribute to the development of a unique artistic style?

Understanding what we each ‘have to offer’ is an endeavor you can’t suddenly take on one day. It’s an understanding that comes over time and practice. We never fully understand it, but we must move toward it and often get out of its way. That said, we work to develop personally and professionally, and the goal is to find where we can each put a spin on things. Our fingerprints on our work are the characteristics reflective of both our strengths and weaknesses. Our ability to accept both of those—our deficiencies being the toughest—is where our individuality and point of view reside. The world is full of people—and companies—trying to create a mass consumable perception. But—as practitioners—we shouldn’t take that approach. The baseline is to be a good problem-solver. However, the expression and articulation of those solutions can be personal and unique to each of us. Herein lies the risk and the satisfaction. One reason this works is that it is honest and defendable. It’s easier to stand up for our own ideas than it is for others. The second reason is that unique work stands the best chance of being novel in the eyes of the public. As designers, we don’t have to have thousands of clients. We must have enough to support the economy of our practice. I have found that making what I can make and searching for audiences that appreciate my sensibilities is much easier—and more satisfying—than working in the inverse. Differentiation serves the competitive nature of our job.

As designers, we don’t have to have thousands of clients. We must have enough to support the economy of our practice … making what I can make and searching for audiences that appreciate my sensibilities is much easier—and more satisfying—than working in the inverse.

If you want to get your hands on Drawn, which I highly recommend — it’s fantastic; you can order his book here.

At our next PRINT Book Club, Debbie Millman and Steven Heller will discuss the book, Material Wealth: Mining the Personal Archive of Allen Ginsberg with writer Pat Thomas and designer Andy Outis.

Pat Thomas is an author, historian, and archival music producer (and liner-note writer). His books have enlightened many on the cultural and musical zeitgeist of the sixties and seventies, with topics ranging from the Black Panthers to Jerry Rubin, photographer Les McCann, Lou Reed, Jack Kerouac, and more.

His latest book takes us through the personal archives of poet, activist, and prolific collector Allen Ginsberg, promising “an unprecedented look inside one of the most prolific poets and agitators of cultural mores of the 20th century.“

“A poster for Patti Smith’s first-ever poetry reading. Correspondence from Allen’s stint as literary agent for William S. Burroughs and Herbert Huncke. Yippie manifestos from Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, and John Sinclair of the MC5. A ticket for a 1974 concert by Bob Dylan & The Band (with Yoko Ono’s phone number scribbled on the back). Posters documenting early Beat Generation readings in 1950s San Francisco as well as later ones capturing the 1960s Haight-Ashbury Hippie era.“

These are just some of the treasures in the book, alongside photographs and ephemera in what is a “visual annotated compendium that reveals one of the unparalleled minds of his generation.”

Andy Outis, Material Wealth‘s designer, began his creative journey as a graffiti artist. Before founding his own practice, Shift7.Studio, Outis led the in-house agency for a group of national media brands and was the Creative Director of events and marketing at New York Media, where he led the team responsible for brand management and revenue-driving creative for New York magazine and its websites including Vulture and The Cut.

Don’t miss our conversation with Pat Thomas and Andy Outis, hosted by Debbie Millman and Steven Heller, on Thursday, March 28 at 4 PM ET! Register for the live stream discussion and buy your copy of Material Wealth.

Mark Mothersbaugh is the co-founder, composer, lead singer and keyboardist of DEVO, the eclectic New Wave band whose 1980 song “Whip It” was a top 20 single. A polymath and experimenter, Mothersbaugh creates music for television (including the long-running Rugrats series and Pee-Wee’s Playhouse), assorted films and video games through his production company Mutato Muzika. As a solo musician, Mothersbaugh also produced four studio albums: Muzik for Insomniaks, Muzik for the Gallery, Joyeux Mutato and The Most Powerful Healing Muzik in the Entire World.

His long-awaited new book, Apotropaic Beatnik Graffiti (Blank Industries), published today, is a hypnotically hyper-visual collection of neo-Dada stream-of-conscious visual poetry, representing one human’s observations of “life on a sliding planet.” I had to look up the word apotropaic—and you should now do the same. Then, read on for how Mothersbaugh explains the concept with precise logic and scientific mindfulness.

It makes sense that a founder of DEVO would create such a beautifully bizarre book, but what does “Apotropaic Beatnik Graffiti” mean to you? And how is the reader meant to interpret it?
I started drawing, writing and making collages on postcard-sized pieces of paper in the late ’60s, and by the time the early ’70s rolled around, I had come to realize they represented one spud’s observations of life on planet Earth. They included everything from ideas for lyrics and sketches of dreams to questions regarding humans being the one species out of touch with nature. My obsession with these cards led to me creating a sort of intellectual repository of my work when I found this specific type of red archival album I still use to this day to keep my cards. At present, I have collected about 700 of these books, each containing 100 pieces of artwork. The central image of each of these cards is a photo of a plaster eye I had purchased in a botanica in downtown Los Angeles between 1977 and 1979. … I really don’t remember the exact date, but I was impressed that the eye was intended to ward off evil; its job was to protect someone from such schadenfreude, jealousy, maledicta and evil-doers of all shapes and sizes. I repurposed the image into my artwork, adding stream-of-conscious writings and drawings, and created my own take on apotropaic [having the power to avoid evil] imagery. Inspired by the Beats, which had a significant influence on my early artwork and DEVO, and graffiti, which evolved as a vehicle for anyone to express their pure, unfiltered, honest thoughts, I created Apotropaic Beatnik Graffiti.

The book isn’t your average black-and-white print book. There are over 500 full-color images and about 40 pages of text with a flexi disc of a song I made using phrases derived from this book. There’s no specific way to interpret this book other than being encouraged to go with your instinct. If you feel inclined to tear out a page that speaks to you and hang it above your bed or front door, by all means, go for it! The book can also be used like a Gideon’s Bible or an oracle deck, where one can flip to any page and live out the key wisdom presented to them that day. 

You refer to the book as interactive, which, as you say above, includes the reader being involved with destruction, construction and reconstruction. This sounds like an ex-voto. How do you imagine the outcome of this?
As I said, the “reader” is encouraged to rip out a page and place it under their car seat for protection or above their bed for good dreams. I hope to one day fill the bedside tables of all hotel rooms with copies of Apotropaic Beatnik Graffiti.

How does the book represent the activities of the serendipitous mail art movement?
It doesn’t really represent the mail art movement. Actually, once I realized I needed to keep these cards, I stopped mailing them out to people, and every time I finished another hundred cards, I would put them in an archival binder that I would purchase from a local post stamp collectors shop.

The eye. Why the eye?
OK, this book draws from only five books of the 700 total I’ve been talking about, and they are atypical in the adherence to a central eye image on each card.

I was actually working on another much larger book than this when these images caught my eye, so to speak.

Eyesight has always been an important concept to me since a young age. I was legally blind up until age 8, when I received my first pair of prescription eyeglasses that forever changed the way I looked at the world. With this new superpower, I had the option of seeing the world as I had known it, blurry moving blobs of light and color, and this new-to-me perspective that was like seeing the world through a fish-eye lens or doorknob. That’s how the size of the postcard became my preferred size for artwork, as that size was the only thing that didn’t become curved and distorted from my glasses. In 2020, I became an early COVID patient, and refused to believe it wasn’t something “I was gonna just kick on my own.” However, I landed in the hospital, luckily making it through, but suffering from an accidental eye injury along the way. Since then, eyesight has taken on a whole new layer of significance to me, as I can only now see out of one eye.

The eye does not seem mechanical but the book, despite what’s going on around the edges of the meticulously positioned, fixed eye, leads this reader to wonder what is your intention. As I read it I feel I am being observed by an all-knowing presence. Is this valid?
No. It’s merely a collection of thoughts and ideas from one human’s perspective of the world around him. And, maybe. Maybe some of the eyes are reaching out to you in an attempt to protect you from the evil that floats around you …?

You state that this is the compilation of many books you’ve made. Are you still making these?
Yes. I draw on cardstock at some time during the day, pretty much every day. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night realizing I hadn’t drawn on a card that day, and finish off a few more, making it easier to fall back asleep.

The award-winning New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast has been places … a conversation with Henry Kissinger at the dentist … cradling an adoring Danny Devito like a baby … a terrifying convenience store named Stop and Chop … something about her mother finding O.J. Simpson’s glove and renting it out for parties. All of these dreams are fodder for her real-life cartoons.

I’m very happy to wake up and ask, where did I go last night?

Roz Chast

In a hilarious conversation with Debbie Millman and Steven Heller, Chast discusses her start in cartooning, why she sent in her work to the New Yorker (her parents subscribed), and why she loves cartoons and to-do lists, sometimes one-in-the-same (they are shorthand for conveying bigger things).

The illustrator talks about her process and why/when she draws on both paper and her iPad. Chast also offers pearls of wisdom from her more than 50 years as an artist, particularly when it comes to dealing with rejection and creative block.

If you missed the live stream, register here to watch the discussion.

Don’t own a copy of I Must Be Dreaming? You can order one here.

We must create space in the global conversation about design and visual culture for these important perspectives.

Are we missing a title you’d recommend? Have a suggestion? Let us know.

Kate Humphreys, a vintage children’s bookseller, has tapped into the inimitable magic of illustrated stories from a bygone era with her online shop, Oly Oly Oxen Free Books. The Nebraska-based Humphreys admits she has a bit of an obsession with vintage children’s books. “I love finding beautiful stories and sharing them with as many people as I can,” she writes on her Etsy shop. Humphreys also uses her delightful Instagram account as a sales channel for her books and to spread her love and appreciation for these classic, illustrated artifacts. She shares a careful curation of book covers, page spreads, and preciously drawn moments from her collection on the daily, amassing a lively community of followers who gush with glee on every post.

I contacted Humphreys to hear more about her vintage children’s book obsession and to get her expert opinion on why these books have such staying power in our souls. Her thoughtful responses are below!

(Interview edited for clarity and length.)

How did you first get into selling old children’s books?

The simple answer is that I had been collecting them for a number of years and started accumulating too many! I also had a hard time not purchasing good kids’ books at the thrift store, even if I already owned them. A friend suggested I open an Etsy store, and things went from there.

The more in-depth answer is that owning a children’s book store has been a fantasy dream job since I was a kid, like owning a candy shop or riding elephants in the circus. Something that your kid mind thinks is possible but your adult mind can’t come to terms with. I decided to ditch the rational adult thoughts and sell beautiful books with pictures.

I decided to ditch the rational adult thoughts and sell beautiful books with pictures in them.

What is it about children’s books that you find so obsession-worthy?

The picture book is the most underrated art form there is! Utilizing words and images to tell an engaging story to young people is no easy feat, and to own these small works of art by people who have indeed mastered that ability is magical. It’s the most affordable art one can own! Imagine if Picasso decided to make a children’s book; it would likely be no more expensive than one about burping dinosaurs!

Because of their brevity and the tendency for kids’ books to teach morality, the well-done ones are often wise and poetic. A story told simply is not always a simple story. A good children’s book embraces playfulness, and I believe play is an essential part of living a life of joy.

A good children’s book embraces playfulness, and I believe play is an essential part of living a life of joy.

What’s your process for choosing the books you sell and the illustrations you post on your Instagram?

I wish I could give you a secret formula, but I’m just buying what I like! That’s my only rule. I have to buy things I like. Sometimes I’ll find kids’ books that are probably worth something, but I don’t really feel drawn to them, so I don’t buy them.

As far as the illustrations I post on Instagram, I have to find images that work well in a small square. Lots of times, a book is remarkable but doesn’t have the perfect square image for the feed. Also, I’m usually looking for a picture that tells a story in and of itself.

What is it about vintage illustration aesthetics that makes them so captivating?

There is something about the analog nature of older printing techniques that imbues warmth! The fact that you can see where the color goes outside the line or imperfect inking draws you closer to the moment of creation. Also, making a children’s book took longer, and I think that extra time and consideration made for a better product. We all know that aesthetically speaking, something astounding happened in the 60s and 70s, that I won’t even attempt to explain.

Children’s media is so intimately tied to our upbringing, it’s impossible to separate the two. The book comes to represent a time and place and a moment, which is truly powerful! 

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. How do you see nostalgia at play in how people respond to your shop?

I didn’t consider the nostalgia element when I started my book account, but it’s certainly what brings many people to the page. I get so many questions about long-forgotten children’s books that I wish I could unearth them for people. Children’s media is so intimately tied to our upbringing that it’s impossible to separate the two. The book comes to represent a time, a place, and a moment, which is truly powerful!

Do you have a favorite children’s book from your childhood that was particularly formative for you?

Doctor DeSoto by William Steig was a particularly big book in my household.

There is a moment in the book when the fox, who is having his teeth worked on, has his mouth glued shut and tries to speak to his mouse dentist. My mom really delivered the fox’s line, “Fank oo berry mush” with such panache. It’s a tremendous memory.

Images courtesy Kate Humphreys.

At our next PRINT Book Club, Roz Chast will join Debbie Millman and Steven Heller to discuss her new graphic novel, I Must Be Dreaming. Since its release in October, the book has been named:

A New Yorker Best Book of the Year


A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice


A Washington Post Best Graphic Book of the Year

Need more convincing?

In I Must Be Dreaming, the New York Times bestselling, award-winning New Yorker cartoonist (check out the recent issue’s cover) takes us into the surreal realms of her mind, to help us untangle the mystery of our dreams and nightmares.

Roz Chast continues what the Ancient Greeks, modern seers, Freud, Jung, neurologists, poets, artists, shamans have all tried: to decipher the mysterious phenomena of dreams. Chast illustrates her own dream world, a place that is sometimes creepy but always hilarious, accompanied by an illustrated tour through “Dream-Theory Land” guided by insights from poets, philosophers, and psychoanalysts alike. Illuminating, surprising, funny, and often profound, I Must Be Dreaming explores Roz Chast’s newest subject of fascination―and promises to make it yours, too.

It perhaps comes as no surprise that the cartoonist Roz Chast―into whose unique and zany mind readers of The New Yorker have peeked, via her instantly recognizable, beloved cartoons―has some weird dreams. Now, fans can see these dreams illustrated, along with an exploration into the history and meaning of dreams as we know them.

The New Yorker, “Best Books of the Year”

Don’t miss our conversation with Roz Chast, hosted by Debbie Millman and Steven Heller, on Thursday, February 15 at 4 PM ET! Register for the live stream discussion and buy your copy of I Must Be Dreaming.

Curiosity is fuel for writer, design critic, and thinker Rick Poynor. He feels a tug toward an issue, a question, or a dilemma, and he explores and tests his ideas systematically through the process of writing. Poynor’s background is in art history and he’s been writing about the broader visual culture for decades at publications such as Blueprint, Eye Magazine (a publication he co-founded), and PRINT. He’s written and contributed to more books than will fit on your nightstand.

The 46 essays in his latest book, Why Graphic Culture Matters, are essential reading.

Debbie Millman’s and Steven Heller’s conversation with Poynor lobbed some meaty philosophical considerations into the air. The first is the vital and disappearing culture of critical writing about design. Poynor believes we should seek out more than a surface-level showcase of our output—that the conversation around graphic design (as part of visual culture, which includes art and film) should be the roots, sources, and cultural reflections behind the work (work, here, meaning not just our commercial deliverables).

This led nicely into the second big topic of the day: that design shouldn’t only be a net to catch consumers. Our favorite part of the discussion came when Poynor talked candidly about the marketization and bland-ification of design—of our trying to find appeal across the maximum audience.

Why must [graphic design] be the boring craft? Our culture isn’t!

If you missed the live stream, register here to watch the discussion unfold.

Don’t own a copy of Why Graphic Culture Matters? You can order one here.

The storyline follows a long-ago conversation between two gay Latino men, one near death, the other young and eager to learn about life. A 1941 compendium of case studies titled Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns acts as a literary and visual motif. The older man owns a rare edition he’s bequeathing to the younger, two heavily redacted volumes covered with black marks that obliterated the findings, so all that remained were words and phrases like ‘narcissistic,’ ‘tendency to femininity,’ ‘abnormalities,’ and ‘mincing.’ 

The winner of the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction, Blackouts is replete with memories, dreams, descriptions of the mental institution where the characters met, family histories, and other references, including French and English literature, the Bible, films, and song lyrics.

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG), the book has been called “a masterpiece,” “magical,” and “an artwork.” I was privileged to enjoy online conversations with Na Kim, who designed its jacket, cover, and endpapers, and the interior page designer Gretchen Achilles. Both designers worked with Torres, editor Jenna Johnson, and production manager Nina Frieman.

(Conversations edited for clarity and length.)

Ellen Shapiro: First of all, congratulations on the excellent reviews and the National Book Award. To begin, how do you generally approach the design of an illustrated novel?

Na Kim: We get a questionnaire filled out by the author with broad guidelines of what they’d like to see, if there are any visual inspirations for the book, any artwork they’d like us to consider, and what they absolutely don’t want on the cover.

ES: Do the cover designer and the interior book designer work together or independently?

Gretchen Achilles: We work separately (on different production schedules) but often consult each other and try to coordinate design elements when possible and appropriate.

ES: Do you usually present one design or more?

Achilles: For interior designs, we present a set of layouts to the editor and author, showing the front matter and an example of each design element as it will appear in the text. From there, we revise or tweak the design until we have approval from both.

Kim: Some books run through rounds and rounds of designs, and there are others when a single cover is presented with a strong sales pitch. We often present three to five options to the editor, but I find that presenting one with real conviction can be the most successful.

ES: Gretchen, did you research and find the illustrations and photographs? Was there any back-and-forth about which ones to use and where?

Achilles: They were all supplied by Justin Torres, and he determined where they needed to fall in the book. For the redacted pages, he made color photocopies of torn pages from his copy of Sex Variants and made the redactions in Sharpie. We scanned them in-house and manipulated the images to sharpen the text and heighten the contrast so they could be seen as part of the reading text rather than stand-alone art like the photos.

ES: So it’s not true that authors have little or nothing to say about a book’s design. At FSG, how much is the author involved? 

Achilles: The author is involved as much as they want to be. We are an author-centric house. We incorporate suggestions and advise on the best ways to visually achieve what they are looking for. Justin was very involved.

ES: Justin, did you need to get permission for every piece? Looking at the three pages of illustration credits, that must have been quite an endeavor. 

Justin Torres: Getting permissions for the images was insane. I didn’t know anything about how complicated the process would be. I had to hire a freelance editor to help hunt down the permiss images; some are from children’s books illustrated by one of the characters, Zhenya Gay, others are from Sex Variants, some are photos by Thomas Painter, another character in the book, whose archive is at the Kinsey Institute. Other images are personal.

ES: Was there any pushback about male frontal nudes?

Torres: Not at all. My editor is the best, and her constant refrain was, ‘Make the kind of book you need to make; let me worry about the rest.’ If there was any internal pushback, she didn’t mention it. We had some conversations about why certain images were important, and we definitely made a lot of jokes about just how many penises are in the book.

ES: Let’s talk about the redacted pages from Sex Variants. Was there a method for choosing which lines of text to black out and which to leave in? 

Torres: Each blackout poem had its own method. For one, I focused on the word ‘to,’ transforming the text into a kind of ode. For another, I focused on reducing the language to simple first-person declarations: ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’ Another focused on internal rhyme. I varied my approach with each blackout.

ES:  The New York Times Book Review chose Blackouts as one of the year’s most notable book covers. Tell us about the black gloss rectangle on the dust jacket.

Torres: When asked to describe my ideal cover, I said something like, ‘All black, only my name and the name of the book in embossed gold lettering.’ I wanted the cover to recall the original Sex Variants book, which my novel circles around: all black with gold titling.

The brilliance of Na’s design is that it’s the exact shape of one of the erasure poem images. I recognized the shape instantly and just loved it. The rectangle-with-one-torn-edge is the shape of the torn page that recurs throughout Blackouts. I made those erasures myself by photocopying the Sex Variants pages and tearing the photocopy to make it appear as if it had been torn from the book itself. I’m not sure how many readers realize the source of the shape on the cover; it’s a subtle connection. 

Kim: The black-on-black also nods to the stories within the stories, shadows existing in the dark. The peeking hyena is pulled from the illustrated children’s book within the novel.

ES: Justin, do you have a special relationship with or feelings about the hyena? What does the animal mean to you?

Torres: Impersonating the hyena’s laugh functions as a queer cry of recognition, a code, so certain characters can recognize one another.

ES: Is there a reason the typeface used for the chapter titles and initial caps isn’t on the cover or jacket?

Achilles: I chose Poster Bodoni, with its ‘censored’ rubber-stamp look yet classic literary feel that would marry well with the Adobe Caslon text. It’s heavier than the font Na used on the cover so that it would drop out of the solid torn rectangles.

ES: How did the choice of brown ink on cream stock come about?

Achilles: That’s a long story! Justin and Jenna wanted the book to have black text and sepia-toned images. I suggested doing it as a two-color job, black and dark gold Pantone 124U ink. We made duotones with the two inks to create a sepia tone, kept the text black, and used the gold in accents like the drop caps. Nina ran estimates every which way, but the book was not making margin (that is, keeping production costs in line). We could make margin with a lower-grade paper, so we settled on that, but when we were routing the page proofs, Jenna looked at me and asked, “Is this book really going to look good on this paper?” And I had to admit that I’d never run a two-color job on that kind of paper. So Nina and I reviewed the pages with redacted text and concluded that the [lower-grade] paper wouldn’t hold the detail. We returned to the higher quality, smoother, cream-colored sheet we’d originally wanted—the paper we stock for poetry titles and books with art that can carry the extra cost. On that paper, dropping the second ink, the book made margin. Jenna didn’t want to lose the sepia-colored images, so I suggested printing in one color, a deep brown (Pantone 2322U), so the text would be dark enough to be legible and so we could manipulate the images to create the ghostly sepia feel the author wanted. All the printer had to do was clean the press and replace the black ink with the Pantone color, and we wouldn’t have to pay for a two-color job. FSG is a smaller house, and we have smaller budgets.

ES: Thank you for sharing insights into what most graphic designers used to do, specifying ink on paper. In-house designers often get short shrift. I sometimes hear comments like, “When there’s a really great project, we send it out.” What are the plusses of being an in-house designer?

Kim: We’re pretty democratic regarding who gets to work on ‘big’ or ‘fun’ titles. Each of us has individual strengths and talents, and we work hard to make sure that everyone in our department of four gets an opportunity to work on a title they’re excited about. The plus-plus of being in-house is the relationships we build with our authors and editors. There’s a lot of trust. If there’s negative feedback, it’s easier to take when you know and like the person behind the remarks. It allows for more clarity and understanding about why something does or doesn’t work. 

Achilles: The biggest plus is that you are part of a team working in different ways for a book to succeed. Here at FSG, a smaller company, the publisher and editors make you a part of something we’re all doing together. The important thing we do is create a mood and support the text in a visual way that helps the reader make sense of it. The text is the star. The most successful designs are ones you don’t notice because they’re in service of the text rather than distracting from it.

ES: When you go on speaking tours and give interviews, do journalists and reviewers usually ask questions about the design?

Torres: I get a ton of compliments on the cover, but not really in the form of interview questions. The interior design comes up quite a bit, though. The brown ink really makes an impression on people. It’s so unusual for a novel not to be printed in black and white. No one asks such design-specific questions, but they do wonder why it was important to me to create such a stylish, visual book.

Start the new year with a thoughtful conversation on the state of design at our next PRINT Book Club! Design critic Rick Poynor will join Debbie Millman and Steven Heller to discuss his book, Why Graphic Culture Matters.

Why Graphic Culture Matters is a collection of 46 essays about graphic design and visual communication, written by Poynor, a non-designer deeply immersed in the practice of graphic communication. Many of these essays – speculative, questioning, sometimes controversial – were first published in PRINT (he was a columnist for 17 years).

What a fantastic, compulsive book. There’s just so much in it! Every page opens up new rabbit holes for me to go down.

Brian Eno

Poynor covers such topics as the commercial takeover of design, design criticism and history, the interplay of word and image, design celebrity, the enduring intimacy between art and design, and whether graphic design is still an apt term for what graphic communicators do.

Don’t miss this sure-to-be provocative conversation on Thursday, January 18 at 4 PM ET! Register for the live stream discussion and buy your copy of Why Graphic Culture Matters.

Images courtesy of Rick Poynor

Following the success of their previous book, AFROSURF, Mami Wata’s AFROSPORT is a 320-page exploration of the broad landscape of sport in Africa to understand its history and global influence through photography, stories, profiles, interviews, and design. It contains contributions from 25 writers, 30 photographers, 130 photos, and more than 100 original new graphics, as it delves into 26 different sports. Highlights include interviews with Joakim Noah, Didier Drogba, Dr. Gerard Akindes, Dricus du Plessis and Siya Kolisi.

“The book takes the reader on a journey beyond pitches, ballparks, training halls and stadiums and into the melting pot of heritage, innovation, politics and identity.”

Mami Wata

Mami Wata has collaborated with the platform for digital collectibles called CENT to create a limited-release collectible of the cover art included with every online book purchase at no additional charge. The book is available for pre-order here for $60, with copies slated to ship on January 24. 

This limited edition first run of 2,000 copies will be each individually numbered. Profits from the sales of AFROSPORT will go to African youth surf therapy organizations, Waves for Change, and Surfers Not Street Children.

“This year has battered our creativity and optimism, so I gift you Art as Therapy — let your imagination immerse in its poetic prose, as Alain de Botton’s sublime writing therapeutically restores the sense of hope, empathy, connection, dignity, and beauty we all desperately need.”

As Strategy Director at BUCK, Surabhi Rathi harnesses the power of creativity and strategy to shape and launch brands globally. She further channels her strategic experience into advising the next generation of brand leaders in the Masters in Branding program at the prestigious School of Visual Arts.

Banner photo by Inna Skosyreva on Unsplash.

“In another year where protests were heard and seen around the world, Strikethrough: Typographic Messages of Protest from the Letterform Archive offers a historical account of calls and responses in typographic form as a way to see lineages of solidarity going back to time immemorial.”

Silas Munro is an artist, designer, writer, curator, and founder of the LGBTQ+ and minority-owned graphic design studio Polymode.

Banner photo by Jean-Philippe Delberghe on Unsplash.

“Racism Untaught: Revealing and Unlearning Racialized Design by Lisa E. Mercer and Terresa Moses, (with a foreword by me), is a dynamic piece of scholarship disrupting our status quo. In Racism Untaught, adapted from their successful workshop series, Mercer and Moses explore design-led interventions and why these approaches are foundational to disrupting normative design practice.

Read more in my recent article: Five Essential Design Books to Decolonize Your Studio, Library, and Classroom.“

Dr. Cheryl D. Miller is is a designer, author, educator, theologian, and a decolonizing design historian. She is recognized for her outsized influence within the graphic design profession to end the marginalization of BIPOC designers through her civil rights activism, industry exposé trade writing, research rigor, and archival vision.

Banner photo by Diogo Nunes on Unsplash.

For Edel Rodriguez politics is personal. As a child, he and his family fled Castro’s Cuba as part of the Mariel boatlift. Once settled in Miami, a young Rodriguez became fascinated with the Bill of Rights in school. His first adult job was working the New York Times op-ed page. As an illustrator, Rodriguez has always been in the business of political commentary, speaking truth to power through his art.

His truth unfolds in Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey.

The Cuban dictatorship was great about sending the ‘right’ kind of propaganda out into the world. I hope my book dispels some of this. A ‘hero’ like Che can be someone else’s oppressor.

Edel Rodriguez

Debbie Millman’s and Steven Heller’s recent conversation with Rodriguez covered a lot of ground, from how he devised Worm’s visual language to the reclaiming of a derogatory term as the title to the deeper philosophical reasons for why this book (and why now). Rodriguez also delves into the parallels between the Cuban Revolution and the January 6th insurrection. As for a future film adaptation (we’re calling it here!), he’d cast Pedro Pascale as his father.

If you missed the livestream, register here to watch the episode.

Don’t own a copy of Worm? You can order one here.

Elinor Carucci is an Israeli-American photographer of Mizrahi Jewish descent, who immigrated to New York in 1995. She has garnered awards from the ICP (2001), the Guggenheim Foundation (2002) and NYFA (2010), and in 2020 she photographed 25 of Ginsburg’s famous collars, which fill the new book The Collars of RBG by Carucci and Sara Bader. The photographs are currently on view at Edwynn Houk Gallery, and the collars will be on view at the Jewish Museum of New York starting tomorrow through May 28.

“With her penchant for unlocking private relationships through intimate details, Carucci frames Ginsburg’s neckwear as evocations of symbols of her position,” states the gallery. “The bold, ornate and subversive collars she chose to wear on the bench communicated so much more.”

RBG’s collars have great historical significance. They were worn during her earliest argument for gender equality to her support of immigration and marriage equality throughout her 27 years on the bench.

I asked Carucci to speak about this unique testament to a legendary warrior for American justice.

Where did the idea to photograph Ginsburg’s famous collars come from?
It began as an assignment for Time magazine that was given to me by Katherine Pomerance. And it was actually an unusual assignment for me because I am not a still-life photographer. And Katherine was like, “I have this incredible assignment. But it’s different than what you’re doing.” So I feel that in a way, it was more who I was as a humanist. I mean, I photograph people. And usually my work, especially for magazines, deals with the human condition—families who’ve been through something.

Why were you given the assignment?
I’m a feminist. I’m a woman. I’m Jewish. I didn’t know. I guess it was more of ‘who I am’ than how I photograph. But when I realized, you know, that this is the assignment … Ruth Bader Ginsburg was someone we highly admired (me and my daughter and my family), and always looked up to. She was an inspiration. Once I accepted that assignment, Katherine and I thought about how to best photograph the collars.

Where did you get the collars?
Some were back at the Supreme Court, [many were] no longer there. They were given to different law clerks and friends and family members. And we saw pictures of them in the drawers, and the drawers had black velvet. And so we thought about photographing them on black velvet.

Who commissioned the collars? Did RBG have her own embroiderer or manufacturer?
Most of the commissions were done not by Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself, [but] by her law clerks, or Columbia Law School. She might have bought a few in the beginning, but the commissions were done by other people. There was one for [each of her] 25 years [on] the Supreme Court. Kim Lieberman, one of the artists, did a collar of white lace for RBG that was given to her through a supreme justice from South Africa.

His latest book, dubbed Grey Flowers, is a departure from his previous book Sidewalk Champions, where he exclusively showcased raw portraits of those on Skid Row, a neighborhood in Downtown Los Angeles that contains one of the largest populations of unhoused people in the United States.

I wanted to travel to a new area of Los Angeles daily and find the people who inspire me, but most often get overlooked.

Suitcase Joe

Grey Flowers, in contrast, highlights Angelenos, capturing the many characters throughout the city’s neighborhoods who make Los Angeles unique. By focusing on the underappreciated, Suitcase Joe brings to life the cultural makeup of Los Angeles through a lens of respect and appreciation for society’s differences. Whether it be different classes, races, sexualities, or genders, the book and its portraits lean into what makes humans different.

“After photographing and documenting Skid Row for several years, I was ready for something new. I’d been thinking about making a book like Grey Flowers for years,” shares Joe when asked what the inspiration behind his book was. “I wanted to travel to a new area of Los Angeles daily and find the people who inspire me, but most often get overlooked. My biggest inspiration and goal was to make a book about Los Angeles that hadn’t been done. I did my best to capture as many different walks of life in as short an amount of time as possible.”

Suitcase Joe captured Skid Row because it was largely previously unshared; he felt, on a personal level, that by photographing the people who call it home, they would be part of the historical record. His new book, similarly, captures the spirits of those who aren’t classically documented. “Often the people I photograph are pre-judged or looked down upon for their chosen lifestyles of where they’re on the monetary ladder,” shares Joe. “I do my best to capture them in a dignifying way. I’ve photographed pimps, gangsters, punks, sex workers, drug addicts, and everyone in between, and they all have redeeming qualities. We all do.”

Through the depth of the images shared, Suitcase Joe hopes his readers will be inspired to pause in their personal lives and meet someone they usually wouldn’t respect through their stories. Grey Flowers can visually inspire us to travel outside of our social circles and mingle with those who might seem different on the surface. He also notes, “I’m currently developing and filming a docuseries based on some of the people and subcultures I learned about while photographing for Grey Flowers. I’ve teamed with another filmmaker and a few others, and it’s coming along nicely. More on that in the near future.”

Learn more about Grey Flowers and pre-order your copy (out this winter).

All images copyright Suitcase Joe.

“Maira Kalman’s Principles of Uncertainty.

Maira basically invented a new genre, the picture book for adults. Many others followed, but she is still the champion.”

Stefan Sagmeister designs things about large subjects of our lives like happiness or beauty and long-term thinking.

Banner photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.

The heralded organization and curator of an invaluable online archive of type resources and references from the ages is hosting a rare book sale this Saturday, December 9. The sale will run both online and in person, so shoppers from near and far can take advantage of Letterform Archive’s incredible collection. 

“We’re clearing out a treasure trove of rare duplicates from the collection, from 19th–20th-century type specimens and hard-to-find design books and periodicals, to ephemera and other design collectibles,” the organization explained on their Instagram. 

The online sale will open exclusively to Letterform Archive members at midnight PST. Not a member? This is the perfect time to join! Or consider giving a Letterform Archive membership as a gift to a type-obsessed loved one. ⁠Annual memberships start at $30 and are available here.

Following the members-only preview, the online sale will open to the public at noon PST. For those in San Francisco, head to Letterform Archive’s headquarters for the in-person sale! The member preview will open at 10 am and run through noon, at which point the public is welcome to shop until 4 pm when the sale concludes. 

You won’t want to miss this chance to acquire your very own piece of the Letterform Archive in your personal book collection. Mark your calendars now!

“Ontario Fruit t-shirt by Christopher Rouleau. For all your Ontario-based fruits and fruit lovers, or fans thereof!

A subscription to the Criterion Channel. I have no affiliation with Criterion but this channel brings me so much joy and inspiration throughout the year. Open yourself up to the history of film and see what it sparks in you.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin. There’s a beautiful hardcover version of it. This novel about a lone human emissary’s mission on an alien world named Winter, whose inhabitants can choose—and change—their gender, is a dazzling work of science fiction and a terrifically eye-opening experience.”

Lola Landekic is a graphic designer and writer working in film and branding. She is also the Editor in Chief of Art of the Title, which she runs from her studio in Toronto, Canada.

Banner photo by Bia W. A. on Unsplash.

Devlin’s protean output draws upon a lifetime of reading and drawing, thinking and seeing, and most of all, reimagining. Seven years in production, the 2.75-inch thick, 8” x 8” book is a solid counterpoint to the artist’s experiential works. Weighing in at nearly five pounds, its square proportions echo one of Devlin’s signature formats, the box. 

Despite its heft, the book’s complex form, designed by her cousin Daniel Devlin, feels intimate and inviting. Devlin describes her process as consisting of five ingredients: space, light, darkness, scale, and time; the book pays homage to all. Printed books always have a time element, marking the passing of the hours as a reader gets lost in the pages. In this one, a surprising variety of translucent and mirrored papers, page sizes, die cuts, and other unexpected moments invite readers to pause and appreciate the object they hold in their hands. The ideas startle, provoke, and reward. Devlin searches for ways to provide dopamine hits. As with her designs for the stage, she invites readers to become part of a temporary society traveling through a rich, creative landscape of observing and feeling.

“I do it for love…If I make a beautiful object, it’s the most important use of my time.”

Es Devlin

The book’s pristine white cover features a blind-stamped title and a hypnotic series of circular die-cut apertures slicing through multiple following sheets. The effect is to draw a reader through a portal into the artist’s world, focused on an image of her as if seen through a camera viewfinder. The back cover features a smaller oval opening as if to say: here is a simple way out; your journey is complete. Each boxed copy includes a die-cut print from an edition of 5,000.

Devlin’s design practice is physical and conceptual; every project starts with a blank page, a pencil, and a conversation with the playwright or musician. She sketches, builds cardboard models, cuts holes in things, welds, and paints. The value of the craft process is integral to the book as well. The sculptural volume runs to more than 900 pages, with 700 color images documenting 120 projects over four decades. Of particular interest are 300 color reproductions of the ephemeral miniature paintings, sketches, paper cuts, and small mechanical models representing the development process of Devlin’s large-scale works. These welcome surprises scattered throughout appear as small accordion-folded inserts that jog sometimes to the head, sometimes to the foot of the book. 

An Atlas of Es Devlin highlights the artist’s deeply personal collaboration with actors, playwrights, directors, musicians, and other creative clients. The project examples cover a range of venues worldwide: performances at the Tate Modern, Victoria & Albert Museum, the Serpentine Galleries, the Royal Opera House, the Royal Ballet, the National Theatre, and the Imperial War Museum in London; Superblue Miami; the Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center in New York City, and La Scala in Milan. This monograph includes Devlin’s initial sketches, paintings, and rotating cardboard sculptures for the design of the London 2012 Olympic Closing Ceremony, early materials for the 2022 NFL Super Bowl half-time show with Dr. Dre and Kendrick Lamar, as well as setlists overlaid with sketched diagrams of illuminated stage sculptures for U2, Beyoncé, and Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye. 

Because Devlin didn’t like the onstage shape of rock shows as seen from the audience (a horizontal layout interrupted by spotlit bumps where the drummers, guitarists, and singers stood, with downlighting and maybe a huge banner behind them—boring!), she tore the shape apart. One approach involved putting each individual on stage into a separate box created with projection mapping and using enormous animated screens that visually synced to a second-by-second timeline of the music. 

In addition to stage performance design, some of her early ideas developed into public sculptures and installations exploring biodiversity, linguistic diversity, and AI-generated poetry. In September 2022, Come Home Again, a 16-meter-high interactive sculpture outside Tate Modern, attracted over 7,000 visitors daily to sing alongside a pre-recorded soundtrack featuring diverse London choirs and the sounds of 243 species. 

Devlin’s process relies upon a give-and-take of ideas, allowing her vision and that of her client to shine through. She collaborates closely with her professional studio team to bring her concepts to life. In an episode of the Netflix series Abstract, she discusses how crucial her collaborators’ support was during stage production for the play The Faith Healer, a series of monologues through rain, sludge, and bleakness. Devlin envisioned and sketched out a curtain of falling rain to create walls separating the actors on all sides from the audience without having the technical know-how to make it happen. Of course, someone else knew how. As she puts it, “It just shows you can design nice things without having any idea how they fucking work.” 

An Atlas of Es Devlin is an immersive, joyful reading experience, an encyclopedia of creativity, and a tribute to the sculptural possibilities of the printed book. It gives form and substance to the artist’s philosophy of why she creates: “I do it for love…If I make a beautiful object, it’s the most important use of my time.”

Banner image: Aperture p xi, © Es Devlin, Engineers and Fabricators

Anyway, just like everybody else in your inbox, I’m festively rolling out the affiliate links and sharing a few of my favourite reads/stacks from this year (plus a couple I don’t have my hands on yet but absolutely need to find space for … maybe I should ask Santa for bookshelves). Leave this email open near a loved one to make sure one/some/all find their way into your stocking.

The blurb for Charlotte Jansen’s Photography Now: “In the last century, photography was always novel. Now, it feels like our world is over-saturated with images. In the 21st century, what can photography do that is new?” A good question. All I know is that I adore this book, especially the Zanele Muholi self-portrait cover. [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

During the late 1960s, Joel Meyerowitz carried two cameras: one loaded with monochrome stock, the other with colour. Juxtaposing the resulting photographs, he explores the significance and effect of both approaches. Perfectly timed for my own obsession with monochromacity. [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

The latest in Phaidon’s excellent series, Vitamin C+ is a great snapshot of contemporary collage (not ceramics, as Vitamin C was – one suspects they’re regretting this approach to titles). [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

I missed Evelyn Hofer retrospective at The Photographers’ Gallery this year, but this collection of her work, focusing on her photobook output, just about makes up for it. [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

Perfectly pocketable for train journeys or school plays, the Do books are always fantastic reads. Keeping me company this year: Do Interesting by Russell Davies [ Amazon / Bookshop / Counter-Print ] and Do Photo by Andrew Painter [ Amazon / Bookshop / Counter-Print ]

After the absolute gem that was Mid-Century Modern Graphic Design, it’s always worth picking up what Theo Inglis is putting down. His new book The Graphic Design Bible is an essential reference for studios and students alike. [ Amazon / Bookshop / Counter-Print ]

Pretty sure Thames&Hudson put out a new Saul Leiter book every year, each time a little bit bigger, but this latest monograph of the street photographer’s street photographer looks particularly weighty. [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

Created by Read-Only Memory and art-directed by The Designers Republic alumni Michael C Place/Studio Build, WipEout: Futurism is the definitive illustrated history of the cult videogame. It isn’t out until next Autumn, but I’ve waited almost thirty years for this book, I can’t wait a little longer. [ Volume ]

As a book designer making a list of design books, it’s essential that I include a book about book design. The British Library always put together gorgeous tomes – imagine the meta-pressure to get the design of this one spot on! – and this is no exception. [ Amazon / Bookshop / Counter-Print ]

This was originally posted on Meanwhile, a Substack dedicated to inspiration, fascination, and procrastination from the desk of designer Daniel Benneworth-Gray.

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Photos courtesy of the author. Banner photo by Robert Anasch on Unsplash.

Mark your calendars for our next PRINT Book Club. Artist and illustrator Edel Rodriguez, creator of over 200 magazine covers for publications such as The New Yorker, TIME, Newsweek, and Der Spiegel, will discuss his latest book with Debbie Millman and Steven Heller. 

Rodriguez’s work is singular, striking, and often controversial and his graphic memoir, Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey, is a stunning example. Rodriguez illustrates the story of his childhood in Cuba and his family’s decision in 1980 to join a hazardous flotilla of refugees, the Mariel boatlift. He uses his own experiences to capture what it’s like to grow up under an authoritarian government and sound an alarm for the future.

A sharply observed document of totalitarianism and its discontents—this gifted artist in particular.

Kirkus Reviews

Through vivid, stirring art, Worm tells a story of a Cold War boyhood, a family’s exile, and their tenacious longing for those they left behind. It also recounts the coming-of-age of an artist and activist who, witnessing America’s turn from democracy to extremism, struggles to differentiate his adoptive country from the dictatorship he fled. Confronting questions of patriotism and the liminal nature of belonging, Edel Rodriguez ultimately celebrates the maligned and overlooked immigrants who guard and invigorate American freedom.

Don’t miss this exciting talk on Tuesday, December 12 at 4 PM ET! Register for the livestream discussion and buy Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey by Edel Rodriguez.

Banner image: illustration from Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey. © Edel Rodriguez

The London-based Boris is as taken by physical mediums as I, primarily working in silkscreen, sculpture, book, and letterpress. She continues her exploration of these proclivities with Rainbow, which features seven layered pieces of paper that gradually form the arches of a rainbow as the pages turn.

The only difference between Rainbow 1 and Rainbow 2 is the colorways featured, with Rainbow 1 composed of bright hues as they appear in nature and Rainbow 2 exhibiting pastels. The two versions came about when Boris made the book prototype from leftover paper samples she had on hand in her studio while under pandemic lockdown in 2020. During the process, she felt compelled to propose two different color palettes. The two versions can be experienced independently of one another or as a set, with Rainbow 1 seen as the classic and Rainbow 2 as its more interpretive counterpart. Both are made from a range of Japanese papers by Takeo.

To fully understand and experience the wordless books, you must hold them and turn the pages. Both Rainbow 1 and Rainbow 2 have been released in an edition of 222 and are available for purchase in Korea, Germany, the US, and online. Boris is also converting the book into an exhibition, which will be on view in France first in March and April and then again in May and June. This exhibition interpretation will feature the book, 48 modular color pencil drawings, a series of sculptures, and a new, unbound edition. Boris is hopeful the exhibition will soon find a home in the US as well.

In the age of all things digital, virtual, and AI, Rainbow is a refreshing reminder that the physicality of the book form still reigns supreme.  

For PRINT’s next livestream Book Club, Mark Kingsley will be in conversation with Debbie Millman and Steven Heller about his new book, Universal Principles of Branding. Register for our livestream and buy the book, here.

In Universal Principles of Branding, author Mark Kingsley deftly deconstructs the discipline of branding with intelligence, candor and a much-needed, remarkably original voice. In doing so, Kingsley has accomplished the impossible: he has created a book that finally—at long last—provides a confident, crystal clear, no-holes barred overview of what it really takes to create, define, build and deliver a brand.

Debbie Millman

Universal Principles of Branding presents 100 concepts, theories, and guidelines that are critical for defining, building, and delivering brands today.

 Richly illustrated and easy to navigate, this comprehensive reference pairs clear explanations of each principle with visual examples of it applied in practice. By considering these concepts and examples, you can learn to make more informed, and ultimately better, branding decisions.



Features diverse principles such as:

• Authenticity
• Social Responsibility
• World Building
• Gatekeepers
• Rituals and routine

Don’t miss this exciting talk on Thursday, November 30 at 4 PM ET! Register for the livestream and buy Kingsley’s book.

And stay tuned for information about the final PRINT Book Club of 2023, coming up on December 12!

He also has been making books for Corraini Editore for many years that apply this artistic gift—so it is no surprise the Italian publishing house would release a book celebrating his quick-draw pun-play. Even the cover bows to his verbal/visual hijinx: Interior Desecration, laden with graphic puns and full of playfulness.

The thematic glue that holds the collection of sketches and finished pieces together are architecture, home, interior decoration, furniture, appliances and, of course, style. Small in physical size, this delightful collection of work reveals how difficult it is to make a pun that is 100 percent pure, rather than flat (two-thirds of a pun, remember, is PU).

I don’t know how linguistically popular puns are in Italy. But Corraini seems to have enjoyed Guarnaccia’s for over two decades. My favorite series of his children’s books for the publisher are puns retelling classic tales through the lens of design: “I realized that many classic children’s stories were thinly disguised tales about design,” Guarnaccia writes in his introduction. “I conceived of The Three Pigs as a story about three architects. I figured the wolf was one, too, but an iconoclastic one who wanted to blow down the old guard.” And about another pun opportunity, he notes: “I’m not much interested in fashion but I love clothes, and so I looked to stories about the things we wear for my next book. Cinderella’s glass slipper and ball gown started me thinking about the other clothes in her closet, and her fairy godfather was clearly a fashion designer.” The most recent of this series is The Emperor’s New Clothes, “with the devious tailors trying invisible suit after invisible suit on the witless emperor.”

This is not to imply that the sum total of Guarnaccia’s output is pun-based, but he’s always had a knack for language and a gift for translating ideas into ironic conceptual images. Guarnaccia is not, however, captive of puns—he’s the captor and this book is, um, captivating.

Eskilson, previously the author of Graphic Design: A New History, takes a broad approach to the evolution of digital practice and outcomes, examining all the hot-button areas, including games, UX/UI, digital typography and prototyping. As the first book of its kind, it is the foundation for future study—and here Eskilson discusses how and when blank slates are filled with historical detail.

Although there are many books addressing how to be a digital designer, yours is the first “a history of” the revolution. At what point did you feel the time was right to codify the design history of the digital age? Would you agree that a period of gestation must occur before a phenomenon as significant as digital design can be codified as history?
Well, when I was in art history undergrad, then grad school, there was a “20-year rule” that you should never discuss something that recent as it’s impossible to make a neutral assessment. That informal rule has really fallen by the wayside! Art and design history is now replete with contemporary work. Since I had always looked at the flurry of exhibitions on digital art/design of the year 2000 as a turning point where there was a critical mass, I am mainly sticking to the rule! Obviously one of the reasons the book is called “A History” is to signal that history writing is plural and contingent.

In Philip Meggs’ A History of Graphic Design, he traces graphic design back to cave paintings, and Paul Rand agreed when he titled one of his autobiographical monographs From Lascaux to Brooklyn. What is the equivalent of cave painting for the digital era?
Would love to chat sometime about the idea of graphic design going back to cave paintings, as I have never felt that the premise made sense; I think of graphic design as arising really in the industrial age of mass production (of course with antecedents, but not cave painting). It strikes me as a Schopenhauer-driven idea of a human “will to form.” That being said, I think there are multiple entry points that people have experienced—games, web, even command line text. Of course, I constantly see analog/digital connections; today I was pondering what A.M. Cassandre, with his love of sequence, would do with motion graphics.

You write, “to fully understand digital design, one needs to grapple with both the future and the past,” and use the example of the word digital that originated from the Latin digitus, “which [means] fingers or toes—appendages that are the analog gateway into counting.” You add that “Today digital design is still an emerging concept.” How do you distinguish analog from digital practice?
Digital/analog: talk about an overlapping Venn diagram! I see two clear paths:

1) Straightforward utilization of a computer and, 2) an attempt to create a digital aesthetic akin to the machine aesthetic of the early 20th century.

You also state that digital communication had a distant relationship to the inventions of Morse Code and telegraphic communication. The evolution of one into the other makes sense, but at what stage in the story of communication do little dots and dashes become ones and zeros?
My interest here is really a cultural one. The telegraph was an incredibly disruptive technology that overturned contemporary communication systems yet was never treated as a cultural force in the way that digital tools have been defined. I wonder what parts of the digital world remain invisible yet have enormous practical impact.

What was the importance of Sketchpad in becoming what you call “a major step in demonstrating the potential of what will become two foci of digital design?
Sketchpad could be seen as able to produce a veritable cave painting, interacting with a screen (HCI) through the TX-2’s light pen with the implicit promise of making graphics faster and better (CAD).

When I started out as a “designer,” the leading technological advancement was the IBM MTST typesetting system, with its Selectric typewriter used for input and output. Was this the beginning of the digital present?
To my mind it’s one of many incremental steps. Still, the MTST was a professional tool of the trade that does not resonate with the idea of an expansive digital culture; I think more in terms of breaking into the mainstream such as with PCs, web, etc.

In 1989 I was invited to attend a workshop at Adobe prior to the release of Photoshop. Designers and illustrators were given an opportunity to learn the basic program and make artwork from scanned images. You write glowingly about Photoshop’s impact. There were other image-making programs—what was it about Photoshop that took the lead?
I tend to think that Photoshop’s success was indicative of good marketing and brand-building by Adobe as opposed to some inherent quality of the program. And I think it was part luck; I had a friend at ’90s Adobe whose project was shut down in the C-suite because he wanted to stream compressed video on the web and was told “nobody wants to watch video on a computer.”

How does the Bauhaus—and notably its typography—become a pathway to the digital age?
This is one of the central stories in the book, as I am fascinated as to how big tech has adopted a whitewashed version of the Bauhaus as their go-to design format. In a literal sense it’s the story of ex-pats and institutions like MIT and Aspen promoting the style. The stickiness of minimalism continues to amaze me; as a corollary the Chicago skyline is filled right now with Miesian towers under construction. Will this style ever look dated and obsolete?

One of the pioneers you call out as a paradigm-shifter is April Greiman, a formerly Swiss-trained graphic designer. She worked with pre-Mac and then Macintosh hardware to break out of the grid. How do you define the early “look” of digital design?
In terms of style I think layers, complexity of composition, pixelated type, fragments of photos. But I also really look at the futuristic iconography: outer space, timeline, etc.

Regarding David Carson, you say that the “digital roots of his work are often completely overlooked.” How can you claim that to be true, since his era-defining aesthetics have inspired so many digital works today?
This question is so right on and really made me think: Why, back in the ’90s, did I form an idea of Carson as almost the antithesis of a digital designer (even knowing he was awash in Emigre types and digital tools)?! I think it’s partly my blind spot and partly testament to how authentically hands-on his grunge style felt in an intuitive sense.

After reading your book, I took a look at my old surviving copies of the early WIRED, which you describe as being the essential chronicle of the current digital age. I must say, with the exception of visuals by Erik Adigard, it was under-designed in a sense. It wasn’t the futuristic new typography that underscored digital design. Did not following an Emigre or Carson path give it a more subtle widely understood impact?
I guess I see the fluorescent mind grenades, with their over-the-top quotes, as emblematic of the cultural arena; I agree not as much the designed one.

Although your prior work has been rooted in graphic design, your liberal definition of digital design in this book addresses product, games, interfaces, data visualization, textiles and virtual space. In your view, is “digital” or “design” the overarching thrust of your scholarship? In other words, is any form of design now just a component of a larger holistic discipline where perhaps one cannot work without the other?
I think it’s a shame that the various design paths have been siloed in the contemporary age. I love it all, from academic, experimental digital projects to major commercial undertakings. Design is my overarching interest: My dissertation from way back when focused on the introduction of color into consumer goods, while I wrote a little book about glass in modern architecture a few years ago.

Would you agree that “digital” was synonymous with “future”? And if so, how has it shaped the language of design? The book ends with a coda that explains and predicts the digital future. Are there other futures waiting to be pioneered?
I definitely agree it is synonymous although always rooted in the past. I think of Futura branded as “the type of today and tomorrow.” I’m also definitely agnostic on the future and skeptical that anyone can predict it with accuracy.