John L. Walters
Recent articles by John L. Walters
Extinction Rebellion: Truth works
Issue 100, Summer 2020
Extinction Rebellion has grabbed the world’s attention with its imaginative, disciplined and…
Malika Favre: Gridlocked
Issue 100, Summer 2020
A love of mathematics and geometry underpins the immaculate illustrations of Malika Favre
Introduction Eye 100
Issue 100, Summer 2020
Design odyssey
Issue 99, Autumn 2019
Editorial Eye 99
Issue 99, Autumn 2019
Business at the centre
Issue 99, Autumn 2019
An interview with Sascha Lötscher, managing partner of G+A
Fritz Gottschalk and the Swiss-Canadian connection
Issue 99, Autumn 2019
Gottschalk + Ash International spans more than five decades, a Swiss design studio with Modernist…
Walker’s riddles
Issue 99, Autumn 2019
Art and ambiguity
Issue 99, Autumn 2019
The identity for Venice Biennale Arte 2019, designed by Melanie Mues, distorts type across a…
They made Canada
Issue 98, Spring 2019
Working against the clock, with virtually no budget, Greg Durrell made a design documentary that…
New bottle old wine
Issue 98, Spring 2019
Drawing on the punches, matrices, specimens and smoke proofs at St Bride Library, Commercial…
Adventures in the book trade
Issue 98, Spring 2019
Editorial Eye 98
Issue 98, Spring 2019
Return to the square
Issue 98, Spring 2019
A chance discovery by some builders led to the adaptation and expansion of a 1930s alphabet by one…
Waste not
Issue 98, Spring 2019
The heart and soul of Harlem
Issue 98, Spring 2019
Shock and oral history
Issue 97, Autumn 2018
This woman’s work
Issue 97, Autumn 2018
Kate Hepburn’s design career, embracing pioneering magazines such as Spare Rib and Vole as well as…
Anglo-Saxon latitudes
Issue 97, Autumn 2018
The art of small moments
Issue 96, Spring 2018
The reviews
Issue 96, Spring 2018
Evaluations by ‘trusted third parties’ are a mag staple, says John L. Walters
Anatomy of a magazine
Issue 96, Spring 2018
Each magazine is unique. Happily, magazines are all alike, too. Here we analyse some of the…
Editorial Eye 95
Issue 95, Winter 2018
Hidden treasure
Issue 95, Winter 2018
Two hours from Paris, the historic printing house Imagerie d’Épinal is reborn as the heart of a…
A sharp eye for Brazilian design
Issue 95, Winter 2018
Market forces
Issue 95, Winter 2018
The crew with no name
Issue 95, Winter 2018
Editorial Eye 94
Issue 94, Summer 2017
A house that type built
Issue 94, Summer 2017
Type foundry House Industries – the subject of a hefty new monograph and a retrospective…
Pleasure in the process
Issue 94, Summer 2017
Paul McNeil and Hamish Muir are graphic designers who construct typefaces through mathematics…
Expressive geometry
Issue 94, Summer 2017
Kabel, Rudolf Koch’s eccentric, geometric 1920s typeface, has been revived as a 21st century type…
Grignani
Issue 94, Summer 2017
Editorial Eye 93
Issue 93, Winter 2017
Soothing deadlines
Issue 93, Winter 2017
Olivier Kugler: bearing witness
Issue 93, Winter 2017
This contemporary illustrator uses his ears and eyes – plus a camera, digital voice recorder…
‘Because, history’
Issue 92, Summer 2016
Time machine
Issue 92, Summer 2016
Each summer since 1973, artist Tom Phillips has taken photos of the same twenty places in his…
Editorial Eye 92
Issue 92, Summer 2016
Editorial Eye 91
Issue 91, Spring 2016
Scissor action
Issue 91, Spring 2016
Tightly cropped critique
Issue 91, Spring 2016
Colouring in the city
Issue 91, Spring 2016
Camille Walala’s exuberant, colourful designs for the Splice Post building bring warmth and…
The case of Romek Marber
Issue 91, Spring 2016
The Polish-born graphic designer behind Penguin’s ‘Marber grid’ helped to define British postwar…
London Letters
Issue 91, Spring 2016
Philip Sayer photographs lettering on the streets of London in this alphabetical compendium
Editorial Eye 90
Issue 90, Summer 2015
Nested narratives
Issue 90, Summer 2015
Editorial Eye 89
Issue 89, Winter 2014
We made this: Dorothy and Otis
Issue 89, Winter 2014
In 2009, Norman Hathaway and Dan Nadel arrived at an archive in Arizona to rediscover a legacy of…
Reputations: Mucho
Issue 89, Winter 2014
‘We were interested in working internationally, to learn from different cultures and to know how…
Powered flight
Issue 88, Summer 2014
For fifteen years, Pegasus, an international biannual corporate magazine designed by Derek…
A small ‘M’ modern master
Issue 88, Summer 2014
Editorial Eye 88
Issue 88, Summer 2014
Luxury of less is more
Issue 87, Spring 2014
‘Roundhead’ Sean Perkins explains North’s designs for restaurateur Alan Yau and the St Pancras…
Burger, fries, no logo
Issue 87, Spring 2014
With ‘nothing to show and nothing to say’, Ben Stott’s ‘anti-branding’ helped turn the Byron…
Editorial Eye 87
Issue 87, Spring 2014
We made this: A life in artefacts
Issue 86, Autumn 2013
Towering ambition
Issue 86, Autumn 2013
Violently opposed to war
Issue 86, Autumn 2013
Editorial Eye 86
Issue 86, Autumn 2013
Reputations: Tony Brook
Issue 86, Autumn 2013
‘What other profession do you end up in where you learn so much about other people’s businesses…
Editorial Eye 85
Issue 85, Spring 2013
Man of letters
Issue 85, Spring 2013
Old school layout
Issue 82, Winter 2012
Every fortnight, art director Tony Rushton and editor Ian Hislop lay out Private Eye in a way…
Better than the real thing
Issue 84, Autumn 2012
Robin Nicholas
Issue 84, Autumn 2012
‘I don’t see myself as a typeface designer. Hermann Zapf is a typeface designer. What I have done…
Alphabetical jazz soup
Issue 84, Autumn 2012
Dan Rhatigan: All about workflow
Issue 84, Autumn 2012
Monotype’s UK type director talks about the way the company’s 125-year history informs its…
Editorial Eye 84
Issue 84, Autumn 2012
Psychedelic tract
Issue 83, Summer 2012
Devil in the detail
Issue 83, Summer 2012
Careful, even-tempered typographer by day – wild art director by night? For John Morgan, both the…
Bible of babel
Issue 83, Summer 2012
Editorial Eye 83
Issue 83, Summer 2012
Resonating image-makers
Issue 29, Autumn 1998
Sound and vision
Issue 76, Summer 2010
Given the visceral feelings stirred by music, it’s time we found new, meaningful associations…
Abbott Miller in the driving seat
Issue 43, Spring 2002
Adventures in motion pictures. Narrative arc
Issue 77, Autumn 2010
Editorial photographer Lauren Greenfield on the jump from ‘essay form’ to story-telling
Adventures in motion pictures. Aerial ballet of upholstery
Issue 77, Autumn 2010
Matthew Donaldson’s high-speed ‘still life’ photoshoot with GTF for Kvadrat at Pinewood
Illuminated thought
Issue 69, Autumn 2008
The practice is said to ‘signal a break with the past’ but GTF has an unforced ‘style’ that…
Reputations: Commercial Type
Issue 82, Winter 2012
‘There has been typography on the Web for its entire existence, because there are words, and where…
Reputations: Marian Bantjes
Issue 72, Summer 2009
‘I’ve come close to working with a couple of agencies for very big brands, but either the money…
Hands-on design and digital angst at the AIGA
Issue 58, Winter 2005
A2’s type design
Issue 67, Spring 2008
Reason and rhymes
Issue 63, Spring 2007
Can design for contemporary jazz, world and experimental music have a meaningful partnership with…
The United Nations of Type
Issue 64, Summer 2007
Look beyond the confines of the Latin alphabet, urges Johannes Bergerhausen of Decodeunicode.
Reputations: John McConnell
Issue 81, Autumn 2011
‘By wanting to be intelligent, it usually gets simpler and simpler. The creative process is paring…
Art and art direction – Kuchar Swara
Issue 73, Autumn 2009
The relationship between art directors and photography has developed in myriad ways alongside…
Men behaving stylishly
Issue 79, Spring 2011
Who would dare to launch a glossy men’s magazine during an economic crisis? The team behind Port…
The mystery of frozen locomotion
Issue 75, Spring 2010
All the flat boys
Issue 82, Winter 2012
Reputations: Karsten Schmidt
Issue 74, Winter 2009
‘If we don’t take responsibility as makers we sacrifice everything sooner or later. We have the…
Black gold
Issue 74, Winter 2009
The digital reality of ‘emotional products’
Issue 69, Autumn 2008
Character studies
Issue 73, Autumn 2009
Michael Johnson’s project to make a ‘phonetic typeface’ that English speakers can understand
Branches and roots
Issue 78, Winter 2010
John L. Walters on the break-ups and tearful reunions of Rock Family Trees
Pop Art’s moving target
Issue 72, Summer 2009
Noted
Issue 67, Spring 2008
The Ed and Geoff show
Issue 69, Autumn 2008
Turning clutter into gold
Issue 69, Autumn 2008
Chalking and talking
Issue 69, Autumn 2008
Recent blog posts by John L. Walters
The printed howl
20 February 2021
Type Tuesday: Happy Birthday St Bride!
26 November 2020
Twisted characters
1 October 2020
Sunday photo-painter
31 January 2020
MagCulture Live 2019
20 November 2019
Being there
24 June 2019
Hacking Gutenberg
13 March 2019
Search for a star (librarian)
20 November 2018
New York state of mag
24 May 2018
Independence day
10 April 2018
Music deco
25 February 2018
Two tribes
27 November 2017
Sea levellers
18 September 2017
Books received #28 (music and visual culture)
6 September 2017
Felt-tip fundamentals
25 July 2017
Brief encounters and the pleasures of ambiguity
16 June 2017
Porto’s studio culture
1 June 2017
Friendships and glue
30 May 2017
Talented talent-spotter
17 January 2017
Giancarlo Ilipriandi (1925-2016)
4 October 2016
Roger Perry’s London letters
10 March 2016
The calm collector
24 February 2016
Pop justice
30 September 2015
Illustrated gumbo
27 August 2015
The freedom principle
19 August 2015
Was, is & will be
29 June 2015
Observer’s post
15 April 2015
Full bleed
13 February 2015
AK and A23D on press
18 September 2014
Design for eating: Milton Glaser
15 July 2014
Poster engineer
8 July 2014
Type on the tongue
20 December 2013
Comp up the volume
18 December 2013
Insanely integrated, day one
12 November 2013
The gospel of Dave
30 October 2013
Whodunnit?
23 October 2013
See and hear
22 August 2013
Cover story
8 August 2013
Babylon aan ’t IJ
12 July 2013
Chair man
19 June 2013
Jazz in print
14 November 2012
The purpose of posters
3 October 2012
The Olympic press gang
26 July 2012
Type Tuesday: Reputations
3 July 2012
Music, flesh and fantasy
21 June 2012
Sonorama panorama
12 June 2012
Type Tuesday: West coast ghosts
29 May 2012
Full tilt
11 May 2012
Clicks and sparks
27 April 2012
Blue notebook
19 April 2012
Javier & Fernando & Bebo
25 February 2012
Getting away with murder
2 February 2012
One day, all this will be ours
26 January 2012
Who’s who
4 October 2011
Awesomely awesome FOTB
16 September 2011
Fixed compass
20 March 2011
Sound and vision #1
9 November 2010
The cover that never was
6 May 2010
Text without type
3 February 2010
Fine words for Kitching / Stothard
19 November 2009
Never mind the music
11 November 2009
The right lines
30 October 2009
Record design framed
22 September 2008
Two degrees of (colour) separation
5 September 2008