Eye Magazine

John L. Walters

Recent articles by John L. Walters

Word playIssue 101, Summer 2021
Opinion

	Sarah Boris’s letterpress collaboration with New North Press reflects the turbulence of 2020.
Crowd controlIssue 101, Summer 2021
Feature
Designers are making illustrated books through crowdfunding instead of traditional publishing…
Drawn from the capitalIssue 101, Summer 2021
Review

                London can be a hard city to love, but David Gentleman always finds good reasons…
      
Pictoglyphic time travelIssue 101, Summer 2021
Review

                If the concept of ‘designer and illustrator as author’ is worthy of close…
      
Captain lithoIssue 101, Summer 2021
Review

	Barnett Freedman (1901-56) was an artist / designer from a Jewish immigrant…
      
Editorial Eye 101Issue 101, Summer 2021
Opinion

	The grids and graphs of Covid-19 graphics are familiar to nearly everyone…
      
Extinction Rebellion: Truth worksIssue 100, Summer 2020
Feature

	Extinction Rebellion has grabbed the world’s attention with its imaginative, disciplined and…
Malika Favre: GridlockedIssue 100, Summer 2020
Feature

	A love of mathematics and geometry underpins the immaculate illustrations of Malika Favre
Introduction Eye 100Issue 100, Summer 2020
Opinion

                For this issue, eleven prominent designers have generously given up time to talk…
      
Design odysseyIssue 99, Autumn 2019
Review

	Stanley Kubrick (1928-99) has long been the ultimate designers’ director, a…
      
Editorial Eye 99Issue 99, Autumn 2019
Opinion

	Eye has always been both a cultural journal and a business-to-business…
      
Business at the centreIssue 99, Autumn 2019
Feature

	An interview with Sascha Lötscher, managing partner of G+A
Fritz Gottschalk and the Swiss-Canadian connectionIssue 99, Autumn 2019
Feature

	Gottschalk + Ash International spans more than five decades, a Swiss design studio with Modernist…
Walker’s riddlesIssue 99, Autumn 2019
Review

	Tim Walker’s photographs are dispatches from a non-parallel universe. His…
      
Art and ambiguityIssue 99, Autumn 2019
Feature

	The identity for Venice Biennale Arte 2019, designed by Melanie Mues, distorts type across a…
They made CanadaIssue 98, Spring 2019
Feature
Working against the clock, with virtually no budget, Greg Durrell made a design documentary that…
New bottle old wineIssue 98, Spring 2019
Feature

	Drawing on the punches, matrices, specimens and smoke proofs at St Bride Library, Commercial…
Adventures  in the book tradeIssue 98, Spring 2019
Review

	Printing R-Evolution’ has been an unexpected public success, confounding…
      
Editorial Eye 98Issue 98, Spring 2019
Opinion

	When you visit St Bride Printing Library in London, or the living archive…
      
Return to the squareIssue 98, Spring 2019
Feature

	A chance discovery by some builders led to the adaptation and expansion of a 1930s alphabet by one…
Waste notIssue 98, Spring 2019
Review

	For many years Vaughan Oliver was the in-house designer for the 4AD record…
      
The heart and soul of HarlemIssue 98, Spring 2019
Review

	The black-and-white Esquire photo  of 57 jazz musicians (plus a few local…
      
Shock and oral historyIssue 97, Autumn 2018
Review

	Ian Birch’s Uncovered: Revolutionary Magazine Covers is an entertaining…
      
This woman’s workIssue 97, Autumn 2018
Feature

	Kate Hepburn’s design career, embracing pioneering magazines such as Spare Rib and Vole as well as…
Anglo-Saxon latitudesIssue 97, Autumn 2018
Review

	The London transport maps designed by MacDonald (Max) Gill can be regarded as…
      
The art of small momentsIssue 96, Spring 2018
Review

	To call Chris Ware a genius seems obvious, banal, almost. So much praise has…
      
Editorial Eye 96Issue 96, Spring 2018
Opinion

	Magazine special issue, part one
The reviewsIssue 96, Spring 2018
Feature

	Evaluations by ‘trusted third parties’ are a mag staple, says John L. Walters
Anatomy of a magazineIssue 96, Spring 2018
Feature

	Each magazine is unique. Happily, magazines are all alike, too. Here we analyse some of the…
Editorial Eye 95Issue 95, Winter 2018
Opinion

	Last summer, during a visit to London, Triboro’s David Heasty made a strong…
      
Hidden treasureIssue 95, Winter 2018
Feature

	Two hours from Paris, the historic printing house Imagerie d’Épinal is reborn as the heart of a…
A sharp eye for Brazilian designIssue 95, Winter 2018
Review

	The short title of this exhibition – ‘Brasil Hoje’ [Brazil Today] – gives an…
      
Market forcesIssue 95, Winter 2018
Review

	Lucinda Rogers is a British reportage illustrator whose career has become…
      
The crew with no nameIssue 95, Winter 2018
Review

	This ambitious exhibition throws light on a circle of artists and designers…
      
Editorial Eye 94Issue 94, Summer 2017
Opinion

	The notion that graphic design is fundamentally a creative business, a form…
      
A house that type builtIssue 94, Summer 2017
Feature

	Type foundry House Industries – the subject of a hefty new monograph and a retrospective…
Pleasure in the processIssue 94, Summer 2017
Feature
Paul McNeil and Hamish Muir are graphic designers who construct typefaces through mathematics…
Expressive geometryIssue 94, Summer 2017
Feature

	Kabel, Rudolf Koch’s eccentric, geometric 1920s typeface, has been revived as a 21st century type…
GrignaniIssue 94, Summer 2017
Review

	‘Franco Grignani: Art as Design 1950-1990’ at London’s Estorick Collection (5…
      
Editorial Eye 93Issue 93, Winter 2017
Opinion

	Illustration and the power of the drawn image are at the heart of this issue…
      
Soothing deadlinesIssue 93, Winter 2017
Review

	Christoph Niemann’s Sunday Sketching (Abrams, $40, £25) includes a few…
      
Olivier Kugler: bearing witnessIssue 93, Winter 2017
Feature

	This contemporary illustrator uses his ears and eyes – plus a camera, digital voice recorder…
‘Because, history’Issue 92, Summer 2016
Review

	Despite its name, Typo Berlin, founded in 1996, has never been solely…
      
Time machineIssue 92, Summer 2016
Feature

	Each summer since 1973, artist Tom Phillips has taken photos of the same twenty places in his…
Editorial Eye 92Issue 92, Summer 2016
Opinion

	In the feature ‘Tune out, dive deep, read on’, Riposte magazine…
      
Editorial Eye 91Issue 91, Spring 2016
Opinion

	Every city resonates to the rhythms of the graphic marks made on its…
      
Scissor actionIssue 91, Spring 2016
Review

	John Heartfield: Laughter is a Devastating Weapon (David King and Ernst…
      
Tightly cropped critiqueIssue 91, Spring 2016
Review

	The subtitle of James Clough’s generously illustrated Signs of Italy: Outdoor…
      
Colouring in the cityIssue 91, Spring 2016
Feature

	Camille Walala’s exuberant, colourful designs for the Splice Post building bring warmth and…
The case of Romek MarberIssue 91, Spring 2016
Feature

	The Polish-born graphic designer behind Penguin’s ‘Marber grid’ helped to define British postwar…
London LettersIssue 91, Spring 2016
Feature

	Philip Sayer photographs lettering on the streets of London in this alphabetical compendium
Editorial Eye 90Issue 90, Summer 2015
Opinion

	The wider world’s interpretation of type and typography can be broad, vague…
      
Nested narrativesIssue 90, Summer 2015
Review

	The Grand Budapest Hotel (Abrams, $35, £21.99) – the book of the film – comes…
      
Editorial Eye 89Issue 89, Winter 2014
Opinion

	Photography and illustration may be separate disciplines, but they are…
      
We made this: Dorothy and OtisIssue 89, Winter 2014
Feature
In 2009, Norman Hathaway and Dan Nadel arrived at an archive in Arizona to rediscover a legacy of…
Reputations: MuchoIssue 89, Winter 2014
Feature

	‘We were interested in working internationally, to learn from different cultures and to know how…
Powered flightIssue 88, Summer 2014
Feature

	For fifteen years, Pegasus, an international biannual corporate magazine designed by Derek…
A small ‘M’ modern masterIssue 88, Summer 2014
Review

	The history of graphic design has many gaps and omissions, whether through…
      
Editorial Eye 88Issue 88, Summer 2014
Opinion

	Publication design is a thread that runs through Eye 88. There’s the…
      
Luxury of less is moreIssue 87, Spring 2014
Feature

	‘Roundhead’ Sean Perkins explains North’s designs for restaurateur Alan Yau and the St Pancras…
Burger, fries, no logoIssue 87, Spring 2014
Feature

	With ‘nothing to show and nothing to say’, Ben Stott’s ‘anti-branding’ helped turn the Byron…
Editorial Eye 87Issue 87, Spring 2014
Opinion

	What do we think about when we look at design for food and drink? This…
      
We made this: A life in artefactsIssue 86, Autumn 2013
Review

	Tom Dixon’s Dixonary (Violette Editions, £35) is a big book (632 pages) that…
      
Towering ambitionIssue 86, Autumn 2013
Review

	Audiovisual events that genuinely work are so rare that Brooklyn Babylon…
      
Violently opposed to warIssue 86, Autumn 2013
Review

	Looking for images of ‘peace’ on the internet yields predictable and clichéd…
      
Editorial Eye 86Issue 86, Autumn 2013
Opinion

	This type special contains several examples of letters that lie some way off the…
      
Reputations: Tony BrookIssue 86, Autumn 2013
Feature

	‘What other profession do you end up in where you learn so much about other people’s businesses…
Editorial Eye 85Issue 85, Spring 2013
Opinion

	Anyone who creates something new – whether it’s an idea or an artefact – is…
      
Man of lettersIssue 85, Spring 2013
Review

	For much of the past decade, illustrator Tom Gauld has been a regular…
      
Old school layoutIssue 82, Winter 2012
Feature

	Every fortnight, art director Tony Rushton and editor Ian Hislop lay out Private Eye in a way…
Better than the real thingIssue 84, Autumn 2012
Review

	A recent exhibition at the Ikon gallery in Birmingham presented work by…
      
Robin NicholasIssue 84, Autumn 2012
Feature

	‘I don’t see myself as a typeface designer. Hermann Zapf is a typeface designer. What I have done…
Alphabetical jazz soupIssue 84, Autumn 2012
Review

	The most ingenious editorial design element of Jazz Covers is its double…
      
Dan Rhatigan: All about workflowIssue 84, Autumn 2012
Feature

	Monotype’s UK type director talks about the way the company’s 125-year history informs its…
Editorial Eye 84Issue 84, Autumn 2012
Opinion

	The original Monotype was an ingenious piece of highly disruptive technology that…
      
Psychedelic tractIssue 83, Summer 2012
Review

	The era of psychedelic art – from the mid 1960s to the very early 70s – was…
      
Devil in the detailIssue 83, Summer 2012
Feature

	Careful, even-tempered typographer by day – wild art director by night? For John Morgan, both the…
Bible of babelIssue 83, Summer 2012
Review

	The 2012 European Design Awards, the winners of which were announced in…
      
Editorial Eye 83Issue 83, Summer 2012
Opinion

	Several recent issues of Eye have focused on type design, but this special puts…
      
Resonating image-makersIssue 29, Autumn 1998
Review

	The graphic scores of Roman Haubenstock-Ramati (1919-1994) date from the…
      
Sound and visionIssue 76, Summer 2010
Feature
Given the visceral feelings stirred by music, it’s time we found new, meaningful associations…
Abbott Miller in the driving seatIssue 43, Spring 2002
Review

	A new phase for the visual culture magazine 2wice begins with this paean to the…
      
Adventures in motion pictures. Narrative arcIssue 77, Autumn 2010
Feature

	Editorial photographer Lauren Greenfield on the jump from ‘essay form’ to story-telling
Adventures in motion pictures. Aerial ballet of upholsteryIssue 77, Autumn 2010
Feature

	Matthew Donaldson’s high-speed ‘still life’ photoshoot with GTF for Kvadrat at Pinewood
Illuminated thoughtIssue 69, Autumn 2008
Feature
The practice is said to ‘signal a break with the past’ but GTF has an unforced ‘style’ that…
Reputations: Commercial TypeIssue 82, Winter 2012
Feature

	‘There has been typography on the Web for its entire existence, because there are words, and where…
Reputations: Marian BantjesIssue 72, Summer 2009
Feature

	‘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 AIGAIssue 58, Winter 2005
Review

	In past years the biennial conference of the American Institute of Graphic Arts…
      
A2’s type designIssue 67, Spring 2008
Feature

	A2’s bespoke type design is mainly the responsibility of Henrik Kubel, though…
      
Reason and rhymesIssue 63, Spring 2007
Feature
Can design for contemporary jazz, world and experimental music have a meaningful partnership with…
The United Nations of TypeIssue 64, Summer 2007
Feature
Look beyond the confines of the Latin alphabet, urges Johannes Bergerhausen of Decodeunicode.
Reputations: John McConnellIssue 81, Autumn 2011
Feature

	‘By wanting to be intelligent, it usually gets simpler and simpler. The creative process is paring…
Art and art direction – Kuchar SwaraIssue 73, Autumn 2009
Feature

	The relationship between art directors and photography has developed in myriad ways alongside…
The mystery of frozen locomotionIssue 75, Spring 2010
Review

	This exhibition explores the static, two-dimensional representation of movement.…
      
All the flat boysIssue 82, Winter 2012
Review

	Michelle Cotton’s book, produced to accompany a Cubitt Gallery touring…
      
Reputations: Karsten SchmidtIssue 74, Winter 2009
Feature

	‘If we don’t take responsibility as makers we sacrifice everything sooner or later. We have the…
Black goldIssue 74, Winter 2009
Review

	If there can be such a thing as a revolutionary coffee table book, Freedom Rhythm…
      
The digital reality of ‘emotional products’Issue 69, Autumn 2008
Review

                Adrian Shaughnessy has long been an astute observer of music graphics from both…
      
Character studiesIssue 73, Autumn 2009
Feature
Michael Johnson’s project to make a ‘phonetic typeface’ that English speakers can understand
Branches and rootsIssue 78, Winter 2010
Feature
John L. Walters on the break-ups and tearful reunions of Rock Family Trees

Recent blog posts by John L. Walters

Come to the Eye 101 launch

3 June 2021

Please join Anette Lenz, Mario Eskenazi, Jim Sutherland & Elizabeth Resnick next Tuesday 8 June to celebrate Eye’s latest issue

The next Type Tuesday is a virtual launch party, designed to celebrate the publication of the latest edition of Eye, writes editor John Walters.

The printed howl

20 February 2021

Though locked down in London, this exhibition of letterpress protest posters has plenty of messages for the world

If the past few years have felt like one long trail of division, doom and injustice, followed by the deadly silence and devastating death toll of the pandemic, then ‘Reverting to Type 2020: Protest Posters’ is the exhibition for you, writes John L. Walters.

Type Tuesday: Happy Birthday St Bride!

26 November 2020

Some of our favourite speakers return to celebrate the 125th anniversary of St Bride Printing Library on 1 December 2020

Eye magazine started organising Type Tuesdays as a regular St Bride Library event back in 2013, and it has been a wonderful partnership: a way to bring designers together for a social occasion that is educative and fun, and an opportunity for the magazine team to keep in touch with readers and contributors, writes Eye editor John L. Walters.

Twisted characters

1 October 2020

Hamish Smyth’s wordmarks for Gaslit Nation and Bellingcat are memorable graphic identities for organisations that fight populism and disinformation with solid research and truth. By John L. Walters

Hamish Smyth’s identity for the Gaslit Nation podcast is a smart piece of design for a project that is playing a part in the unravelling of Trump’s presidency, writes John L. Walters.

Sunday photo-painter

31 January 2020

In the early 1950s, Swiss designer Gérard Ifert walked the streets of Paris on quiet Sundays, taking pictures of the colourmen’s shopfronts

The ‘designer as photographer’ is a trope that has been much explored in articles, books and exhibitions, with photos by graphic designers as different in temperament and outlook as Rudy VanderLans, Nicolete Gray, Robert Brownjohn, Wojciech Zamecznik and Ken Garland, writes John L. Walters.

MagCulture Live 2019

20 November 2019

The conference formerly known as ModMag gave magazine makers plenty to think about, and reasons to be optimistic

The ‘magCulture Live’ day of presentations by editors, art directors and publishers was one of the best magazine events I have ever attended, writes John L. Walters.

Being there

24 June 2019

Lucinda Rogers finds something rich and strange in the streets of New York. Her drawings will be the subject of a substantial book – if it gets the support it needs via crowdfunding

Hacking Gutenberg

13 March 2019

Eye’s Type Tuesday about 21st-Century letterpress featured Double Dagger, The Counter Press and Erik Spiekermann. A splendid time was had by all

Erik Spiekermann opened his talk at Type Tuesday on 5 March 2019 with some ruminations on the subject of craft: ‘Craft, skill, trade, vocation: The human impulse to make something for its own sake, to do it as well as you can,’ writes John L. Walters.

Search for a star (librarian)

20 November 2018

St Bride Library is looking for someone to take charge of its extraordinary archive

The ad looks almost mundane at first glance, tucked away on a site called lisjobnet.com, which is for ‘Library & Information’ jobs. Yet what it is advertising is one of the most crucial roles in type and design history: the job of Librarian at St Bride Printing Library in London, writes John L. Walters.

New York state of mag

24 May 2018

ModMag takes Manhattan next Wednesday for a one-day celebration of magazine-making with Gail Bichler, Richard Turley, Emily Oberman and more

Anyone who has attended or taken part in London’s annual Modern Magazine conference will know the depth of Jeremy Leslie’s love for magazines, writes John L. Walters.

Independence day

10 April 2018

Over the past decade, Eye magazine has not only survived but thrived

Ten years ago, on 10 April 2008, Eye became an independent magazine, owned by the people who make it, writes Eye editor John L. Walters.

Music deco

25 February 2018

‘Rhythm & Reaction’ gets under the skin of a British love affair with American jazz

Jazz first came to Britain as a visual and cultural style – rather than as a musical form, writes John L. Walters.

Two tribes

27 November 2017

It’s always fun to win awards. But what do two wildly different ceremonies tell us about the state of magazine design, editing and publishing? By John L. Walters

Last week I attended two magazine awards ceremonies on two successive days. I don’t make a habit of this, but I was involved as a nominee in both the Stack Awards and those run by the BSME, the British Society of Magazine Editors, writes John L. Walters.

Sea levellers

18 September 2017

The 2017 Folkestone Triennial turns this seaside town into an open-air gallery for a kind of applied conceptual art … with a graphic edge

Folkestone is hosting its fourth Triennial, a two-month-long festival of contemporary art that can be appreciated in the open air of this British seaside town in Kent, writes John L. Walters.

Books received #28 (music and visual culture)

6 September 2017

The design and look of music – from classical CDs and rave culture to stock (library) album covers and jazz photography

Here are some musically inclined books that came to our attention in recent months.

Felt-tip fundamentals

25 July 2017

Ink soaks into paper as Daniel Eatock’s mark-making processes result in a riot of colour

Designer and artist Daniel Eatock has a good-natured but unswerving way of reducing things to their essence, writes John L. Walters.

Brief encounters and the pleasures of ambiguity

16 June 2017

Design, illustration, animation and anecdotes at Here London 2017

Here London, It’s Nice That’s annual conference, has become an established fixture on the design calendar, with speakers from a range of ‘creative’ disciplines showing their work, entertaining an audience of professionals and students with anecdotes, videos and slide shows of career highlights writes John L. Walters.

Porto’s studio culture

1 June 2017

This year’s European Design Awards ceremony was held in the city of Porto, which is about to launch an international design biennale

Last weekend, designers from all over Europe converged on Porto for the European Design Awards (EDA) ceremony. The EDA has been running for the past decade, and now attracts entries from 34 countries, writes John L. Walters.

Friendships and glue

30 May 2017

A book of scrapbook pages gives new insights into the world of illustrator Edward Bawden

Designer-illustrator Edward Bawden is remembered for a prolific career that embraced posters, book covers, illustrations, murals and set design, writes John L. Walters.

Talented talent-spotter

17 January 2017

Unit Editions’ second book about Herb Lubalin zeroes in on his ‘expressive typography’ and his gifted collaborators

Unit Editions’ Herb Lubalin: Typographer is a slimmer, more compact volume than the publisher’s popular blockbusters on Supergraphics, Henrion and Lubalin himself, writes John L. Walters.

Giancarlo Ilipriandi (1925-2016)

4 October 2016

A recent interview with the distinguished and prolific Milan designer, who died on 15 September 2016 at the age of 91.

Roger Perry’s London letters

10 March 2016

A ‘replica reissue’ of The Writing on the Wall’, designed by Pearce Marchbank, delivers a gritty slab of mid-1970s graffiti

The Writing on the Wall (Plain Crisp Books) is a recent, Kickstarter-financed ‘replica reissue’ of a cult book from four decades ago, writes John L. Walters.

The calm collector

24 February 2016

A new collection of Steve Hare’s writing demonstrates an erudite passion for the design and content of Penguin Books

The late Steve Hare (1950-2015) was one of those writers that every editor appreciates, writes John L. Walters.

Pop justice

30 September 2015

The curators of ‘The World Goes Pop’ have scoured the globe for overlooked and under-appreciated artists from a moment when art collided with the mass media

It is hard to dislike ‘The World Goes Pop’ (Tate Modern), with its mad visual assault on the senses, starting with Ushio Shinohara’s Doll Festival (1966) and finishing with Komar and Melamid’s mordant take-down of Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Indiana, writes John L. Walters.

Illustrated gumbo

27 August 2015

A children’s picturebook about jazz musician Trombone Shorty brims with positive vibes

The story of children’s picturebook Trombone Shorty is a familiar one, writes John L. Walters.

The freedom principle

19 August 2015

Thierry Noir channels the improvisatory spirit of Berlin in ‘Jazz’ at the Howard Griffin Gallery

Thierry Noir is the street artist’s street artist, painting outdoor surfaces (famously the Berlin Wall) all over the world for more than 30 years, adding colour, line and a quizzical cheerfulness to public spaces, writes John L. Walters.

Was, is & will be

29 June 2015

For its 160th anniversary, British newspaper The Daily Telegraph unveils a new masthead, crest and typefaces

Some news outlets have a hard time staying in business for more than a generation. British broadsheet daily The Daily Telegraph celebrates its 160th anniversary this week with a confident redesign that includes a new masthead, crest and bespoke typefaces, writes John L. Walters.

Observer’s post

15 April 2015

Watercolours by Eric Ravilious at South London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery

With its verdant gardens, mausoleum (with sarcophaguses) and a smart tea-room, the Dulwich Picture Gallery seems more like a country town art centre than a London gallery. Yet its quirky contradictions and charm make it appropriate for an exhibition of watercolours by Eric Ravilious, writes John L. Walters.

Full bleed

13 February 2015

The catalogue for Glenn Ligon’s Come Out evokes the power and brutal claustrophobia of Steve Reich’s 1966 tape composition, first made to raise legal expenses for the Harlem Six.

The catalogue for Glenn Ligon’s Come Out is a picture book full of words, based on a piece of music made of speech, writes John L. Walters.

AK and A23D on press

18 September 2014

Two 21st-century letterpress projects breathe new life into this arcane, antiquated but much-loved method of mark-making

The LDF’s opening graphic weekend featured plenty of stimulating events and fascinating displays, with workshops, movies (Lost Highway), demonstrations, talks (Paula Scher, Irma Boom), David David’s Carousel Wall in the tunnel entrance, and Barber & Osgerby’s vertiginous Double Space – huge rotating mirrors – in the Raphael Gallery, writes John L Walters.

Design for eating: Milton Glaser

15 July 2014

Milton Glaser recalls working with an inspirational client – the great New York restaurateur Joe Baum (1920-98). Interview by John L. Walters

New York designer Milton Glaser has long been associated with design for food and drink, from his restaurant identities (Rainbow Room, Aurora) to his label and logo designs for Brooklyn Beer.

Poster engineer

8 July 2014

Naomi Games profiles the life and work of her father Abram Games in this recent book from the Antique Collectors’ Club

Flaubert once wrote that when one writes the biography of a friend or relative, one should do it as if taking revenge on that person’s behalf, writes John L. Walters

Type on the tongue

20 December 2013

Eye’s panel checks out the taste of Helvetica, Impact and Comic Sans (as cooked up by Sarah Hyndman)

Designer Sarah Hyndman is known for her Type Tasting workshops – popular events at Pick Me Up and London Design Festival this year. For Hyndman’s latest project, A Taste of Type, she has reversed the approach by asking, ‘what does type taste like?’

Comp up the volume

18 December 2013

A loud new book pays tribute to the Colby Poster Printing Company of LA and their clients, from artists to junk dealers

This new book is a riotous feast of posters produced in recent decades by the Colby Poster Printing Company, which shut its doors for good at the end of 2012, writes John L. Walters.

Insanely integrated, day one

12 November 2013

Despite its vague theme of ‘The fluidity in-between …’, the Integrated2013 conference in Antwerp was sharp and entertaining

The biannual Integrated conference organised by Hugo Puttaert, can seem bewilderingly complex at first glance, writes John L. Walters.

The gospel of Dave

30 October 2013

Graphic Renaissance man Dave McKean sings two of his Nine Lives and launches Sandman Overture at Foyles’ 3rd floor gallery

Dave McKean is a prolific illustrator, film director, animator, designer and self-publisher – the bearded Renaissance man of British comic art, writes John L. Walters.

Whodunnit?

23 October 2013

Last few days to catch the exhibition ‘Romek Marber: Graphics’ at the Minories in Colchester.

If you live within a few hours of Colchester in Essex, I strongly recommend a visit to the ‘Romek Marber: Graphics’ exhibition, which runs until Saturday 26 October 2013, writes John L. Walters.

See and hear

22 August 2013

If you have an interest in the intersection of sound and visual culture and you’re anywhere near London before next Sunday, I strongly recommend a visit to the Calvert 22 gallery in Shoreditch, writes John L. Walters.

Cover story

8 August 2013

You’ve seen that face before. But why is Jeanne Moreau (as seen in La Notte) staring soulfully from the cover of Eye 85?

The cover of the current issue, Eye 85, has attracted lots of (largely welcome) attention in recent weeks, writes editor John L. Walters.

Babylon aan ’t IJ

12 July 2013

Brooklyn Babylon, a multimedia spectacular by Darcy James Argue and Danijel Žeželj, raises the roof at the Holland Festival

In the critic’s lexicon, there are few terms more problematic than ‘multimedia’, writes John L. Walters.

Chair man

19 June 2013

London’s Estorick Collection shows the work of Giorgio Casali, the photographer who framed Domus’s modernist dream

The Estorick Collection is one of London’s smaller galleries, just a short walk from Highbury and Islington (a node of the shiny new London Overground) but not on many tourists’ art tours, writes John L. Walters.

Jazz in print

14 November 2012

Matt Willey’s sumptuous brochure for UK radio station JazzFM evokes a golden age of magazine and LP sleeve art direction.

Jazz and radio came of age around the same time, the 1920s, when ‘physical music’ was clunky and expensive, writes John L. Walters.

The purpose of posters

3 October 2012

London Transport’s spare posters go under the hammer at Christie’s tomorrow.

‘Of course it's not about graphic design,’ said my friend, glancing at the high proportion of besuited viewers. ‘It’s about money!’

The Olympic press gang

26 July 2012

Editorial designers get into the fast lane to deliver print for the Games

One big, but largely unsung design challenge of the 2012 Olympic Games has been the print production and design of 55 different publications, from the 196-page, perfect-bound Official Programme to an Olympics daily, the first of which is due to roll off the presses early on Saturday morning, writes John L. Walters.

Type Tuesday: Reputations

3 July 2012

Commercial Type’s Christian Schwartz & Paul Barnes – interviewed in Eye 82

‘There has been typography on the Web for its entire existence, because there are words, and where there are words there is typography … Some people believe that there is going to be a radical change in the process of reading because of webfonts. Actually, no.’

Music, flesh and fantasy

21 June 2012

When Mati Klarwein’s hyperactive paintings stole the psychedelic show.

Mati Klarwein is best known for a handful of album covers in the very early 1970s, a time when his exotic, erotically charged and quasi-mystical images stole the psychedelic show, writes John L. Walters.

Sonorama panorama

12 June 2012

A French magazine that put a new light (and spin) on musical multimedia

This June issue of French magazine Sonorama includes reports from the Cannes film festival, writes John L. Walters.

Type Tuesday: West coast ghosts

29 May 2012

This Emigre type specimen celebrates a lost era of LPs and recording studios

I once heard someone dismiss a former boyfriend with the put-down, ‘he’s the sort of person who files his records in alphabetical order.’ Which prompted me to think: ‘what other sort of person is there?’ writes John L. Walters.

Full tilt

11 May 2012

Glass & Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach liberates the space-time continuum.

Though I missed the UK premiere* of Einstein on the Beach by Robert Wilson and Philip Glass (nearly 36 years after its first performance in Avignon), reports John L. Walters, the performance I witnessed ran flawlessly without a break, clocking in around four hours 20 minutes, and earning a standing ovation from the packed house.

Clicks and sparks

27 April 2012

data.anatomy – Ryoji Ikeda’s new audiovisual installation in Berlin

Ryoji Ikeda’s work quivers somewhere between electronic music, digital art, installation and performance, writes John L. Walters. He uses raw materials – both visual and sonic – that seem plucked from the innermost depths of contemporary gadgetry: tiny clicks and flashes that are amplified to colossal proportions.

Blue notebook

19 April 2012

David Wild’s Jazzpaths is a personal and poetic ‘photomemento’

David Wild’s Jazzpaths is labelled a ‘photomemento’. It is a carefully printed hardback collection of mid-1960s impressions, in images and prose, formed during the author’s two-year stint in the United States. It is closer to poetry or oral history, however, than a conventional autobiography or photobook.

Javier & Fernando & Bebo

25 February 2012

Mariscal’s full length movie Chico & Rita is in the running for an Oscar

As this weekend’s 84th Academy Awards ceremony brings the season of movie awards madness to a glittery (and/or cringe-inducing) climax, it’s good to note that a leading European designer-illustrator is in the running for an Oscar.

Getting away with murder

2 February 2012

Good, bad and ugly cover ‘tributes’: a new spin on the death of music design.

The album cover may have lost its mojo as far as contemporary culture is concerned, but its classic era (from Blue Note to 4AD, say) maintains a powerful grip on the imaginations of music-loving designers, writes John L. Walters.

One day, all this will be ours

26 January 2012

Getting ready for the hyperbolic new Design Museum in Albertopolis.

The new Design Museum, slated to open in 2014, is cause for celebration in London’s design community, writes John L. Walters.

Type Tuesday: Private Eye

18 October 2011

Matthew Carter’s timeless typographic masthead for Private Eye magazine

Tony Rushton has been art director of satirical magazine Private Eye for 49 of its 50 years. The fortnightly is celebrating its half-century with a small, free exhibition in two rooms at the Victoria & Albert museum.

Who’s who

4 October 2011

High-octane graphic design in Barcelona for AGI Open

AGI Open is a high-octane assemblage of graphic designers with international reputations, performing to a packed gathering in Barcelona’s Coliseum Theatre.

Awesomely awesome FOTB

16 September 2011

Buzzwords and the inspiration of improv at the Brighton codefest

If you were to play buzz-word bingo at Brighton’s ‘Flash on the Beach’, the squares for ‘awesome’, ‘pumped’ and ‘stoked’ would fill up pretty quickly, writes John L. Walters. A wordcloud of all three days’ presentations would bloom with the same words, plus ‘HTML5’, ‘agile’, ‘responsive’, ‘Molehill’ and the inevitable ‘clients’, ‘schedules’ and ‘budgets’.

Fixed compass

20 March 2011

David Gentleman talks about his identity design for British Steel

The most recent issue of Eye includes a Reputations interview with David Gentleman, whose career spans nearly six decades, and whose work includes illustration, wood engraving, protest graphics, posters, books, stamps and identity design.

Port of entry

25 February 2011

Two art directors and an editor launch a brand new men’s magazine

You could be forgiven for thinking that the cold Spring of 2011, with its cutbacks, closures, price hikes and app-frenzy is not the best of all possible times to launch a new magazine, writes John L. Walters.

Sound and vision #1

9 November 2010

Time to find some new, meaningful associations between music + design.

Think about design for music, and record covers spring to mind, writes John Walters. (See ‘Sound and vision’ in Eye 76, the music design special issue, opening spread below.) That’s understandable: graphic design has borne witness to an extraordinary canon of independent work over the past 70 years.

The cover that never was

6 May 2010

Is Chris Ware’s rejected cover for Fortune 500 right on the money?

The world of graphic design is full of images that never were, writes John L. Walters, buried in blogs, and the footnotes to design or cultural history.

Text without type

3 February 2010

Building Sound: can a website work with just speech, space and colour?

Here’s an interesting sound-based concept – a website that has no type or lettering whatsoever, other than the URL.

Fine words for Kitching / Stothard

19 November 2009

Breathing life into the dying embers of letterpress … to light graphic fireworks

The great thing about spoken tributes, when they’re done well, is that they give the speakers a chance to say nice things they would never say face to face, writes John L. Walters.

Never mind the music

11 November 2009

Your chance to vote for the best of 2009’s vinyl sleeve art

Formats come and formats go (and MP3s are going the way of cassettes now that we have room for ALEs), but vinyl has had a surprisingly long afterlife, writes John L. Walters.

The right lines

30 October 2009

iwant’s illustrative identity for the London Jazz Festival

Album covers may be a dying art, but design for live music is thriving, writes John L. Walters, and iwant’s identity – brochures, posters, launch invitations (top) and floor vinyl (below), for next month’s London Jazz Festival is an example of what can be achieved when imaginative illustration and design meets a sympathetic music client.

Record design framed

22 September 2008

Does ‘Spin’ reduce graphic design to the level of art on a wall?

The Spin exhibition is small, free, easy to find (if you’re in or near London) and won’t take up too much of your time, writes John L. Walters.

Two degrees of (colour) separation

5 September 2008

Graphic Rolling Stones artefacts are saved for the nation

It began with a letter – addressed to the designer at the Royal College of Art, writes John L. Walters.