Monthly archives for "November 2007"

Super-Special Audio/Triplet Edition!

Spotty Interpol croonster Paul Banks;

Largely-forgotten Guns ‘n’ Roses excrescence Axl Rose, and

Earsplitting lollapalooza Ethel Merman?

Book cover design is close to my heart—if you’re an avid reader, it’s nice to have a really attractive cover to the book you’re reading. Joseph Sullivan of Book Design Review publishes his favourite book cover designs of 2007.

From his list, my favourites are “Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance” (above, designed by David Drummond), “Six Degrees” (designer unknown), “One Perfect Day” (designed by Evan Gaffney), & “Brave New World” (designed by Greg Kulick). Of course I’m also very fond of “Simple Sentences”, but since I designed it I might be biased!

There’s an interesting article in Design Observer about the fairly recent trend in ugly design—nasty colour combinations, stretched type & a lot of other characteristics considered no-nos of good design.

The development of this style—perhaps we should call it “anti-design”, even though its proponents claim it’s the hardest work they’ve ever done—seems to be a reaction to the prevalence of overly-clean (and potentially overly restrictive) design as covered in the documentary Helvetica.

Michael Bierut makes a good point about negative reactions to the design:

If you’re familiar with art and design, you know the perils of condemning the shock of the new. After all, no one wants to risk being one of the bourgoisie sneering at the unveiling of Les Mademoiselles D’Avignon (sic) or booing at the debut of Le Sacre du Printemps.

I’ve always disliked people who try to paint critics with such a brush—it’s a response calculated just to shut you up, not to provoke any debate. But it’s one thing to be provocative in your work & quite another to be heedless to anything that’s actually attractive.

Time will tell whether this new trend—redolent of the early days of PageMaker & Quark design with its “ransom letter” font choice & squeezed typography—will actually last. I can’t help but wonder why we’re caught in this same spiral of reaction & counter-reaction: restrictive design vs. unfettered, even unschooled, design. We’re stuck learning & un-learning the same lessons: we’re fighting old men’s wars. After all, it’d be nice to create something new, wouldn’t it?

Richard Strauss: What hath I wrought?

Gotta love that warbly voice-over.

I’m pretty sure that I, or at least friends of mine, had at least half of these items when I was an impressionable youth—it all seems so familiar.

But you have to wonder why the humans just keep getting caught. Is this fun?