As the creator of the site Design Is History, I have a particular interest in the history of graphic design. It was with that interest in mind that I jumped at the chance to interview John Clifford, author of the new design history title Graphic Icons: Visionaries Who Shaped Modern Design, about his catalog of some of the notable designers who have shaped what graphic design is today.
The smell of Cow Gum rubber cement and the fascination of stacked Letraset trays form a large part of my childhood memories of afternoons spent at my father’s graphic design and advertising agency.
In order to deal with the ever-growing pile of design books on my desk, I have become more choosy about what to review. Some design books are simply gorgeous design objects, others contain insightful content.
Reviewed by Carolina de Bartolo
In my 2010 review of Josef Albers’s Interaction of Color, I summarized this most excellent volume as “an eternal gift to the world of design.
As part of a DROB series of interviews with authors, Jenny Venn interviews Noah Scalin and Michelle Taute about co-authoring the useful and inspiring book The Design Activists Handbook and about the emerging niche of designing for social change.
Design Anthropology: object culture in the 21st century, edited by Alison J. Clarke
Publisher: Springer, Vienna, 2011.
Review by Maria Blyzinsky
'This book describes a seismic shift in the way experts and users conceptualize, envisage, and engage in object culture.
