Typography Now: The Next Wave

by Rick Poynor, Edward Booth-Clibborn

Book by Poynor, Rick, Booth-Clibborn, Edward

Genres: Design, Art Design

256 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1991

About the author

Rick Poynor is a British writer on design, graphic design, typography and visual culture. He began as a general visual arts journalist, working on Blueprint magazine in London. After founding Eye magazine, which he edited from 1990 to 1997, he focused increasingly on visual communication. He is writer-at-large and columnist of Eye, and a contributing editor and columnist of Print (magazine).

In 1999, Poynor was a co-ordinator of the First Things First 2000 manifesto initiated by Adbusters. In 2003, he co-founded Design Observer, a weblog for design writing and discussion, with William Drenttel, Jessica Helfand and Michael Bierut. He wrote for the site until 2005. He was a visiting professor at the Royal College of Art, London from 1994 to 1999 and returned to the RCA in 2006 as a research fellow. He has also taught at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. In 2004, Poynor curated the exhibition Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties at the Barbican Art Gallery in London. The exhibition subsequently travelled to four venues in China and to Zurich.

Poynor's writing encompasses both cultural criticism and design history and his books break down into three categories. He has written several monographs about significant British figures in the arts and design: Brian Eno (musician), Nigel Coates (architect) and Vaughan Oliver and Herbert Spencer (graphic designers). Other books document and analyse general movements in graphic design and typography. Among these are Typography Now, the first international survey of the digital typography of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and No More Rules, a critical study of graphic design and postmodernism. Poynor has also published three essay collections, Design Without Boundaries, Obey the Giant and Designing Pornotopia, which explore the cultural implications of visual communication, including advertising, photography, branding, graphic design and retail design.

Poynor was a prominent interviewee in the 2007 documentary film Helvetica.

Reviews

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a typical graphic designers look book: many examples of great designs, practically no words or explanations.
It is not the kind of book I am reading nowadays, but when I was a student I loved them as a source of inspiration.
I used to Love that Book back then, it felt so uptodate on a visual level.
Now it is a sign of its time, it will be interesting to see the works when even more years have passed.

[Natty Peterkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully experimental book of type-centred design from the turn of the century. It perfectly captures a certain moment in design history that I'm a big fan of, before the recent move toward conservatism that came along with austerity, the recession, a big increase in right wing politics etc. It's actually a little sad looking back at how much more optimistic and daring the zeitgeist seemed to be just 20 years ago, but also I'd recommend this to anyone who wants to draw on that empowered energy to inspire their own creative work.

[Anthony Lawrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sounds boring doesn't it! Well, it is unless your into this kind of thing and being an ex-graphic designer I dig it. It helped through Uni anyway!