Communicate: Independent British Graphic /anglais

by Rick Poynor

In the last four decades British graphic design has established itself as a powerful and significant force, expressing itself within the music and publishing industries, through brand identities, new media and all other forms of visual communication in the contemporary world. Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties, which accompanies the Barbican exhibition of the same title, presents an authoritative overview of the design work produced in this period, tracing how and why British graphic design has developed in the way it has Over 60 internationally renowned designers working today are featured, including Derek Birdsall, Mark Farrow, Neville Brody, Peter Saville, Why Not Associates and The Designers Republic. Rare and classic pieces from the 1960s by influential designers such as Barney Bubbles, Herbert Spencer and Michael English are also featured. The book is divided into sections covering Publishing, Identity, the Arts, Music, Politics and Society and Self-initiated Work, with essays by John O'Reilly, David Crowley and Nico MacDonald. There are interviews with ten key designers, including Julian House, Ian Anderson and Margaret Calvert, and biographies of all the designers featured.

Genres: Design, Art Design, Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

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.