Graphic designers could do with some of the revolutionary spirit of ISO Recommendation R216 It is all too easy to feel discouraged today. The contemporary graphic designer is being encouraged to turn their back on the past, to accept that we are responsible for past mistakes (real or invented) made by those who came before. That we must atone by being better, more ethical designers, activists in the service of social justice. Graphic design is being recast as a moral imperati

Vertigo: a film poster by Saul Bass. A masterclass in graphic communication Film director Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller Vertigo is regarded as one of the greatest films ever made: a story of morbid, doomed romance and a degenerate, illusory love. The story of the film’s poster designer, Saul Bass, is an equally thrilling one. In the late 1950s, he revolutionised the graphic presentation of the feature film through his treatment of the title sequence and the poster. Bass is crit

re-pub #03 April 2025 Download re-pub #03 A curated collection of articles on creative matters from a ‘design essentialist’ perspective....

The Scottish Union for Education. 12 Views on Scottish education Delighted to have my article republished in the Scottish Union for...

re-pub #02 June 2024 Download re-pub #02 A curated collection of articles on design matters from a ‘design essentialist’ perspective. In...

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum's new permanent exhibition, Glasgow - City of Empire is a shameful piece of Social Justice propaganda...

A new collection of essays suggests we break out of the narrow version of ethics being foisted upon architects today. Five Critical...

The ‘social purpose’ university - social engineering by another name. Towards the end of last year, the University of the Arts London...

What’s in a name? Having been somewhat press-ganged into design and ‘self-taught’, I rapidly developed imposter syndrome. It took years...

re-pub #o1 - October 2023 Download Re-pub #01 A curated collection of articles on design matters from a ‘design essentialist’...

Milan Design Week (17 – 23 April), regarded as the world’s most important design fair, has come and gone, but the eco-wailing persists....

A new proposal for the Design & Technology GCSE is indoctrination A proposal to revise the Design and Technology (D&T) GCSE curriculum,...

Five Critical Essays on The Crit, Future Cities Project. The link between criticism and the crit is strong. A crit is a developmental...

The design manifesto is in urgent need of life-saving attention. As we look forward to a better year than the last, we should,...

A Thesis on Communication Design [ 1 ] The old, elite prejudice of the modern era – fear and loathing of the masses – is resurfacing...

The Grid has endured despite attacks by post-modern ideologues, because it is a foundational principle of effective design for communication. The grid has been central to how we structure visual communication. From the Middle Ages through to today’s digitised world it has been a defining feature in how we communicate. How written language has been organised in western civilisations has followed a familiar, measured logic throughout the ages. Clarity in composition was an impo

A gender bias poster campaign that was not all it was cracked-up to be. To coincide with International Women’s Day (IWD) and Women’s...

The third London Design Biennale (LDB) runs from 1st – 27th June, hosted at the magnificently imposing Somerset House, on the banks of...

Decolonising design: It’s not racism that has led us to celebrate the London tube map or the ‘I “love” New York’ logo. The decolonisation...

Valencia Design Education Forum 2020 This is a short (15 minutes) presentation at the Valencia Design Education Forum on 5 November 2020....