Type Tuesday

Dédale Emerged from the Paris Catacombs to Conflate Font Design With Human Mortality

Name: Dédale Designer: Thomas Bouville Foundry: 205TF Release Date: October 2020 Back Story: Dédale began life in 2017 when Thomas…

Type Tuesday

Dédale Emerged from the Paris Catacombs to Conflate Font Design With Human Mortality

A lesson in letterforms manifested by erosion

Words by
Emily Gosling

Published on
January 19th, 2021

Design + Politics

The CIA Has Always Understood the Power of Graphic Design

To see the CIA launch a contemporary rebrand that has been likened to electronic music fliers or a generic tech…

Profiles

“Intentionally Bad in a Confident way”—the Work and Play of TXTBooks

Risograph zines are publications with much aesthetic hype, but they’re also a medium that allows for a democratic and attainable…

Design History 101

The Life of Huang Hua Cheng, the Idiosyncratic Designer Who “Led Taiwan into the First Design Revolution”

In 1996 while on his hospital sickbed, Huang Hua Cheng was eagerly completing two final projects. The first was his…

Type Tuesday

A New Cut of Caslon, the Classic Font With a Long, Varied History

Name: F37 Caslon Foundry: F37 Designer: Rick Banks Release Date: November 2020 Back Story: F37 Caslon is, as the name suggests,…

Design History 101

The Overlooked Career of Mid-Century Designer, Artist, and Teacher Norman Ives

Designing for clients such as the Museum of Modern Art, AIGA, Knoll International, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale…

Magazines

The Indie Magazines Driving the Climate Change Conversation

The ossified binary of climate change discourse in the United States has been grievously fractured by reality. Out has spilled…

Graphic design

How the Design-y Puzzle Came to Rule Quarantine

Welcome to Spotted, Eye on Design’s column that turns an eye on the styles and graphic trends you’re seeing everywhere.…

Type Tuesday

Lektorat’s Bold Strokes and Sharp Cuts Give Headlines a Jolt of Assertive Style

Name: Lektorat Designer: Florian Fecher Foundry: TypeTogether Release Date: October 2020 Back Story: Many a design student dreams of producing a senior…

Graphic design

What Leading Designers, Educators, and Writers Want to See in 2021

2020 was tough. Between a global pandemic, a divisive election, and rising racial tensions, it sometimes felt like the year…

The EoD Year in Review: The Best Stories We Didn’t Write

Writing about design is never just writing about design. Oftentimes, the language of design creeps into other parts of our lives—the…

Graphic design

2020’s Biggest Design Trends Were All Over the Map

It’s that time of year when we glance back at the last 12 months in an attempt to understand what…

Editors’ Picks

Branding

Amid COVID-19 Restrictions, Restaurant Branding Extends Beyond the Dining Room

Restaurant branding as we think of it today, with its cookbooks, T-shirts, and Bic Clic pens, can be traced back…

Illustration

Don’t Worry, These Gangly-armed Cartoons Are Here to Protect You From Big Tech

In 2017, Facebook began rolling out a series of new illustrations to accompany content throughout the site. The illustration system,…

Design + Politics

A Failed Soviet Experiment Offers A Warning To Today’s Burnout Generation

This story was originally published in 2018 in the “Utopias” issue of Eye on Design magazine. What’s a week…

Illustration

For Decades, Cartographers Have Been Hiding Covert Illustrations Inside of Switzerland’s Official Maps

The first three dimensions—length, height, and depth—are included on all topographical maps. The “fourth dimension,” or time, is also available…

Typography

Type Designers Are All About the Details, So Why Are They Selling Fonts That Aren’t Finished?

“Everything is in progress” was the curiously open-ended statement that heralded the launch of Future Fonts back in 2018. The…

Digital

Who’s Responsible for Preventing Dark Patterns?

Dark patterns are as old as the internet itself. For over 30 years, the web has served as a breeding…

Graphic design

Our Best Stories of the Year, According to Us

Another year passed, another season of “best ofs” is upon us. It’s time to look back at the last 12…

Design + Music

The Dual Album Design of Kendrick Lamar’s Major Label Debut Offers a Glimpse Into an Alternative Future

In 2012, good kid, m.A.A.d city brought hip hop’s finest new storyteller to the attention of the masses. Kendrick Lamar’s…

Branding

The Pandemic Brought Back QR Codes—and They’re Not Going Away Anytime Soon

QR codes have been the subject of various cycles of derision over the past 20 years, and yet, walk around…

A Year of Protests

Design + Politics

How Protesters in Hong Kong Use Illustration to Make Their Voices Heard

This piece is part of a series that looks at the past year of protests—in Hong Kong, Beirut, Delhi, and…

Design + Politics

During the Beirut Protests, Artists and Designers Found New Ways to Keep People on the Streets

This piece is part of a series that looks at the past year of protests—in Hong Kong, Beirut, Delhi, and across…

Design + Politics

How Designers in India Turned Digital Tools into Virtual Grounds of Activism

This piece is part of a series that looks at the past year of protests—in Hong Kong, Beirut, Delhi, and across…

Design + Politics

Black Lives Matter Instagram Carousels Are Changing the Shape and Longevity of Protest Graphics

Protest movements shift minds long before they lead to action. This is by nature and design. The welling up of…

Type Tuesday

The Rare Cursive Typeface That Actually Recreates the Feel of Handwritten Script

Name: Carta Nueva Designer: My-Lan Thuong Foundry: Sharp Type Release Date: November 2020 Back Story: Type history 101: once upon a…

Design + Education

ATypl President Carolina Laudon on Teaching Typography in the Instagram Age

Carolina Laudon is a Swedish typographer and type designer living in Gothenburg. Laudon studied Fine Art in Painting (Gerlesborgsskolan), earned…

Branding

As Social Media Reshapes Branding, Retail Stores Become More Like Sponsored Content

In 2001, students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, under the direction of architect Rem Koolhaas, published The Harvard…

Decolonizing Design

Design + Diversity

Collaboration, Cultural Nuance + Localism—A Conversation on Reshaping the Design Monolith

We’re republishing some of our favorite stories from the year that best encapsulate 2020. Happy reading! Sometimes the design scene…

Design + Education

Nontsikelelo Mutiti on Interrogating the Euro-centric Design Canon

Nontsikelelo Mutiti is a Zimbabwe-born interdisciplinary artist and educator who works across fine art, design, and social practice. Mutiti co-founded…

Op-ed

Why Can’t the U.S. Decolonize Its Design Education?

While diversity and inclusion might be ubiquitous terms in the mission statement of any progressive university, these words alone do…

Design + Diversity

Typography as a Radical Act in an Industry Ever-dominated by White Men

Letterforms are loaded cultural objects—they often reflect the people who made them and the story they want to tell. In…

Design + Diversity

Why Self-publishing is a “Decolonizing” Act in the Philippines

While its name suggests a grandiose collective occupying its own impressive brownstone office, in fact the Office of Culture and…

Design + Politics

What Does It Mean to Decolonize Design?

“Decolonization” is a word we’re increasingly hearing at design events, often being used interchangeably with “diversity.” It’s important to emphasize…

Design + Politics

“Decolonizing Means Many Things to Many People”—Four Practitioners Discuss Decolonizing Design

Last year, I wrote an article for Eye on Design that asked what decolonization means in the context of design.…

Design + Ecology

What Is “Visual Sustainability,” and How Can Designers Challenge Power Through Form?

Benedetta Crippa is an Italian designer living in Stockholm, where she works as lead designer at Stockholm Environment Institute, teaches…

Type Tuesday

How Many Different Directions Can a Single Type Family Take?

Name: Hejira Foundry: Sudtipos Designer: Gastón Fuoco Release Date: October 2020 Back Story: Gastón Fuoco designed Hejira specifically to defy…

Branding

Joe Biden’s Branding Was Both Traditional and Trippy, and It Looks Like the Future of Politics

When Democrat Jon Ossoff’s U.S. Senate race in Georgia was forced into a runoff, his campaign changed up its social…

Design + Ecology

The 💯% Official 2020 Holiday Gift Guide for Graphic Designers, Illustrators, Generally Creative People + Also Everyone You Know

Let’s face it, it’s been a long year. The last thing you have mental space for is figuring out the…

Type Tuesday

A Razor-Sharp Typeface Inspired By Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai

Name: Tongari Display Designer: Émilie Rigaud Foundry: A is for fonts Release Date: September 2020 Back Story: Both Tongari Display…

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Editors’ Picks

A Year of Protests

Decolonizing Design