Design History 101

What Role Does Design Play in a Public Health Crisis?

Whether employed to warn or impart information about symptoms, prevention, and infection, graphic design plays a significant role in the…

Design History 101

What Role Does Design Play in a Public Health Crisis?

A look back at the positive impact communication design can have in matters of life and death

Words by
Lucienne Roberts

Published on
April 2nd, 2020

Design + Mental Health

How Are Outdated Notions of Masculinity Affecting the Design Industry?

In these strange and uncertain times, it’s more important than ever that we speak up about creative industry mental health…

Design + Gender

Women Make Up Over Half the Design Industry—So Why Are There So Few at the Top?

This article was originally published in 2018 in the “Worth” issue of Eye on Design magazine. We’re republishing it today…

Type Tuesday

A Typeface That Shifts from Trendy Bitmap Lettering to Cheeky Organic Curves

Name: Unknown Type Designer: Lukas Haider and Alexander Raffl Release Date: March 3, 2020 Backstory: Lukas Haider and Alexander Raffl…

Digital

How The Fantastical, Futuristic Art of AR Face Filters Is Subverting Traditional Notions of Beauty

In Ines Alpha’s world, everyday faces turn into futuristic landscapes. Through a mere swipe, the face filters imagined by the…

Happy Hour

Eye-popping Whiskey, Trippy Wine Labels, and Beer that Doubles as a Design Stunt

Stuck inside with nowhere to go? Good. We’re hunkered down, too, with a glass of something in hand and some…

Editors’ Picks

Design Census

The Trick to Recession-proofing Your Design Practice? Try Something New

This story is the first in a series that explores the results of the 2019 Design Census. In 2008, Katie…

Design + Mental Health

“Hard Work, Attention to Detail,” and Paralyzing Fear: the Ups + Downs of Designing with Anxiety

A month or so ago, we published an article about why we need to rethink the way we discuss the…

Design History 101

The Hidden History of Magic Eye, the Optical Illusion That Briefly Took Over the World

For a flash in the 1990s, Magic Eye, the world’s most famous—and infamously frustrating—optical illusion, was everywhere. Posters bearing the…

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…

Graphic design

The Eye on Design Guide to Self-isolation for Designers and Creatives

From our respective home offices, we’ve been scanning the web over the past few days to collect tips and resources…

Design + Gender

One Designer’s Radical Redesign of the Rape Kit

In 2017, SVA product design student Antya Waegemann was volunteering as a domestic violence advocate in a New York City…

Design + Money

A Short (But Useful) Guide to Not Getting Screwed By the IRS

With tax deadlines on the horizon, we’re shifting our attention—albeit, just slightly—away from type design and smart graphics, and towards…

Type Tuesday

How Knowing Your Type Design History Can Produce The Most Innovative Typefaces

Name: Ansage Designer: Alejandro Freitez Foundry: Sudtipos Release Date: January 2020 Back Story: A well-worn chestnut of wisdom in the…

Design + Politics

How Bernie Sanders Built a New Visual Language for Democratic Socialism

Bernie Sanders’ campaign logo is one of the defining visual representations of socialism for many Americans, but look a little…

Digital

Multimedia Artist Jaime Levy Was at the Forefront of Web Design Before Websites Even Existed

Jaime Levy’s real name is not Jaime. She won’t tell me what her real name is, only that her parents…

Design + Gender

What Would a Feminist Alexa Look, or Rather Sound, Like?

In an episode of the beloved animated 1960s sci-fi sitcom The Jetsons, Mrs. Jetson decides that housework is becoming too…

Digital

Finding the Blank Spots in Big Data

Mimi Onuoha is an artist who works mostly with algorithms, data sets, and digital systems, but her best known work…

Digital

Netflix’s UX Design is Keeping Us Up at Night

Netflix is keeping us awake. I’m not talking about its latest gameshow Awake: The Million Dollar Game, where contestants must…

Design + Sexuality

The UX of Porn Tube Sites Are Designed for the Ultimate Money Shot

This article is excerpted from the fifth issue of Eye on Design magazine. Pick up a copy of Eye on…

Digital

A Software Engineer’s Advice for Saving Social Media? Keep It Small

There’s a common refrain on Twitter that can be heard echoing across the feed any time there’s a big news…

Digital

AI Has a Real Environmental Impact—Here’s How Designers Are Handling It

One of the foundational materials of computer science is an endless piece of tape. “An unlimited memory capacity obtained in…

Digital

Calm Technology Is Staging a Comeback—Can Good Design Make it Stick?

Last week I made progress. I was down 20 minutes. Instead of spending an average of three hours a day…

Type Tuesday

Anatomy and Design Meet With Swedish Studio Bedow’s Crafty New Type Family

Name: Bedow Head and Bedow Hand Designer: Bedow, along with Tor Weibull and Alexander Örn of type foundry Kanon Foundry: Kanon Backstory: When…

Design + Diversity

Designing an Experimental Technology Curriculum By—and For—Black Creatives

Somewhere along the long timeline of human existence, society began associating innovation with speed: faster cars, rapid test results, instant…

Featured

A Farewell Letter From Eye on Design’s Founder, Perrin Drumm

Dear reader, I’m up early this morning. I’m not a morning person, but if I’m up at 6 a.m. I…

Design + Politics

Can Graphic Design Help Mend a Political Divide?

For many extended families across the United Kingdom, 2016 became the year that we stopped talking to one another. Something…

Design + Gender

Roberta Williams Is the World’s First Graphic Computer Game Designer—But She’s Famous for All the Wrong Reasons

YOU ARE IN THE FRONT YARD OF A LARGE ABANDONED VICTORIAN HOUSE. STONE STEPS LEAD UP TO A WIDE PORCH.…

Type Tuesday

Finder, A Typeface Whose Invisibility Expands Its Use Cases

Name: Finder Designers: Jérémie Hornus, Gaëtan Baehr, Changchun Ye, and Zhang Miao Foundry: Black[Foundry] Release Date: January 2020 Back Story: Back…

Design + Education

Parsons’ E Roon Kang on Graphic Design as a “Structure for Knowledge”

E Roon Kang lives and works in New York, where he operates the interdisciplinary design and research studio Math Practice,…

Design + Education

Elizabeth Carey Smith on Running the Ultimate “Summer Camp for Type Nerds”

Elizabeth Carey Smith is a creative director whose focus is on furthering the overlap of New York’s type designers, art…

Design + Education

Graduating in Vulnerable Times Calls for Radical Schools—and Students

Rebecca Wright isn’t one to shy away from big questions. As co-founder of the publishing, curation, and design advocacy organization…

Design + Education

What Does “Queering Design Education” Actually Look Like in Practice?

Nicole Killian is an artist and graphic designer whose work “investigates how the structures of the internet, mobile messaging, and…

Design + Education

Design Legend Gail Anderson Answers Your Questions About Where Designers Should Live, Racism in the Workplace + Creating Social Impact

As the 2018 recipient of the Cooper Hewitt’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Gail Anderson (a 2008 AIGA Medalist) has once again…

Design + Education

Elizabeth White on Teaching for the “Whole Student”

Elizabeth White is an interdisciplinary artist and educator. Her work explores “social, psychological, and political themes including maintenance and self-preservation;…

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

We Need a New Approach to Designing for AI, and Human Rights Should Be at the Center

AI is going to radically change society. It will do so in exciting and even life-saving ways, as we’ve seen…

Graphic design

So You Wanna Design for the Movies?

Just say her name and most graphic designers will inwardly ooh and ahh: Annie Atkins, that art department star of…

Design History 101

Mid-century Uruguayan Graphic Design Proves that Creativity Flourishes With Limitations

Put the word “design” in front of the name of some countries, and it becomes shorthand for a certain aesthetic.…

Type Tuesday

A Highly Functional Sans-serif With a Healthy Dose of Weirdness

Name: Acid Grotesk Designer: Folch Studio Foundry: Folch Studio Backstory: Last year, we wrote about Acid House Barcelona, a new…

Digital

Can Quieter Alarms Save Your Life?

If you were to score the soundtrack to an Intensive Care Unit, the relentless din would likely be too overwhelming…

Graphic design

Overheard on Design Twitter: Eli Schiff is Banned, Twitter is Used for Good (Surprise!), and Designers Debate the “Take Home Test”

It was the best of #DesignTwitter, it was the worst of #DesignTwitter, it was the age of wisdom, it was…

Weekend With

Ravi Naidoo Takes Us on a Design Tour of Cape Town, from Michael Beirut’s Favorite Jogging Spot to an Artist’s Homage to SA Wine

Our Weekend With series looks at the world through the eyes of a designer on their days off. Last time,…