Product Description

Influences

A Lexicon of Contemporary Graphic Design Practice

Influences looks at who and what is influencing, provoking, inspiring and informing graphic designers’ working methods and research processes today. Two hundred of the best established and up-and-coming graphic designers around the world were asked about their influences. Their responses reveal the hidden catalysts that motivate and propel designers. The entries show the range of preparatory work and intensive research that forms the backbone of any creative project.

From Charles and Ray Eames to John Cage, teaching to yawning, money to plumbing, Braun Amplifier to the Brannock Devise, Frank Zappa to Ghandi, Gridnik to kidney stones, Charlie Chaplin to Kraftwerk – the designers’ collected answers show the influences driving contemporary graphic design practice.

Taking the form of a lexicon, this dictionary of graphic design influences and references is structured in two parts – the main part lists the responses from each designer shown alphabetically while an appendix at the end of the book includes the designers with references to their answers and biographies. The book gives detailed insight into the daily working processes of designers with short entertaining texts getting to the root of their passion and creative conviction.

Influences is created by Anja Lutz, a Berlin-based graphic designer, founder of the shift-platform and co-initiator of The Green Box and Anna Gerber, a London-based graphic designer and journalist currently teaching at Martins College of Art & Design and the London College and writing for magazines including Eye, Print and Idea.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #623739 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Customer Reviews

encyclopedic reference to the field of contemporary graphic arts
Though arranged alphabetically like an encyclopedia or dictionary, this "Lexicon" is really a work to be read, not only used as a reference. For the influences on the graphic design which has come to be a major influence in postmodern culture as evidenced in advertising, web pages, and fashion, for example, are, as one comes to realize from the innumerable entries, more wide-ranging than one would conceive. The countless examples of graphic design--ones taken for granted, some surprising, and others provocative--definitely expand a reader's awareness of the design on one's environment while also educating one about its sources and features. References to magazines, individual art works (e. g., Ed Ruscha's print "1984"), fiction writers (e. g., Philip K. Dick), films, and artists from all fields from all ages, etc., convey the cultural riotousness of postmodernism and also expound graphic design which is its characteristic type of expression. Even a reference to the tennis star John McEnroe is worked in for the effects of his flamboyant, sometimes confrontational behavior on one graphic artist. The format of most of the entries is a definition or identification followed by quotes from one or more of over 150 graphic artists currently working in countries around the world. These artists are listed in the Appendix with brief biographies. Along the top of many pages, as a border, are photographs and illustrations of the times' ubiquitous graphic arts.