Print: The Vivid Word

I was asked to do the cover for the US design magazine, Print, as well as given [almost] free reign over eight interior pages.

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The idea for both came from the content I was given to work with for the interior: predictions of the future of graphic design as made by designers 40 and 50 years ago.

The predictions ranged from the wacky to the remarkably prescient, and as one can imagine they focussed quite a bit on technology. When thinking about technology then and technology now, I decided that one of the few things we’re still using are little wires. Those fine, coloured wires that make a nice, colourful line. But I wanted to add an element of humanity for the fallibility of predictions, and so came the little hands, which then started doing things related to the text.

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For the text itself I chose a typeface I felt evoked the 50s & 60s in Poster Bodoni Bold; and broke yet another of my own typographic rules never to use a display face for text, by choosing StormType’s Rondka: a quirkly little number evocative of all the mistakes humans make. Then I created my own custom text for the display: imagining a script that a machine would make.

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This remains one of my favourite projects.

2006