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Writing & research for graphic designers
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EPILOGUE:
is anYBodY reading?
Determining how many people actually read your words was
once difficult. In today’s media world, analytics reign supreme.
If you publish online you are only a few clicks away from learning
almost everything you need to know about who, where, when,
and for how long your readers have engaged with your work.
Or, for that matter, whether you even have any readers. Visits,
hits, page clicks, and bounce backs are all considered as the
measures of success or failure. In addition, social media
encourages users to discuss or critique your work. So you not
only know whether anyone is reading, but you also know
what they think about it. Like? Dislike? How many stars?
And what about entrepreneurial sites, such as Kickstarter.
com? Your finished work is less relevant than your stunning
proposals. Crowd sourcing encourages but can also discourage
the creative act.
All this media attention can make an instant star or abject
failure out of every one of us. If your work does not appeal to
your proposed niche, fuggedaboutit!
There is a lesson for the future to be learned here. And since
I prefer to look at the silver lining, I refuse to sound the death
knell of tradition. Rather, all this attention—or overload, if
you prefer—has a clear benefit. Despite warnings that our
collective attention span is microscopically reduced or our at-
tention deficit disorder is telescopically increased (as I sit at my
computer incessantly clicking the Get Mail button to the right of
my three open Word files), arguably more is being written, more
is being read, more is being learned than ever before.
This surplus—deluge, if you prefer—demands one thing:
For a reader to invest his time (and free up brain storage
space), the writing must be fluid, accessible, and enjoyable to
read. Most important, the content—the research, ideas, and
story—must be worthy of being read. This is not, to borrow a
real estate term, a “writer’s market.” It is a “reader’s market.”
The writer must “sell” the audience. And the audience must
be discerning.
Is anyone reading? Everyone is, in some form and in various
platforms. But as the writer, you must work extra hard to win
their attention, if not their loyalty.
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seleCted BiBliograPhY
The following are informative and inspiring books that will
serve as models for design writing and research. But before
reading these, essential reading is The Elements of Style by
William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White (Longman, 1999), the
classic inspirational and instructional book on writing.
Albrect, Donald, Ellen Lupton, and Steven Holt.
Design Culture Now: National Design Triennial.
New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000.
Barringer, David. There’s Nothing Funny About Design.
New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009.
Bierut, Michael, et al. (Eds.). Looking Closer: Critical
Writings on Graphic Design. New York: Allworth, 1994.
Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style.
Vancouver: Hartley & Marks, 2004.
Brody, David, and Hazel Clark (Eds.). Design Studies:
A Reader. London: Berg Publishers, 2009.
Caplan, Ralph. By Design: Why There Are No Locks on
the Bathroom Doors in the Hotel Louis XIV and Other Object
Lessons / Edition 2. New York: Fairchild Books, 2004.
Caplan, Ralph. Cracking the Whip: Essays on Design and
Its Side Effects. New York: Fairchild Books, 2005.
Glaser, Milton. Drawing Is Thinking. New York:
Overlook Hardcover, 2008.
Glaser, Milton. In Search of the Miraculous or One Thing
Leads to Another. New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2012.
Helfand, Jessica. Screen: Essays on Graphic Design,
New Media, and Visual Culture. New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 2004.
Heller, Steven. Design Literacy (Second Edition).
New York: Allworth Press, 2004.
Heller, Steven (Ed.). The Education of a Graphic Designer
(Second Edition). New York: Allworth Press, 2005.
Heller, Steven. The Graphic Design Reader. New York:
Allworth Press, 2002.
Heller, Steven. Paul Rand.
London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 1999.
Heller, Steven, and Louise Fili. Stylepedia: A Guide to
Graphic Design Mannerisms, Quirks, and Conceits.
San Francisco: Chronicle, 2006.
Heller, Steven. Teaching Graphic Design: Course Offerings and
Class Projects from the Leading Graduate and Undergraduate
Programs. New York: Allworth Press, 2003.
Hollis, Richard. Graphic Design: A Concise History,
Second Edition. New York/London: (World of Art)
Thames and Hudson, 2001.
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Hollis, Richard. Swiss Graphic Design: The Origins and
Growth of an International Style, 1920–1965.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Lange, Alexandra. Writing About Architecture: Mastering
the Language of Buildings and Cities.
New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2012.
Lupton, Ellen. Mixing Messages: Graphic Design in
Contemporary Culture. New York: Cooper-Hewitt National
Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution and Princeton
Architectural Press, 1996.
Lupton, Ellen, and Abbot Miller. Design, Writing Research:
Writing on Graphic Design. London: Phaidon Press Limited,
1999.
Lupton, Ellen. Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for
Designers, Writers, Editors and Students.
New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004.
Maeda, John. Maeda @ Maeda. New York: Rizzoli, 2000.
Mau, Bruce. Life Style. New York: Phaidon Press, 2000.
Meggs, Philip B., and Alston Purvis. A History of Graphic
Design, Fifth Edition. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2012.
Poynor, Rick. Designing Pornotopia: Travels in Visual
Culture. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006.
Poynor, Rick. No More Rules: Graphic Design and
Postmodernism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.
Poynor, Rick. Obey The Giant. Basel: Birkhauser Verlag, 2007.
Poynor, Rick. Uncanny: Surrealism and Graphic Design.
Brno: Moravská Galerie, 2010.
Purcell, Kerry William. Alexey Brodovitch.
London & New York: Phaidon Press, 2002.
Purcell, Kerry William. Josef Müller-Brockmann.
London & New York: Phaidon Press, 2006.
Sagmeister, Stefan, and Peter Hall. Made You Look.
New York: Booth-Clibborn, 2001.
Shaughnessy, Adrian. How to Be a Graphic Designer
Without Losing Your Soul. New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 2005.
Shedroff, Nathan. Design Is the Problem:
The Future of Design Must be Sustainable.
Brooklyn: Rosenfeld Media, 2009.
Scher, Paula. Make It Bigger. New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 2002.
Thomson, Ellen M. The Origins of Graphic Design in
America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.
Twemlow, Alice. What Is Graphic Design For?
London: Rotovision, 2006.
seleCted BiBliograPhY
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ContriButor BiograPhies
sean adams is a partner at AdamsMorioka. He is a professor
at Art Center College of Design, and president ex officio
of AIGA.
gail anderson is a designer, teacher, and writer. Formerly
creative director of design at SpotCo and senior art director at
Rolling Stone magazine, she is coauthor, with Steven Heller, of
six design books, including New Ornamental Type. She is the
recipient of the 2008 AIGA Medal for Lifetime Achievement.
sue apfelbaum is a freelance writer and editor with a focus on
design, art, music, film, and culture. From 2006 to 2012 she
was the editorial director for AIGA, publishing critical, inspi-
rational, and educational content about design on the AIGA
website and developing programming for AIGA’s webinars.
david barringer is the author of American Mutt Barks in the Yard
(Emigre, 2005) and There’s Nothing Funny About
Design (Princeton Architectural Press, 2009). He teaches de-
sign and writing at Winthrop University and MICA.
Visit www.davidbarringer.com.
stefan g. bucher is the man behind 344 Design and the creator
of Dailymonster.com. His latest book is 344 Questions: The
Creative Person’s Do-It-Yourself Guide to Insight, Survival, and
Artistic Fulfillment.
akiko busch writes about design, culture, and the natural world
for a variety of publications. She is the author of Geography of
Home: Writings on Where We Live and The Uncommon Life of Com-
mon Objects: Essays on Design and the Everyday. Her most recent
book of essays, Nine Ways to Cross a River, a collection of essays
about swimming across U.S. rivers, was published in 2007.
andrew byrom served a five-year apprenticeship in a North
England shipyard before leaving to study graphic design
in London. He is currently a professor at California State
University, Long Beach, and divides his time between
teaching, playing with his three children, and designing
for clients including the New York Times, Sagmeister Inc.,
Penguin Books, and UCLA Extension.
ralph caplan, author of By Design and Cracking the Whip, has
been a writer on design and related subjects for more than
fifty years. He intends to keep at it until he gets it right.
allan chochinov is the editor-in-chief of Core77, and the chair
of the MFA Products of Design Program at the School of
Visual Arts, New York.
seymour chwast is a founding partner of the celebrated Push Pin
Studios, whose distinct style has had a worldwide influence
on contemporary visual communications. In 1985 the studio’s
name was changed to The Pushpin Group, of which he is the
director. He and Push Pin were honored at the Louvre in Paris
in a two-month retrospective exhibition titled The Push Pin Style.
liz danzico is chair and cofounder of the MFA Interaction De-
sign program at the School of Visual Arts, New York. She is
part educator, part designer, and part editor, who writes part
of her time at Bobulate.com.
michael dooley is a creative director, writer and Print magazine
contributing editor. He teaches graphic design history at Art
Center, LMU, and UCLA Extension. He is the coauthor of The
Education of a Comics Artist (Allworth Press) and Teaching Motion
Design (Allworth Press).
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