Date: 18.05.2025Distance: 4 milesSteps: 9150Start: 11:50Ground covered: Town centre and feeder streets It’s been a while. Four hours to kill in the East Midlands gave me time to visit a town I lived in for five years in the 1980s, exactly 40 years ago. The intention wasn’t nostalgia, but that naturally occurred as memories jarredContinue reading “Graphic commons: A memory drift”
Category Archives: Critique
Ultra-processed graphics
When colleagues bought me Chris van Tulleken’s Ultra-Processed People as a recovery read while I was off work recently, I didn’t expect a book about food to have so many of its pages dedicated to graphic design. But alongside advertising and marketing, visual communication is mentioned enough times for me to liberally tab many of its pagesContinue reading “Ultra-processed graphics”
Nostalgia aid
This month, Just For One Day: The Live Aid Musical, opens at The Old Vic in London. While in 1985 the focus of the original Live Aid was all about raising money for famine-struck Ethiopia, despite Just For One Day giving 10% of all profits to The Band Aid Charitable Trust, nostalgia appears to beContinue reading “Nostalgia aid”
Fluff and nonsense
Recently on Facebook I posted the following video by Mike Rich from the Steering YouTube channel. In it he discusses whether Graphic Design could be considered art. This is an often discussed topic, particularly amongst design students. I certainly have very firm views on the subject, and contend that they are different disciplines. As aContinue reading “Fluff and nonsense”
First Things First: 2020
In amongst recent events, maybe for good reason, I missed that a new First Things First manifesto was launched in May. A more radical and critical version, and one that certainly gets my signature. This time around, as well as signing your support, you can help to rewrite the manifesto itself by submitting your opinions.Continue reading “First Things First: 2020”
Mainstream discussions on graphic design
Mainstream media doesn’t often do graphic design, and when it does it rarely does it seriously. Preference is more often given over to art, architecture, interior design, photography and fashion. On the odd occasion when an appropriately critical article does appear, (one that does not claim that the journalist’s 6 year old daughter could haveContinue reading “Mainstream discussions on graphic design”
Insidiousness
In response to the worldwide epidemic of COVID-19 there is an inevitability to the words …And Wash Your Hands, replacing …And Carry On, as the coda to Keep Calm and Carry On posters. Given that news of the spread of the virus has the ability to produce widespread panic, any populist measures to get health messages across toContinue reading “Insidiousness”
Graphic commons: Tunnel and peripheral vision
Distance: 3.7 miles Steps: 8113 Start: 06:25 Ground covered: Feeder roads into and out of Ipswich town centre; pedestrianised shopping precincts; town centre. It has been a while since I last did a dedicated graphic commons walk; 2017 in fact. More recent graphic commons posts have mainly been about walks taken as part of otherContinue reading “Graphic commons: Tunnel and peripheral vision”
Proposing the Graphic Commons
This text was first published as a pamphlet of the same name in August 2017. It is republished here for the first time online. Copies of the original pamphlet, as a numbered limited edition of 300, are still available on request. Please get in contact if you would like a copy. This essay introduces theContinue reading “Proposing the Graphic Commons”
Common affairs
The state of design criticism, it could be argued, has never been in better shape. There are the big guns, such as Michael Bierut and Jessica Helfand’s printed compilation of fifteen years of online discourse at the Design Observer with Culture Is Not Always Popular. Likewise, AIGA’s Eye On Design magazine which covers topics interrogated on aContinue reading “Common affairs”
Nigel Ball 