Run by Richard Embray and Elinor Jansz, Four Corners Books is a London-based publishing house that seeks to bring art history to life. They explore unfamiliar histories of visual culture, sharing the stories that capture their own attention in order to grab ours. We caught up with the pair to find out what they think we should all be reading. “We both studied Art History at university and met there, but Four Corners started quite a few years later. It came out of a desire that we both had for a much broader, engaging approach to art history than we had experienced when we were being educated ..read more

Recently, the Illinois Department of National Resources asked branding studio Span to “rebrand” a fish.  The new miracle species that Span concocted (in collaboration with design consultancy Daylight) is called “Copi,” named for the “copious,” or abundance, that it promises Americans. Among Copi’s other defining traits, it is “environmentally-friendly,” locally-sourced, wild and responsibly caught. Plus, it’s fresh and mildly flavored, marrying “well with a range of seasonings.” Copi is a “clean, top-feeding” product that is “healthy,” high in Omega 3’s, 6’s, and protein. Copi is also sus ..read more

This article is an excerpt from Growing Up Underground, the new coming-of-age memoir by Steven Heller published by Princeton Architectural Press.   This book is about, you guessed it, me. However, it is not a trek through the hills and valleys of my autobiographical topology. I focus instead on how blind luck put me in intriguing places with curious people when, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, between ages sixteen to my mid-twenties, as an art director, graphic designer, cartoonist, and writer, I was sometimes on the fringes and sometimes in the center of New York’s youth culture—the ..read more

Joey Donatelli slides their glasses off and proudly holds them in front of the camera, as though bestowing an all-powerful gift. Donatelli is wearing a stone-washed Space Jam T-Shirt (the original 1996 version) and three metal chain necklaces, one of which looks like a dog collar. Their hair has faded teal tips and is slicked into a tapered faux hawk. And the finishing touch? Their everyday prescription glasses: thin, gold, and heart-shaped. Donatelli, who is 26 and identifies as queer and non-binary, is a graphic designer, make-up store associate, and owner of a popular TikTok account. The ac ..read more

What do you do when you’ve secured your legacy as one of the great creative minds of the 20th century? You make children’s books, apparently. From Milton Glaser’s If Apples Had Teeth, Saul Bass’s Henri’s Walk to Paris and Paul Rand’s I Know a Lot of Things, to Bruno Munari’s Zoo, Dick Bruna’s Miffy and Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a number of prominent mid-century designers and illustrators turned their hand to books for kids as they sank into their own old age. Milton Glaser — creator of the iconic I Heart New York logo, the DC Comics logo and that 1966 Bob Dylan poster for CBS R ..read more

Jack Self looks both relieved… and daunted. His Kickstarter campaign for the Real Review membership community has met its funding goal of £26,880… thanks, in part, to a sizable $10,000 lifetime membership from a DJ in Croatia. “It was amazing to think that someone would be prepared to put that type of value on what we’re doing,” Self, the editor-in-chief of Real Review, says. “I was very moved by that.” Now, the campaign has 48 hours to go. And Self is watching the clock. “I’ve gone from being moderately depressed about the idea that we were not going to make it to now being moderately stresse ..read more

Name: Silvana  Designer: Siri Lee Lindskrog of Formal Settings Foundry: Blaze Type Release Date: September 13 2022 Back Story:  Siri Lee Lindskrog — one half of Berlin-based studio Formal Settings — started work on Silvana about two-and-a-half years ago. It’s not unusual for Siri and Formal Settings cofounder Amanda-Li Kollberg to work on custom type projects, but around the beginning of the pandemic, with a few big client projects postponed, Lindskrog “found herself with the urge to dive deeper and work on bigger type families,” she said. In a way, the pandemic “presented a nice opp ..read more

In 1966, Scott Paper Co., an American company that made a range of paper products, released an advertisement for their new ‘Color Explosion’ range of toilet paper and paper towels.  In it, two smiling young girls were pictured in knee-grazing shift dresses, hands tucked into pockets. The two dresses in the photograph — one flooded with a monochromatic Op-Art pattern, the other red with a smattering of paisleys — were disposable paper dresses, made out of a cellulose material called ‘Dura Weave’ and designed as a tongue-in-cheek promotion for the company’s new range of throwaway tableware ..read more

You probably don’t need me to tell you that the publishing world is a tough business. While the internet — and social networks — have put the tools of publishing into the hands of anyone with a smartphone, they’ve also made questions of gaming algorithms, virality, and likes and shares integral to building an audience. This is, perhaps, especially true for design publishing. There are more people talking about design — and especially graphic design — than ever before but that doesn’t make starting and running a design publication any easier. Despite this, it can still feel like we have nowhere ..read more

Name: Good Girl Designer: Marion Bisserier Foundry: Type Department Release Date: July 2022 Back Story: We don’t often run ‘sequels’ of Type Tuesday, but we had to make an exception for Good Girl by designer Marion Bisserier thanks to its significant updates, and also the fact that we love it so much. We first covered Good Girl back in 2019, and dubbed it “typography’s retort to manspreading,” thanks to its deliciously expansive forms. The letters actively take up space, since the font was created as a response to the “visibility gap” in typography for women designers. As Bisserier pointed out ..read more