I love the whole book: how it paints such a vivid picture of reading and writing as part of an artistic practice, and how it shows that professional and private life simply cannot be uncoupled. Davey’s honesty about productivity, creative blocks, and the search for strategies to keep working despite them resonates deeply. But what I am most grateful for is her notion of ‘working-reading’ in this essay: ‘Reading tied to productivity, to making something.’ It is a way of reading that evokes butterflies, causes all kinds of associations, makes me take notes like mad and run over to my bookshelves, a reading that gives me design ideas. This book gently encouraged me to start seeing reading and writing as part of my practice as a graphic designer as well.
Experimental Jetset's Design Lecture at the Walker Art Center in 2009, is in my opinion a lecture that you must see. The insights and referebces they show are pure and sometimes very personal. The concepts they show are meaningful and powerful in a simpel way. They keep on resonating and stay timeless (in my opinion).
This talk is now almost 18 years old and there work has evolved but lives still in the same spirit. This all shows that having a good and simpel work ethic, ore in there case a manifesto, is realy effective.
I chose this recommendation because this women is a very a visual artist who first worked at Irma Boom Office for five years to later on study once more at Werkplaats Typographie to study fine arts. Now almost her whole practice is around typography as a visual image.
Books by Ettore Sottsass, edited by Giorgio Maffei and Bruno Torsi, 2011
This book displays the many books, zines and book projects Ettore Sottsass made in his live. Sottsass is mostly known as a furniture and product designer but is a phenomenal boomaker, also. His ways of going about a page, composition, typography and image editing are joyful yet at times a little unhinged. Some designs are textured and can veen feel a little spartan, displaying the use of a tool or scruffy handwriting and nothing much else.
Coal Mine, Land Mine, Body of Mine, Stefaniia Bodnia, 2024-ongoing
Stefaniia Bodnia made a very beautiful book for her graduation at the KABK, she is currently developing it further. It's based on her Ukrainian home region and touches upon geo-politics. It includes lots of interesting printing and production methods.
Daniel Buren. Discordance/Cohérence, Published by Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Designed by Walter Nikkels, 1976
80 pp. (b/w ill.), 21 × 27 cm, English/French
“A book by R.H. Fuchs with the collaboration of Daniel Buren and with contributions by André Bompard, B.H.D. Buchloh, Douglas Crimp, René Denizot.
All descriptions (photographs+texts+diagrams) here included correspond with works selected by Rudi Fuchs. This selection represents approximately seven percent of the work executed since 1965. Most descriptions are being done here for the first time. All descriptions have been written (or rewritten) especially for this book.
Walter Nikkels’ work should not be underestimated. This catalogue is structured around a clear concept; yet every spread is different and a delight to see.
A Graphic Designer who has an insane play with images, type and form. His work builds up to a combination of strong conceptual and typographic work which is both playfull and structured.
Ed Fella: A Life in Images (Unit Editions), celebrates the life and work of a great designer, artist and educator.
The book’s beating heart is a 316-page visual essay that contains uncaptioned selections from 60 years of work – flyers, posters, original sketches, drawings, photographs and collages. It divides almost equally between what Fella calls his ‘two careers’: first, his 30 years as a commercial artist in Detroit; second, his life as an ‘exit-level’ designer, teaching at CalArts in Santa Clarita, California, where he still has a studio. The visual essay was sequenced and art directed by Ed Fella with his daughter Andrea Fella, who contributes an afterword about their work in his big archive.
In a digital age, Fella remains fully committed to the power of the hand-drawn and at 84 he is still pushing boundaries, living a life outside the lines, freed from the tyranny of the grid.
Hardcore Architecture, Marc Fischer, Published by Public Collectors, 2019
Hardcore Architecture explores the relationship between the architecture of living spaces and the history of underground American hardcore bands in the 1980s. Band addresses are discovered using contact listings found in demo tape and record reviews published from 1982-89 in the fanzine MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL (MRR). Google Street View is used to capture photos of the homes.
Since 2007, Public Collectors has been an ongoing initiative, founded by Chicago-based artist Marc Fischer (a member of Temporary Services). Public Collectors is founded upon the concern that there are many types of cultural artifacts that public libraries, museums and other institutions and archives either do not collect or do not make freely accessible. Public Collectors asks individuals that have had the luxury to amass, organize, and inventory these materials to help reverse this lack by making their collections public. (https://halfletterpress.com/brands/Public-Collectors.html)
The largest online index of carefully selected designers / design agencies / typographers / artists etc., compiled by Thierry Chancogne (lecturer, theorist and writer on graphic design).
If you could recommend anything relevant to graphic design, what would it be?
Must Know is the master's project of Kato Van Nerom, a Graphic Design student at LUCA School of Arts Ghent. Must Know is a curated website that publishes recommendations related to graphic design every two weeks. This project started from a desire to learn more about other designers and techniques within graphic design. With this project, I aim to share knowledge about graphic design in a simple and accessible way with fellow students and other interested readers.
By asking designers for their three absolute recommendations, Must Know aims to provide inspiration in the field of graphic design, without relying on algorithms or selections made by me. All recommendations are published online exactly as submitted, so the designer themselves is responsible for all information regarding their recommendation.
Intrigued to share your own must-knows as well? You can do so via the button 'Upload Your Must Knows Here' below. Enjoy the website, hopefully you’ll discover some new favourites along the way. :)
