Tag: graphic design
W. E. B. Du Bois’ visionary infographics
2 June 2020
W. E. B. Du Bois’ visionary infographics2 June 2020
In 1900 W.E.B. Du Bois travelled to the Exposition Universelle in Paris to present the ‘American Negro’, an exhibition that sought ‘to give, in as systematic and compact a form as possible, the history and present condition of a large group of human beings’. In addition to Du Bois, then… Read More
Architectural Typefaces
29 May 2020
Architectural Typefaces29 May 2020
It is a drawing of a C. A rather normal looking C, a bit condensed perhaps. Its thick and thin parts are distributed along a vertical axis, rather than a diagonal one, so in typographic terms it is a modern C. To me it also looks a bit British, because it only… Read More
Haiku
28 April 2020
Haiku28 April 2020
Here John Cage is writing in November 1950 to Cecil Smith, the Editor of Musical America, in passionate defence of Eric Satie, who had been attacked in the journal in an article by Abraham Skulsky. In 1948, Cage had delivered a controversial talk at Black Mountain College, titled ‘Defense of Satie,’… Read More
Daria’s Aria
23 April 2020
Daria’s Aria23 April 2020
Between 1939 and 1941 the French-born, Milan-based editor Daria Guarnati published seven volumes of a series called Aria d’Italia. Each issue formed a substantial monograph on a distinct facet of Italian life and culture. The inaugural Christmas edition was followed by the evocatively titled issues ‘Italy through Colour’, ‘Mediterranean Summer’, ‘The… Read More
Origins in Translation
20 January 2020
Origins in Translation20 January 2020
Broken bits of ancient architecture piled up in the foreground of a printed page is a topos in the canon of architectural publications. An early example takes place in the frontispiece of Sebastiano Serlio’s book on antiquities. Produced for the first edition of the third book, written in Italian and published in… Read More
Watkin on Milizia: Frontispiece to The Lives of the Celebrated Architects, Ancient and Modern
17 January 2020
Watkin on Milizia: Frontispiece to The Lives of the Celebrated Architects, Ancient and Modern17 January 2020
The illustration on the title page to the Vite is striking and can be seen as a preparation for that of Pugin’s Contrasts (Sailsbury 1836). Milizia depicts a crowded scene in which, on the left hand side, a Corinthian portico and Laugier’s primitive hut, fashioned from trees and branches, represent Antiquity and Nature. Pallas,… Read More
Other Lives: Charles Eisen and Laugier’s Essai sur l’Architecture
26 December 2019
Other Lives: Charles Eisen and Laugier’s Essai sur l’Architecture26 December 2019
One of the best-known drawings related to the discipline is the ‘allegory of architecture’, drawn by Charles-Dominique-Joseph Eisen and engraved by Jean-Jacques Aliamet. [1] The original is now in the collection of Drawing Matter. Aliamet’s engraving serves as the frontispiece to the second edition of Marc-Antoine Laugier’s Essai sur l’architecture, and was included… Read More
Zaha Hadid
27 November 2018
Zaha Hadid27 November 2018
When, in January 1983, Peter Cook reviewed a recently held exhibition for Zaha Hadid’s 59 Eaton Place, he spoke of the resonance between the individual and their education in developing an architectural identity. [1] He pondered on the development of Hadid over that period, What if fate had led her… Read More
Herbert Matter
27 November 2017
Herbert Matter27 November 2017
This is the work of the Swiss photographer and designer Herbert Matter, who after a short career in New York had moved to California in 1943 with his wife, the American painter and art critic Mercedes Carles. Both were friends and associates of Fernand Leger, with whom Herbert had been… Read More
USSR in Construction No. 9 1931
1 September 2017
USSR in Construction No. 9 19311 September 2017
Constructing a Fantasy of the New Moscow through Architectural Photographs In June 1931 Lazar Kaganovich, the Secretary of the Communist Party Central Committee gave a speech to the Moscow plenum entitled, Za sotsialisticheskuiu rekonstruktsiyu Moskvy i gorodov SSSR (On the Socialist Reconstruction of Moscow and other Socialist Cities of the USSR). The… Read More
San Rocco
20 June 2017
San Rocco20 June 2017
This beautiful and black glossy image lies on top of the contrasting ground of a thick, white and matt-surfaced magazine binding. The substance of the drawing is not composed of lines but rather made of solid fields that recoil from each other, very neatly, to leave spaces. These slivers where… Read More
Writing Prize 2020: Figures of War
29 September 2020
Writing Prize 2020: Figures of War29 September 2020
– Francesco Marullo
Niccolò Machiavelli concludes his treatise on the art of war (Dell’Arte della Guerra, 1521) with a series of diagrammatic ‘figures’ illustrating the arrangements of troops known as ordinanze. Rather than using human silhouettes, the ordinanza links alphabetical signs to specific roles and positions of the soldiers, reducing the army to… Read More
drawing matter writing prize 2020 DMC publication concept & diagram theoretical & imaginary graphic design military