Skip to content

Adrian Shaughnessy

Showing 49 – 60 of 64 results

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

The 2012 Olympic Logo Ate My Hamster

Designers often bemoan the lack of coverage given to graphic design in mainstream media. Yet when design catches the attention of journalists and commentators it usually results in a vicious mugging rather than hearty praise.

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

Are JPEGs the New Album Covers?

Black to Comm "Levitation/Astoria." 7" Lathe-Cut Picture Disc, design by Marc Richter and Renate Nikolaus. Dekorder Records.Over the past few months I've been researching a book about current record cover art. Besides hunting down examples …

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

"I Sold My Soul And I Love It"

Creative Review cover, February 2007.The current issue of Creative Review is "guest edited" by hip British advertising agency Mother. As is the way with "guest editors," Mother hasn't actually edited the magazine; instead, they've …

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

Pet Shop Boys — A Flawless Vision

Suburbia, 12" sleeve, 1986. Photography by Eric Watson,design by Mark Farrow at 3 and PSB.You might balk at the prospect of listening to twenty years worth of Pet Shop Boys music — although their brittle, Anglicized, melancholic pop …

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

Listomania

Spin, spread from 50 Reading Lists, 2006Lists appeal to the fetishistic instincts found in many graphic designers. Hardly surprising since the typographic rendering of a list is one of the first skills the young designer learns: or …

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

Graphic Design vs. Illustration

Someone emailed me recently to point out that illustration isn't included in Design Observer's list of "categories" — the list you can see below, on the right of your screen. Art, typography and photography are there, but not …

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

Living Without The Internet

I've just done what tens of thousands of Brits do every summer: I've spent the past two weeks holidaying in rural France. This annual British invasion of our near neighbour is, ostensibly, a search for good weather, unspoilt countryside …

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

Werner Herzog and the Deeper Truth

Compared to the newer technological advances that enable us to experience, and participate in, art and culture (television on cell phones, MP3 players, blogging websites), the DVD format appears almost antique. The first DVD players …

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

We're All Stellar Designers, Now

In her book The Substance of Style, author Virginia Postrel notes that "Worldwide, at least fifty graphic design magazines publish regularly." Postrel wrote this in 2003; it seems likely that the number will have risen since then. There's …

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

Google and the Tyranny of Good Design

The Google logo — that scrap of oddball typography — is perhaps the most famous piece of graphic design in the world today. Milton Glaser's "I 'Heart' New York" may have a prior claim, and the Coca-Cola script, the Nike tick …

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

Robert Brownjohn and The Big Idea

Left: Robert Brownjohn. Right: Liberace. There's an essay on Liberace by art critic Dave Hickey that's so full of vivid insight that it persuaded me, on a recent trip to the US, to visit the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas. Amongst other …

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

Charles Dickens and The BBC

Who would have guessed that a BBC costume drama would provide us with Exhibit-A in the defense’s case — that a mass audience can be engaged without pandering to base instincts?

Observed

View all

Jobs