Rick Poynor

Rick Poynor|Essays

How to Cover an Impossible Book

Tadeusz Borowski’s book This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen poses a visual challenge for designers.

Rick Poynor|Essays

The Infinite Warehouse of Images

The more photos we collectively produce, the more ruthless we need to be about bestowing our attention.

Rick Poynor|Essays

Literary Horror from the Chapman Brothers

British artists Jake and Dinos Chapman have created an image of sublime horror for the cover of Granta magazine.

Rick Poynor|Essays

This Post has Been Declared a Link-free Zone

Links can greatly enrich an online text, but are they also a counterproductive distraction from reading?

Rick Poynor|Essays

On My Shelf: Continuum’s 33 1/3 Series

The 33 1/3 books about classic albums are a perfect example of how design can help focus an editorial idea.

Rick Poynor|Essays

Did We Ever Stop Being Postmodern?

Like it or not, argues the V&A's exhibition about postmodernism and design, we are all postmodern now.

Rick Poynor|Essays

Should We Look at Corrosive Images?

What do violent photographs of war do to us as viewers?

Rick Poynor|Essays

Jan Svankmajer and the Graphic Uncanny

Uncanny: Surrealism and Graphic Design opens at the Kunstal in Rotterdam on September 24.

Rick Poynor|Essays

Richard Hamilton, the Great Decipherer

The artist Richard Hamilton, who died this week, was an acute observer of design and the contemporary world.

Rick Poynor|Essays

A Swedish Perspective on Critical Practice

The Reader, a recent book from Stockholm about critical practice, has some smart insights while missing the bigger picture.

Rick Poynor|Essays

Chris Foss and the Technological Sublime

Is cult science fiction artist Chris Foss’s work just highly effective illustration, or can it be seen as a visionary form of art?

Rick Poynor|Essays

On My Shelf: The Metallization of a Dream

The best designed book about the artist Eduardo Paolozzi was compiled in 1963 by a student at the Royal College of Art.