Adrian Shaughnessy is a graphic designer and writer based in London. He is a senior tutor in Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art and a founding partner in Unit Editions a publishing company producing books on design and visual culture. Scratching the Surface, a collection of his journalism, has recently been published.


04.28.21
Pan Afrikan Design Institute
 In this month’s Terms of Service, Adrian Shaughnessy explores contemporary African graphic design.
03.10.21
Impact
 Today, we use the internet and social media feeds to stay abreast of developments, but we used to rely on the design press. Already, most of the major players have left the stage. Will the few remaining stalwarts be around in 10 years’ time?
06.28.18
The Politics of Desire and Looting
The part designers have played in the London riots.
06.16.17
Literary Alchemy and Graphic Design
 Should graphic designers take a lead from Joycean lyricism?
01.05.17
Books. Still not dead.
 Thoughts from a publisher, author, editor, and occasional designer of printed books.




09.19.16
Credit Check
 In the age of collaboration how do we cater to the fundamental desire for recognition?




05.18.16
Collaborate or Die
 Graphic design as ensemble performance
05.02.16
Innovation in banality
 Searching the stacks of "library music"
03.15.16
Music by the Numbers
 Listening in the Digital Age
02.12.16
Tweets from the Afterlife
 The Internetization of Death
01.21.16
Statement and Counter-Statement
 Notes on Experimental Jetset




01.14.16
Survey says … !
 What’s the difference between UK and US designers?
12.22.15
The Observer Decameron—Fifth Day
 The top ten books of 2015 picked by our contributors




12.17.15
In praise of boredom
Enforced reflection




12.04.15
Typojanchi
 A refreshing approach to type in the city
07.06.15
Typographic Tipping Point
 Have we reached peak typeface?




01.05.15
The Design Conference
 An outmoded format or an essential feature of the design calendar?




12.05.14
An interview with Kyuha Shim
 Creating generative systems for typography




12.02.14
Graphic Language
 A discussion on graphic design teaching, learning, and thinking




12.02.14
An Interview with James Goggin
 On study, school, and being a "free listener"




12.01.14
An Interview with Neville Brody
 Moving toward a structured mayhem




12.01.14
GraphicsRCA: Fifty Years
 Kicking off a week celebrating the exhibition GraphicsRCA: Fifty Years




11.25.14
Rejection and the designer
 Is it necessary to make better work?
09.23.14
Twitter has its dark side, but it’s also a source of delight.
In defense of an imperfect medium.
09.15.14
Identity Politics
 On the eve of a historic vote for independence DO’s resident Scot explains his position
08.18.14
On Bias, Tolerance — and Taste
 The unconscious mind responds with Darwinian brutality to anyone not “like us”.
03.18.14
Open Source Politics/Open Source Design
 A review of the identity for the radical new Danish political party, Alternativet.




02.29.12
When Less Really Does Mean Less
 Since the banking crises of 2008, designers fromWestern nations are learning painfully to adapt to the new reality: less is the new normal.




09.27.11
Kyoorius Designyatra Festival 2011
 Adrian Shaughnessy writes about his experience of the Kyoorius Designyatra Festival 2011 in Goa, India.
05.10.11
Philosophy, Graphic Design and Virtue of Clarity
What can designers learn from exposure to philosophy?




01.25.11
Down in the Trenches with Kenneth FitzGerald
 Adrian Shaughnessy reviews of Kenneth FitzGerald’s new book Volume: Writing on Graphic Design, Music, Art and Culture.




11.09.10
Minotaurs in Suburban England
 English designer Vaughan Oliver met Adrian Shaughnessy to show him preliminary work on a deluxe Pixies box set called Minotaur.




08.03.10
Publishing in the Age of the Internet
 Design/Research, published by Unit Editions, are collectable "papers" which, focus on design and visual communication, from the past, by placing it in a future context.




04.19.10
Safety and Comfort: A Walk with Paul Davis
Davis has asked me to write the introduction to his latest book. I told him I didn't want to write about the usual stuff. He agreed and suggested we go for a walk instead.




01.13.10
Logorama
 A world colonized by brands is the theme of a new film, Logorama, by French designers and filmmakers H5.




03.27.09
Ten Graphic Design Paradoxes
 I’ve just finished writing a book about graphic design. There are entries on kerning, the wisdom of using only lowercase letters, and the merits of Univers. But mostly it’s a book about the soft stuff — the stuff that we deal with every day and tend to take for granted.




11.17.08
Obsessive Branding Disorder I
 Obsessive Branding Disorder by Lucas Conley is a book that graphic designers can place on their shelves. Conley describes in vivid detail the extent to which branding has permeated modern culture...




08.28.08
A Layperson's Guide to Graphic Design
 Graphic design has been likened to a wine glass. When we drink wine we barely notice the glass it’s served in. It’s the same with graphic design: people absorb the messages that graphic designers use their skill, training and ingenuity to make, yet rarely stop to think how the message is constructed or how it affects the viewer.




06.16.08
We Found It at the Movies: Part I
 Rick Poynor: Looking back, it’s surprising how long we’d known each other before it emerged that we shared an obsession for film. 
Adrian Shaughnessy: Your obsession with film came as a surprise. Before lending you the Herzog box set I had you tagged as a visual arts man, not a cineaste.





06.16.08
We Found It at the Movies: Part II
 The second installment of Rick Poynor and Adrian Shaughnessy’s conversation about film. Can genre movies express a personal vision? Are films blurring into other media? And what’s the state of film culture today?




04.18.08
The Design Observer Playlist
 I’ve never worked in a design studio where music wasn’t played pretty much constantly. Nor can I recall visiting a studio where music wasn’t being played, or where designers weren’t wired up to headphones and bobbing rhythmically to unheard sounds. What is it with graphic designers and music?




02.07.08
Look and Feel / Nip and Tuck
 If clients are happy to refer to the output of graphic designers as look and feel, where's the harm?




12.16.07
Graphic Editorship
 Fuel's realization that they possessed the transferable skills and instincts to publish thought-provoking books with editorial depth, has allowed them to create a publishing venture that offers a fresh take on visual culture.
10.25.07
The Designer's Virus
 Perhaps he was right and I was wrong? Perhaps it is dumb of me to believe that the only design worth bothering about is design born out of a mixture of personal enquiry and intelligent intuition? I realized I was suffering from the designer's disease: empathy.




08.14.07
Tony Wilson: The Postmodern Mythmaker
 Tony Wilson, founder of Factory records, died August 10. Wilson had many claims to fame: he was a successful television presenter; a music industry impresario of flawed and maverick genius; and he was one of the shrewdest patrons of graphic design there has ever been.




07.30.07
Barnbrook Bible: A Graphic Autobiography
 Jonathan Barnbrook's new book, Barnbrook Bible, ranks amongst the most ambitious personal projects undertaken by any graphic designer...




06.06.07
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.
04.11.07
Are JPEGs the New Album Covers?
 An audio file with a thumbnail JPEG of the album cover will never have the resonance — not to mention the commercial value — of a well-made piece of packaging. But if the corporate providers of downloadable music have their way, this is the future of recorded music. Who ever had a love affair with a JPEG?




02.05.07
"I Sold My Soul And I Love It"
 The current issue of Creative Review is "guest edited" by hip British advertising agency Mother. The theme, suggested by Mother, is I Sold My Soul And I Love It — a vastly contradictory statement, but one that invites debate over what it means to work in visual communication."




12.17.06
Pet Shop Boys — A Flawless Vision
 During the past two decades, the Pet Shop Boys have developed a "brand image" that is nearly flawless. Other bands have moments of brilliance — the occasional great album cover or music video — but PSB pull it off repeatedly.




11.14.06
Listomania
 The English design group Spin has produced a publication called 50 Reading Lists, which allows the reader the double pleasure of admiring the handsome presentation of 50 lists, as well as the chance to study the reading habits of 50 graphic designers.




10.15.06
Graphic Design vs. Illustration
 Graphic design's ability to deliver explicit messages makes it a major (if little recognised) force in the modern world: it is embedded in the commercial infrastructure. Illustration, on the other hand, with its woolly ambiguity and its allusive ability to convey feeling and emotion, makes it too dangerous to be allowed to enter the corporate bloodstream. Our visual lives are the poorer for this.




08.03.06
Living Without The Internet
 The "community" that I find on the internet is the communality of shared enthusiasms for marginalised subjects.




06.16.06
Werner Herzog and the Deeper Truth
 For hardcore cineastes — and bug-eyed amateur movie buffs like me — DVD audio tracks are an invention of Guttenburgian proportions. Few technological advances in the realm of art and culture can equal the joy afforded by an articulate and perceptive commentary specially prepared to accompanying a movie.




05.09.06
We're All Stellar Designers, Now
 When it comes to ads aimed at designers, advertisers are targeting an audience that will look at their ads with hypercritical and informed eyes. They'll sniff out the half-baked, the clichéd, and the patronising. Or will they?




03.12.06
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. In its own small way, it's a little beacon of insurrection, in a world where graphic designers have become the agents of conformity.




01.19.06
Robert Brownjohn and The Big Idea



12.19.05
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?




09.30.05
"Can you make the type bigger?"




08.04.05
Self-Initiated House Music
 It is perhaps stretching definitions to say that Julian House has become a musician, but with the help of sampling technology and an array of digital audio tools, he makes striking and compelling audio assemblages, which have strong stylistic parallels with his collage-based graphic design.




06.08.05
Decoding Coldplay's X&Y
 At a time when invisible data streams of binary information fed straight to our desktops are doing away with the need for album covers, it's odd to find a record sleeve as the subject of media comment and speculation. Odder still that the album cover in question — Coldplay's X&Y — should contain binary data as its central motif. Prophetic or what? The X&Y cover is agreeably eye-catching. You wouldn't call it a classic, but it has an unexpected severity that lifts it above the anodyne and cosmeticised design currently favoured by multi-platinum selling artists. It has dark echoes of Peter Saville's ephocal Factory covers.




04.26.05
The Designer as Buffoon
 The "Designer as Buffoon" phenomenon can be seen in two big-budget, prime-time advertising campaigns currently showing on British television. Both Ford and Ikea are promoting their respective products by offering us pumped-up caricatures of designers and inviting us to guffaw at them.



Observed | October 01

Adnan Lotia recreates iconic album covers with ... Lego. [JH]

Designers Verònica Fuerte and Sebastián Londoño turn circles into an international design language. [JH]

Jim Jarmusch, collage artist. [JH]

Posted without comment. [JH]


Observed | September 24

For the ABC Science series Phenomena, the Australian artist and filmmaker Josef Gatti collaborated with the Australian composer Kim Moyes for an amalgamation of art and science exploring ‘naturally occurring patterns, and the fundamental forces of nature that create them’. [BV]

Jack Kerouac, book designer. [JH]

An exquisite memorial by the American artist Suzanne Firstenberg. [JH]




Observed | September 17

From Aunt Jemima to AI, How Racism Creeps Into Design: an insightful video from Bloomberg Equality. [JH]

The 40 winners of this year’s Posterheroes Becoming e-Quals competition have been announced. Congrats to all! [BV]

German artist Max Hattler finds inspiration in the immense size, muted colors, and relentless repetition of the facades of Hong Kong’s apartment high-rises. [BV]

Swatch Bharat—online collections of Indian native aesthetics, created to preserve artifacts disappearing due to globalization—has completed their eighth collection. Get inspired![BV]


Observed | September 10

Rachel Berger’s Shooter Box—an exhibition protesting the United States military’s use of Microsoft Xbox controllers as battle equipment—now on view at California College of the Arts. [JH]

Pantone No. 1837, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and a conspiracy theory about art and commerce. [JH]

Designing a better airport. [JH]

Revisiting a seminal guerilla signage project, twenty years later. [JH]


Observed | September 03

Everyone’s a (design) critic! The internet goes wild—not in a good way—for the cover art “design” for Drake’s new album. [JH]

A new graphic novel on censorship—from MITPress—gathers insights and highlights from a profession under attack. [JH]

Rebranding Chernobyl with a logo that decays over time. (Via Michael Bierut.) [JH]

Today we chase after information, without gaining knowledge. We take note of everything, without gaining insight. We communicate constantly, without participating in a community... This is how information develops a lifeform: inexistent and impermanent. [JH]



Jobs | October 16