The first book dedicated to the career of a truly hands-on graphic designer, charting his ‘Swiss Grit’ approach from the influential Ray Gun magazine in the 1990s, through to his experimental type projects of the present day.
Emerging from the North of England, and nominated in 1993 by Why Not Associates as the most up and coming British graphic designer in Creative Review magazine’s annual ‘Creative Future’s’ awards, Chris Ashworth achieved design notoriety in the late 1990s at Ray Gunmagazine, the influentialLA-based ‘bible of music and style’. His early schooling in the rigours and principles of Swiss graphic design fused with the gritty vernacular of the street came together to create the sounds of the 90s in visual print form.
He has since worked with pop culture bands and brands from New Order, Michael Stipe (REM), Robbie Robertson and Bush to Nike, Diesel and Adobe as well as spending over 20 years as a Creative Director running in-house creative studios at Microsoft, Nokia and Getty Images.
He recently launched thisisme.art with his partner Nicola which sells high end apparel and one-of-a-kind original art featuring his unique handmade creative approach.
The ultimate typographic experiment – 7,762,392 typefaces from one of the world’s foremost typography studios.
MuirMcNeil makes typefaces that work in mysterious but mathematical ways. Using methods that are entirely contemporary, though they can seem arcane, they explore ‘parametric design systems’. And there is something about their commitment to a punchy, practical, systems-based approach that communicates far and wide.
Founded in 2009 by Paul McNeil and Hamish Muir, MuirMcNeil was established to explore the use of systematic methods in graphic design, typography and moving image. Their first publication, System Process Form, is a detailed survey of their Two type system, an extensive collection of geometric alphabets in which every stroke, shape, letterform and word is designed to correspond and collaborate in close harmony. Far from a mere catalogue of typefaces, this publication is a powerful demonstration of the beauty of analytical approaches to form-giving for visual communication, one that embraces both micro and macro views, and one whose end results can be as spectacular as they are unexpected.
Driven by numbers, rules, conditions and permutations as well as design decisions and collisions, the Two type system is a continuously evolving body of work both analog and digital, algorithmic and fortuitous, predefined and wildly unpredictable. The system comprises eight family groups, designed not as independent alphabets but as features of an expansive design space in which individual glyphs interact as variable components. A standard grid determines positioning for both shapes and spaces with every element aligning precisely, so that the superimposition of any pair of the system’s 198 modular fonts will result in a single unique instance from 39,204 possible combinations. Selected examples of these combined forms are displayed in System Process Form, along with many even more exuberant outputs composed from the millions of options afforded by the combinations of three layers.
In the editions here, exclusive to Volume, System Process Form reveals how design can be liberated from the narrow confines of individual ideas, intentions or expressions, leaving the designer free to discover infinite new organisms rather than being obliged to invent them.
Aesthetics are usually considered a set of principles concerned with the nature of beauty, but for both of us, systems are aesthetically beautiful in themselves.
The Designers Republic, led by founder and born rebel Ian Anderson, has shaped graphic communication over the past 30 years. It has done this through gravity-defying client work, revolutionary self-initiated projects, and provocative gestures.
Under Anderson’s idiosyncratic leadership, TDR™ pioneered the idea of a design group with attitude. More like a band than a design studio, they changed the dynamic between client and design group, and uniquely, they acquired a following beyond the graphic design tribe.
Now, for the first time in book form, Ian Anderson explores his studio’s output, its concepts, its processes and its influence on a generation of graphic designers.
Dismissed by some as “stylists”, Anderson demonstrates how the work of TDR™ is underpinned by conceptual thinking. The book delivers a unique insight into why TDR™ work looks the way it does, and provides a guide to the studio’s modus operandi.
I was lucky enough to grab a bundle from KickStarter and have my name featured in the book!
36 days of restless creativity, where participants are challenged to design a letter or number each day, resulting an outcome of the ability to represent the same symbol from many different perspectives.
A project that aims to be a space for creation around typography and its endless graphic possibilities.
I will be contributing to this years project with a series of 3D type treatments. Follow me on Instagram to view my submissions:
