If you are not sure what to buy me for Christmas

Make design history with scissors and glue

Set to bring joy to even the most hardened of graphic designers, a new book from Gestalten provides an illustrated history of graphic design, complete with cut-out-and-keep designers (Messrs Rand, Tschichold, Bass and Carson, shown above)...

With an all-star cast, Graphic Design History for Rainy Days, takes the reader on a gentle tour of the subject, courtesy of a time-travelling grandfather and his enquiring grandson. The book is designed by Studio 3, the in-school design agency at the Graphic Design Department of Westerdals School of Communication in Oslo.

As the pair journey from the time of the industrial revolution, right up to Jessica Helfand's mid-90s design studio (above), they meet everyone from Max Bill and Wim Crouwel, to Neville Brody (below, doing the talking) and Paula Scher in between.

Graphic Design History for Rainy Days is a charming take on the medium and, as is the current vogue (see our own paper toys posts and the figure that comes free with the current issue of CR), the book even contains a selection of cut-out designers, your own Bauhaus diploma, and a miniature Apple Macintosh that can be assembled in about 10 minutes, shown above.

This is one for the Christmas list.

Published by Gestalten; £17.99. gestalten.com.

Oh and also...

Those Olympic posters: some alternatives

Earlier this month, 12 posters by leading artists for the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics were unveiled to a largely skeptical public. Given the same brief, Kingston University students have come up with their own versions

Over the current term, I have been doing some lecturing with the third year students on Kingston University's graphic design and photography courses. A couple of weeks ago, following the release of the 2012 Olympics artists posters, course director Rebecca Wright and I asked the students if they would like to respond to the same briefy given the artists. We asked them for a personal response to the idea of the London Olympics and the intersection between art and sport. Here are their responses.

Leanne Bentley and Ben West came up with this cheeky and somewhat damning response to the artists involved with the official series: DNF stands for Did Not Finish, the ultimate Olympic fail.

For her poster, Ran Park overlayed images of athletes performing various sports to create this beautiful composition.

A lot of the student responses were quite critical or dubious about the supposed benefits of the Games coming to London. Here Libby Wimble compares LOCOG's ambitions to those of a Stalinist Five Year Plan: presumably she feels they have as little basis in reality as each other. The background to the poster is made up of 250,000 tiny tractors.

Rosie Palmer and Helen Ferguson were also dubious, focusing on the terrorism threat

Tamara Elmallah was concerned about all the overcrowding the games will bring to the Tube, overlaying an image of spectators rendered in all the Olympic colours until it becomes a brown sludge of humanity

And Alice Tosey wants us all to 'mind the gap'

And Paul Chanthapanya points to the insidious nature of sponsorship at the Games

While Stephen Messham points out that suffering in the world will not go away just because the Games are in town

Others, though, chose a more positive view. Benji Roebuck and Clara Goodger created their poster from the word for 'hello' in the languages of competing nations, allowing the ink from one word to run into another suggesting the coming together of different nations at the Games.

Coming together is also the theme of Jo Hawkes' poster

And this cut paper piece by Fred North

Hannah Parker had a neat idea for a digital display in which segments would gradually appear over a period of time running up the opening of the Games until the image was completed

TYPE (type Categories)

Knowing the terms and characteristics of these groups can help you in the process of selecting the appropriate type for your project.

The number of type categories can vary according to the source, bibliography or point of view of the author. Here are 7 basic categories.

Old Style

The Old Style types are commonly used in the body of printed text due to its appearance and readability. They have serifs and are characterised by having a gentle transition between the thick and thin strokes and the stress is always diagonal.
Some examples of Old Style types are: Times New Roman, Palatino, Garamond and Centaur.

Modern

Modern typefaces have serifs and a strong vertical stress line. They display an elegant feeling. Its readability is not always great though due to the contrast between the strokes. Some examples of Modern types are: Bodoni, Didot and Onyx.

Slab Serif

Slab Serif types originated from the advertising business after the Industrial Revolution. The main characteristic of these types are the thick (slab) horizontal serifs. There is often very little, sometimes no, transition between the thin and thick strokes, and the stress is vertical (if any). It is very common to see this group of type being used on webdesign nowadays. Some examples of Slab Serif types are: Memphis, Clarendon and New Century Schoolbook.

Sans Serif

Sans serif types are the ones without serif (“sans” = french for “without”). They became popular when the Bauhaus school of design was formed. They have almost no transition between strokes and have a large x-height. Some examples of Sans Serif types are: Futura, Arial, Tahoma and Helvetica.

Grunge

These types, also called Distressed or Fringe, are distorted, trashy and heavily manipulated. Some examples of Grunge types are: Rapture, Fragile and Amoebia Rain.

Scripts

Script types are easy to spot – they resemble handwriting. Some examples of Script types are: Minstral, Snell and Poppl Exquisit.

Decorative

These types are created for a specific purpose of emphasise the content. They are also called Ornamented or Novelty. Some examples of Decorative types are:Circus, Gypsy Rose and Baileywick.