Reunited herein are the many links to my available articles on graphic and industrial design.
Æsthetics of thirtysomething
Or, if you will, “Thirtysomething æsthetics.”
(“Thirtysomething was like a Saab – an intelligent, sensitive, worldly creation for intelligent, sensitive, worldly people”)
Fixing the retarded L.L. Bean duckboot
I have been wearing the L.L. Bean duckboot (né Bean Boot), indeed made in Maine, for 20-odd years. The advantages are many. The core disadvantage is they fall apart after a few years due to a design flaw that L.L. Bean refuses to acknowledge
Conservatives cannot design
Well, they can’t
Screenfonts
Screenfont.CA: All about fonts for captions & subtitles
Blog posts
Typography ¶ graphic design
Signage & wayfinding
Articles on signage and wayfinding in Toronto and on the TTC (the Toronto public-transit system). Additionally: Two old reports on wayfinding and typeface comparison at GO Transit
Print
Articles for Print magazine – including two on captioning typography and, soon, many more – now have their own page.
- Articles from the Globe and Mail, 1993 (added 2007.03.07)
-
Review of Deep Sites by Max Bruinsma (originally published in Eye; 2004.11.18)
- Reviled Fonts: When recherché designers denounce certain fonts in high dudgeon, dost they protest too much? Aren’t these the same fonts that designers used when they were starting out? A call for participation in an article I’m writing
- Typecasting: Review of, and Commentary on, Typography in the Movies. First up: Guy Maddin’s Heart of the World
- Autonominal Fonts: How can it be that the visual appearance of the name of a musical group can epitomize a typeface and vice-versa? (at fawny.org)
- Daily Diet of
Tubby, an assessment of the graphic design and
politics of the National Post newspaper
- Monomania! With
thousands of typefaces at their fingertips, just why are designers opting for typewriter fonts?
- Three articles on the Typo Expo that took place in Toronto in
April 1996: A long monologue, a more conventional
published article, and another conventional
published article (at fawny.org)
- The 1994,
1995,
and 1996
Advertising & Design Club of Canada Awards (at fawny.org)
- What’s wrong with the White Pages?
- My startling interview with design prima donna David
Carson, including a superexclusive revelation about the
true nature of his PageMaker sponsorship
- Alex Isley, late of Spy and a
rather fabulous and unassuming and consistent designer
- Gary Panter,
responsible for the look of Pee-wee’s Playhouse
- A new wayfinding
system for the Toronto subway (since decommissioned and
ignored, of course)
- Exactly what kind of impression Bruce Mau made at the Culture/Technology
Convergence Conference
- Canadian
identity as expressed through graphic design (yawn, though Paul
Arthur makes some good points)
- An analysis of Liz McQuiston’s book
Graphic Agitation on protest graphics (and review of
the lecture she gave on the same topic)
- The influence of Babs Kruger-esque slogans on popular culture (Emigre 33, 1995)
- The conversion of the
Village Voice to desktop publishing
Old items
This one didn’t go anywhere:
The Toronto Typographic Charter: The City of Toronto has no coordination whatsoever in the typography of its public spaces. I call for a Toronto Typographic Charter to fix the problem
Industrial design
My expertise in industrial design isn’t remotely as advanced as it is in graphic design, but I’ve written a few things.
Updated 2026.04.26 15:09
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