Graphic Design News Publication Publishing

Eye Magazine Issue 100

posted by Robyn Pitts July 10, 2020

After nearly three decades of continuous publishing, Eye’s very special hundredth issue is titled ‘Talking about graphic design’, and is a broad overview of current design and designers. At 140 pages (including covers and inserts), this is the biggest Eye ever, all thanks to the generous support of readers, subscribers and advertisers worldwide.

For this latest edition of the quarterly magazine about graphic design and visual culture, Eye invited eleven prominent individuals to talk about graphic design. These contributors included Liza Enebeis, Bobby C. Martin Jr, Fraser Muggeridge and Sophie Thomas, all of whom took part in the online Type Tuesday launch event on 9 June 2000.

Photographed by Maria Spannhe, the cover feature is an interview with ‘mag-man ad-man’ Richard Turley, and inside the pages one can find interviews with Elaine Ramos, Michael Bierut (Pentagram), Kate Moross, Jessica Walsh, Françoise Mouly (The New Yorker) and Milton Glaser, who discuss work, design processes, clients, and other concerns. These illustrated conversations are interwoven with thirteen snapshots of projects that range from editorial design to digital processing, calligraffiti, and Hangul type design.

Also included in this issue are three articles that address historical matters: Silas Munro’s review of ‘As, Not For’, Jerome Harris’s travelling exhibition of work by black designers; ‘Objects of inspiration’ about the Letterform Archive in San Francisco; and ‘Eye’s early years’, in which Rick Poynor, who edited the first 24 issues, recalls the aims and ideas behind the magazine’s 1990 launch.

Other features include photographer Jack Davison (profiled by The New York Times Magazine’s Kathy Ryan); the geometrical approach of illustrator Malika Favre; French studio Spassky Fischer; Swiss letterpress designer Dafi Kühne; and Extinction Rebellion.

John Walters, editor of the magazine, describes Eye 100 as “a panorama of current, time-stamped graphic design practice… representing a freeze-framed now that has taken on new significance in the shadow of the pandemic“.

The final design and production of the hundredth issue took place during the Covid-19 lockdown, thanks to the socially distanced design team of Simon Esterson and Holly Catford. The issue was printed by Pureprint and repro house Dawkins Colour, who have been helping produce the magazine since 2008.