by Ian West | Jul 3, 2012 | Typography
The first whiffs of new technology were blowing through the world of typographic design. Display fonts were the typefaces that were available in large sizes to create headlines in designs and advertisements – such faces as Grotesque No.9, Gill Sans Ultra or...
by Ian West | Apr 9, 2012 | Design education
In the summer of 1966 I heard that a silkscreen printer who specialised in producing the ‘flags’ that estate agents place outside houses for sale, had suffered a major fire. Racks full of stencils repeatedly washed with white spirit, drums of solvent based inks and...
by Ian West | Apr 8, 2012 | Design education
Design education – the delights and tribulations of typography A key subject in the curriculum, and one that was to become particularly important to me, was typography. In the days before computers and desktop publishing, all text had to be set in type – either...
by Ian West | Mar 27, 2012 | Design education
In design, as in all education, students are often more aware of cultural shift than are their tutors – even if they can’t at first articulate them. As the course progressed we began to recognise some of the tensions in the world of design. The college was...
by Ian West | Mar 19, 2012 | Uncategorized
Serendipity led me to stumble over one of the most influential designers and educators of the ‘Swiss’ school. My intake at college was the product of what was known as ‘The Bulge’ (later called ‘Babyboomers’) – the children of soldiers recently returned...
