It’s been said that desktop publishing democratized graphic design. For those of you too young to know what the term means, it means the technology that enabled graphic design to go digital. It was an ecosystem, really: the Mac, PostScript, LaserWriter, and PageMaker. But before all that, designers depended on typesetters to set type.

David Langton writing for UX Collective:

A lot was lost when the Macintosh wiped out the traditional typesetting industry. From the art of typography to the craft of typesetting, many essential elements were lost. Typesetters were part of a tradition that stretched back more than 500 years to Gutenberg’s printing press. They understood the basics of type: kerning (spacing between the letters), leading (the space between lines of text), and line breaks (how to avoid widows — those solo words abandoned at the end of a paragraph). They knew about readability (like how to avoid setting type that was too wide to read). There were classic yet limited fonts, with standards for size and leading that assured that everyone working within common ranges maintained a threshold for quality. Yet it was in the craft or business side of typesetting that these services were most under appreciated. Typesetters provided overnight service. They worked overnight, so graphic designers did not have to. We would finish our days specifying the type, and the typesetters would keystroke the manuscripts, proofread, stylize the type, and set up columns following our instructions.

Designers would then pick up the galleys from the typesetters in the morning. The black type was photographically printed on white photo paper. You’d have to cut them up and paste them onto boards, assembling your layout.

Because this was such a physical process, we had to slow down. Langton says:

But since the Macintosh became an in-house tool, the process was reversed. Now, designers design first, then think about it. This shift in process has contributed to a trivialization of the role of graphic designer because anyone can noodle around with the Mac’s sophisticated type tools and make layouts. The design process has been trivialized while the thinking, the evaluation, and the strategic part of the process are often abandoned.

One small thing I’ll point out is that desktop publishing wasn't popularized until 1985.

• PostScript was released by Adobe in 1984.
• The LaserWriter printer was released by Apple in 1985.
• PageMaker was released by Aldus—later bought by Adobe—in 1985.

"Beating AI" is an interesting framing, but OK. There is a lot of concern out there about how AI will affect the entire design industry, from graphic design to UX. Understandably, designers are worried about their careers.

Georgia Coggan writing for Creative Bloq:

"So are we just cooked?" asks a recent Reddit thread from a designer who is four years out of college. " Any other jobs i can get with such a degree now that design is kind of becoming obsolete?"

Hundreds of responses poured in from designers with strong and diverse opinions on what AI is doing to the graphic design industry – and it isn't all as doom and gloom as you might fear. Ranging from advice around what humans can do that AI can't, to how nothing has really changed regarding what the industry needs from its designers, there's lots for the OP to feel positive about – as long as they're happy to stay agile. Head over to the Reddit thread to garner more wisdom from those in the field.

Apologies for linking to a lot of Christopher Butler recently, but I really love his thinking about design. This time, Butler reminds us about the importance of structure and how the proto-graphic designers we studied in art history, like Piet Mondrian, mastered it.

A well-composed photograph communicates something essential even before we register its subject. A thoughtfully designed page layout feels right before we read a single word. There’s something happening in that first moment of perception that transcends the individual elements being composed.

My favorite passage in his essay begins here:

Perhaps we “read” composition the way we read text — our brains processing visual structure as a kind of fundamental grammar that exists beneath conscious recognition. Just as we don’t typically think about parsing sentences into subjects and predicates while reading, we don’t consciously deconstruct the golden ratio or rule of thirds while looking at an image. Yet in both cases, our minds are translating structure into meaning.

The next eight short paragraphs build on this idea and crescendo with this banger:

In recognizing composition as this fundamental visual language, we begin to understand why good design works at such a deep level. It’s not just about making things look nice — it’s about speaking fluently in a language that predates words, tapping into patterns of perception that feel as natural as breathing.

Composition is a fundamental visual language. I had never thought of it that way and yet it feels right.

The whole thing is great. Please go read it.

I knew instantly that the brand identity was paying homage to Eadweard Muybridge’s famous photographic studies of a galloping horse. It’s a logo for an AI video company.

The whole case study from Jody Hudson-Powell and Luke Powell of Pentagram is great.

A lot of young designers love to look at what’s contemporary, what’s trending on Dribbble or Instagram. But I think to look forward, we must always study our past. I spent the week in New York City, on vacation. My wife and I attended a bunch of Broadway shows and went to the Museum of Broadway, where I became enamored with a lot of the poster art. (’Natch.) I may write about that soon.

Coincidentally, Matthew Strom wrote about the history of album art, featuring the first album cover ever, which uses a photo of the Broadway theater, the Imperial, where I saw Smash earlier this week.

In the 1980s and ’90s, Emigre was a prolific powerhouse. The company started out as a magazine in the mid-1980s, but quickly became a type foundry as the Mac enabled desktop publishing. As a young designer in San Francisco who started out in the ’90s, Zuzana Licko and Rudy VanderLans were local heroes (they were based across the Bay in Berkeley). From 1990–1999 they churned out 37 typefaces for a total of 157 fonts. And in that decade, they expanded their influence by getting into music, artists book publishing, and apparel. More than any other design brand, they celebrated art and artists.

Here is a page from a just-released booklet (with a free downloadable PDF) showcasing their fonts from the Nineties.

Elizabeth Goodson, writing for It’s Nice That:

The cynicism our current moment inspires appears to be, regrettably, universal. For millennials, who watched the better-world-by-design ship go down in real time, it’s hard-earned. We saw the idealist fantasy of creative autonomy, social impact, and purpose-driven work slowly unravel over the past decade, and are now left holding the bag. Gen Z designers have the same pessimism, but arrived at it from a different angle. They’re entering the field already skeptical, shaped by a job market in freefall and constant warnings of their own obsolescence. But the result is the same: an industry full of people who care deeply, but feel let down.

Sounds very similar to what Gen X-ers are facing in their careers too. I think it’s universal for nearly all creative careers today.

On 4/4, Marvel released a wonderful teaser poster for their upcoming movie, The Fantastic Four: First Steps. This will be the fourth iteration of the first family of comics on film. There was an unreleased Roger Corman-produced movie from 1994, with a fascinating history.

I was visiting a customer of ours in Denver this week. They're an HVAC contractor and we were camped out in one of their conference rooms where they teach their service technicians. On the walls, among posters of air conditioning diagrams were a couple of safety posters. At first glance they look like they're from the 1950s and ’60s, but upon closer inspection, they're from 2016! The only credit I can find on the internet is the copywriter, John Wrend.

Sadly, the original microsite where Grainger had these posters is gone, but I managed to track down the full set.

Infographics have exploded over the past few years. It’s a great way to visually and simply explain sometimes complex data to a general audience. My own personal brand of infographics is more on the data visualization side, and thankfully coincides with TrueCar, my employer. I believe that data should be presented in a beautiful and sophisticated way. It should be easy to grok and doesn’t have to be cutesy.

When the latest epic infographic™ project landed on my desk, I started where I always start—I looked at the data. What inspired me was seeing this color-scaled chart of the smartest day of the year to buy. Just by looking at the color I quickly understood the patterns: end of the month, December is the best month, and January 1 is the best day.