I met up with a close friend recently at an offshoot of Soho House in Mayfair. It was filled with the usual lively thirty-somethings drinking and embroiled in animated conversation. We found a relatively quiet table and settled in for the evening, doing what graphic designers tend to do: gossip about the state of design; the latest films, television and art; and the wider creative world.
One interesting topic that surfaced was the plethora of ‘how-to’-style books on graphics that have appeared in recent years. “If only it were that easy,” we both thought. And if it were, it would save all those poor graphics students the £9,200 PA plus ever-increasing interest rates for their three-year university stint.
Back in the 1960s, the publishers Studio Vista (no longer with us) produced a series of little paperbacks demystifying various aspects of creative disciplines. They were very useful.
Above, just a few of the many books published by Studio Vista back in the 1960's and 70's, all sleeping on my bookshelf.
But you have to remember (you young ones, that is) that back then books and trade magazines were the main outlets to show us what was going on in the graphics world. Instant gratification was not available – it was a far slower affair. Now, of course, you can tap ‘Swiss graphics’ into a search engine and within seconds have an astonishing resource appearing on your screen while sipping a flat white at your favourite coffee shop.
I have no idea if the ‘how-to’ books actually work (do let me know if they have worked for you). But many of them are stuffed with projects and overly written. Oddly, last year’s D&AD annual was turned into a mammoth instruction manual. I found it absolutely tedious – I just wanted to see the year’s selected and awarded work, not to be lectured to.
We started on our main course and became more absorbed in this ‘how-to’ topic, and we wracked our brains to recall a book of this type that actually had an effect on us. We agreed on two.
The first was Bob Gill’s Forget All the Rules You Ever Learned About Graphic Design (1981). It’s utter directness and downright simplicity of explaining, in as few words as possible, a design problem followed by a design solution really hit the spot.
Two typical spreads with an utter economy of words.
The stark typographical cover and dictatorial message were the forerunners to the presentation formula that most books would adopt some three decades later.
Paul Arden's Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite (2006) is a good example of this genre.
The second book we both felt that had great value was Identity Kits: A Pictorial Survey of Visual Signals by Germano Facetti and Alan Fletcher (1971). It is very much about the notion of looking; for a designer, attuning the eye to lock on to the ordinary and extraordinary is one of the key attributes in his/her creative armoury.
A book I bought back in 1987, reprinted from 1963, is David Ogilvy’s Confessions of an Advertising Man.
Although not strictly a 'how to' book, every chapter did start with 'How to...'
It is not strictly a ‘how-to’ book but is actually full of wisdom about writing, psychology, marketing and running a company. In his introduction, Ogilvy set out why he wrote the book: “First, to attract new clients to my advertising agency. Second, to condition the market for a public offering of our shares. Third, to make myself better known in the business world.” He goes on to confirm that he achieved all three – Ogilvy was not known for modesty. But he writes like a dream. Concise, witty and persuasive. So I would certainly rate this book as an influence on me, and, refreshingly, it only contained one image in the entire book. Sometimes words are worth a thousand pictures.