Using typography as its exemplar with its lack of clear performance criteria, this article questions what is good design and how to measure a designer's accountability. Evaluation criteria are teased out from various perspectives: credibility, ease of use, stakeholder inclusion in the design process, respect for cultural dimensions and whether it…

Critique is a communicative and sociable event in which students present their design and critics provide feedback. Students often find it difficult to explain their work and articulate their thoughts because most design knowledge is tacit by nature. If design is about new concepts, then in a critique, students have to describe and clearly present…

An area of visual communication that might be classified as a "design failure" is the visual presentation of information about "prescription-only medicines" for patients. This information is provided on packaging, leaflets, brochures, labels and websites. The practical issue is that there are problems in convincing patients to…

Analyzes the verse of the French poets Stephane Mallarme and Guillaume Apollinaire, contrasting their purposes in suppressing normal punctuation in their work. (MM)

Examines the relationship of concrete poetry to "abstract" poetry (so labeled because its circular semantic play interferes with the image-forming aspect of representation). Analyzes the interrelations of these two types of poetry in the context of a poetic tradition centered in France. Asserts that both types aim to eradicate differences between…

Argues that the creative procedures of writing, performing, and interpreting poetry are subtly interrelated. Illustrates this argument with examples from the author's own poetry. (MM)

Examines how literary criticism exploits and marginalizes the poem as printed artifact. Argues that the author-centered, phonocentric premise of close reading neutralizes spatial dynamics and reduces material identity to the status of a transparent medium. Suggests that appreciation of silent visual form is a convention of post modernist writing.…

Examines the role of visual form in the free verse of Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, William Carlos Williams, and Louis Zukofsky. Argues that this functional approach, entailing careful attention to how visual form affects the experience of printed poems, can contribute toward developing the "theory of graphic prosody" called for by John…

Introduces this issue of the journal, which is devoted to new perspectives on critical histories of graphic design. Notes that the essays in this issue offer examples of the variety of interpretative approaches available that serve to question both the previously unchallenged acceptance of historical explanations and the transcendent understanding…

Argues that the practice and influence of design history can benefit from new forms of visual and chronological analysis. Identifies and discusses a unique phenomenon, the "historical visual narrative." Examines special instances of this phenomenon in twentieth-century design and visual culture, which are tied to the theme of the…

Examines British fanzines as one form of subcultural communication that embraces specific visual and textual languages, often appropriating elements from mainstream cultural and media sources. Charts the growth of fanzine production over the last 20 years and analyzes the productive effects of fanzines on both the audiences they address and the…

Through a bilingual reading of Beckett's "Mal vu mal dit," the illusion of painted relief for printed letters is created. Colors manifest themselves through the continual process of translation. The French translation adds color to the black and white English text. (DF)

Defines the scope of research concerning "inscriptions in painting" from a semiotic point of view. Shows that in cases from medieval pictograms to modern new concreteness inscriptions are used to subvert the pictorial content of art works. (RS)

Argues that Fernand Leger avoids the mimetic use of literary elements in order to subvert the conventions of the illustrated book and subordinates meaning to a graphic interplay where word and image can, on occasion, become interchangeable. States that Leger subverts the borderline between readable and nonreadable, lyric and painterly. (RS)

Notes that Jules Kirschenbaum, a modern American artist whose work integrates inscriptions and figurative painting, studied under the masters of abstract expressionism yet exhibited with protagonists of "magic realism." States that his later work took a wholly different turn--it became art about meaning and the "meaning of…