It’s January, and time for clear out. For our design correspondent Daniel Benneworth-Gray this means tackling the reams and reams of fonts that are clogging up his computer. Surprisingly, the job turns into something of a trip down memory lane
Faced with tiny budgets for imagery for use in his work, our design correspondent Daniel Benneworth-Gray has found a treasure trove on Flickr Commons. If you have the time to look
It’s been another glorious year for movie posters, which has seen illustration in particular rise to the fore. Here, CR’s design correspondent Daniel Benneworth-Gray picks his ten favourites of 2019
Our design correspondent Daniel Benneworth-Gray reflects on the various terrors that can come with a phone call to a client
Our design correspondent Daniel Benneworth-Gray has escaped work for a family holiday. Or has he…?
Our design correspondent Daniel Benneworth-Gray has recently been drawn back into the world of comics. Here he muses on the difference they have made to his life, and his work
Our design correspondent ponders the differences between working from home compared to an office, and the perils of procrastination and small children
Our design correspondent Daniel Benneworth-Gray ponders the value of a university education. Is his work suffering because he didn’t do a formal design degree?
Our design correspondent Daniel Benneworth-Gray attends the launch of Thin Ice Press, a common press reconstruction and letterpress housed at the University of York, and is enamoured by the alchemy of wood and metal and ink
Here’s some end-of-year eye-candy. Our columnist Daniel Benneworth-Gray picks his favourite movie posters of the year
In his latest column, our correspondent Daniel Benneworth-Gray finds himself trying to explain his job, and in turn what design is, to his six year-old son
In this month’s column, our correspondent Daniel Benneworth-Gray finds himself suddenly smart-phone free. He expects being unshackled from the device to bring freedom, but finds he is unexpectedly bereft
In his latest column, our correspondent Daniel Benneworth-Gray expresses the agonies of writing the ‘about’ page on his website, and why the easy answer is to just keep putting it off
In his latest column, our correspondent Daniel Benneworth-Gray muses on the potentially paralysing effects of indecision, and the role it plays in his work
Our correspondent casts an envious eye over Michael Bierut’s ordered tower of completed notebooks and wonders if it’s time to rethink his more ‘eclectic’ approach
A nostalgia-fuelled quest to rediscover his old Myspace page leads our correspondent to ponder the impermanence of lives lived online
Comedy thrives on Twitter, thanks to its range of unique joke formats and structures. In constant flux, the platform’s humour is often hard to pin down – and all the more amusing for it
The art gallery can offer the freelance designer a quiet, contemplative space in which to work without distraction. Unless you start looking at the art. And the art is by John Stezaker, whose collages you really, really like….
From reading more books to unsubscribing, CR columnist Daniel Benneworth-Gray presents a checklist to prepare you for the year ahead – as part of our New Year New You series of articles on how to kickstart your work life and creativity in 2018
If you have a bit of time on your hands (or indeed if you don’t, but are procrastinatively inclined), may I recommend a stroll down the infinite scroll of typesetting.co.
Artist Jeffrey Alan Love recently tweeted a sketch, simply captioned “illustrator’s funeral”. Leaning over an open casket, a mourner asks one final question of the deceased …
A saunter around the big city can work wonders for the mind and the transformation from designer to unhurried ‘flâneur’ is relatively simple: Go slow – and get lost
A freelancer’s working life has little regard for the traditional calendar. So how to get those daily markers back in place? Start watching TV
Even for the seasoned designer, colour can be a tricky visual language to master. So how best to start embracing its spectrum of possibilities?
Sharing work online can bring more than just ‘hearts’ and ‘likes’, but designers may need to start channelling their inner window-dresser in order to keep up
Self-employment can be liberating – but when you work from home there’s little respite when the demands and deadlines all come crashing in at once
New Year finds our man Dan in the mood for a thorough tidy up. Room to think, room to work … and an intimidatingly vast and empty space to fill
The Visual Telling of Stories is one of the strangest websites you might ever come across – out of joint and out of time, it contains some pictorial wonders
In his artwork for David Bowie’s last album, designer Jonathan Barnbrook provided the musician’s fans with a range of hidden elements to discover. Intrigued by the findings – and the theories behind them – our columnist finally opens up his own vinyl copy to see for himself
Being a designer allows you, temporarily at least, to inhabit the fascinating worlds of those you work for. Just be careful of the old inferiority complex.
While designing a book’s index allows for little creative expression, it’s a task that has its own rewards – turning a collection of pages into a working object
In which our correspondent gets all hot and bothered over his current favourite typeface and what to do when such infatuations start impacting your work
Tall, awkward and skinny: no, not your average graphic designer but the spine, key to a book’s structural integrity, but a bugger to do anything interesting
The work that goes into any design project is yours and yours alone. Unless, of course, your client asks to have a quick peek at it. Well, they were warned…
Ah, the smell of a good book – those printed pages are much more than just a visual experience, as our man reminds himself with some delving amid shelving…
It’s easy to lose hours in the stock image library, yet among all the corporate surrealism, there’s a common language here; a lexicon for the modern world
The three talks that featured on the closing day of this year’s Leeds Print Festival offered up some very different approaches to printed matter – from film journalist Danny Leigh’s eulogy on the film poster, to The Designer’s Republic’s Ian Anderson and letterpress master Alan Kitching showing how the media thrives today
More than just words and pictures, the best children’s books are complex objects made up of nuanced design decisions
Last night, just as World Book Day was coming to a close (yes yes, your child looked adorable), the winners of the third annual Academy of Book Cover Designers (ABCD) Awards were announced at a ceremony in a bar beneath the streets of Hoxton Square. Now in its third year, the remit of the Academy is simple: to celebrate the ten best covers of the year. Last night, these were chosen by people who understand book cover design: book cover designers.
Dinosaurs, dingbats and digital: in the creative industries, the 90s was the decade that changed everything
All those great ideas that don’t see the light of day – should we hide them away, show them off, or try to recycle them?
Christmas is a time for giving, receiving … and agonising over what to put on this year’s card. Letterpress anyone?
Upping sticks to a new place is a big operation, so focus on the smaller details – deskspace, broadband, cleaning wares
We shouldn’t underestimate the act of putting pen to paper; it connects us to language – and letters – in a unique way
A designer’s books should be on-hand for inspiration and guidance, so a well-kept library is a must. Just keep it tidy
The commute to work is often written off as a dull necessity, but with no distractions it can be the perfect mobile studio
The relentless temptations of our always-on world make it almost impossible to preserve the space to think. Almost
In which our hero unwittingly uncovers the creative potential of punching himself in the face
All of a sudden your software is out of date and you’re out of the loop. But who needs all those whistles and bells anyway?
If you’re ever stuck in a design rut, remember that working in this profession gives you a chance to do, well, anything, says Daniel Benneworth-Gray
It seems that nothing stirs the designer’s mind like designing a cover for a book about … nothing. Or something
New year quiet time affords an opportunity for a little self-promotion, provided Daniel Benneworth-Gray can tear himself away from a certain animated film, of course
Whether or not to display a favourite record sleeve as art can be a difficult question for a designer. Even if it is a Saville
When illness blights the home of the freelancer, sick days just aren’t an option – you have some new clients on the sofa. By Daniel Benneworth-Gray
Design is all about making a series of choices, where even the small ones – hyphen or en-dash? – have significance
Designers on the big screen are so few and far between that the film that best reflects our profession is a Pixar animation, says Daniel Benneworth-Gray
It’s a pleasure to be travelling off on holiday but, as most designer’s know, leaving the inbox behind isn’t that easy
Finding the right image for a book cover is a lengthy process, made even harder when the text deals with a difficult subject
There’s a tool out there, perfect for giving the mind a creative workout. It’s tactile, stimulating, playful even. It’s called Lego
The original paintings from the 1950s Rowntree’s Aero ad campaign were recently discovered, leading to a quest to identify the Aero Girls