Rick Poynor

Rick Poyner is Professor of Design and Visual Culture at the University of Reading

Hard Werken: the studio that shocked Dutch graphic design

It’s hard to imagine a graphics studio today causing so much outrage that a newspaper would call for them to be jailed for crimes against design, but that’s just the kind of extreme reaction that Hard Werken provoked in the Netherlands in the 1980s. Rick Poynor reviews a new book charting the rise and fall of a hugely influential and controversial design studio

National Theatre Posters: A Design History

The 1,700-plus posters created for the National Theatre have been the responsibility of just five individuals over a period of 50 years. In this exclusive extract from Unit Editions’ new book on the subject, Rick Poynor looks at how such a wide range of expression has come from a single in-house studio

Why Emigre mattered – and still matters

Massimo Vignelli once called it a “factory of garbage” but for 20 years Emigre magazine provided a vital forum for fierce debate about the future of graphic design. As the first UK exhibition about the title opens, Rick Poynor looks at its enduring influence