Parting It Out. Writing on Graphic Design by Ian Lynam
is a collection of essays spanning much of Graphic Design as it applies to aspects of contemporary culture — from the Olympics to Japan to typography to R. Kelly to Cuba to sign painting. A practicing graphic designer, design teacher and design critic based in Tokyo, Ian Lynam has crafted an assembly of writing that is equal parts personal narrative, design criticism, design history and cultural study.
Detail from the introduction, featuring various styles of Jens Gehlhaar’s CIA Compendium: CIA Humdrum, CIA Earthworm, and CIA Dogsear.
All fonts in use are credited in the colophon, set in CIA Dictator.
Blurb on the back cover featuring reversed Bureau Grot.
Poster for an exhibition of Ian Lynam’s work at the Ultrasupernew gallery in Harajuku where the launch party for Parting It Out took place. The fat typeface is Rubber Vloeren, Lynam’s revival of letterforms drawn by Piet Zwart in the early 1920s.
Exhibition signage
2 Comments on “Parting It Out. Writing on Graphic Design by Ian Lynam”
Photo with the caption “Japanese text is set in Kozuka Gothic.” is actually Korean, if no one noticed :)
Michael, thanks, that indeed was a misplaced caption. Pardon the ignorance. I assume that the Korean text uses Jiwon Lee’s Baurunjiwon as mentioned in the book’s colophon.