What does ‘graphic design’ mean, an activity which conditions, without us having a clear perception of it, our relationships with objects, places, goods, communication tools which we use on a daily basis? What distinguishes ‘education and propaganda’, the real conflict of our times as Martin Buber said? What are the tangent lines between illustration, information, advertising? But beyond these Sussidiario, in the new graphics of the historic A&a – Architects and Architecture series answers even more circumscribed questions. For example: how were the calendars designed? Where do the symbols we see when we turn our computer on come from? How is the Coca-Cola brand born and what does this logo mean for the history of identity design? How are the banknotes designed? What are the contributions given by some of the great designers to whom other chapters of the book are also dedicated: Herbert Bayer (the Bauhaus father of the universal font, John Maeda (the graphic designer of the Media Lab di Negroponte at MIT), Susan Kare (Apple’s graphic interfaces), Georges Remi-Hergé (the most famous European comics designer: the Tintin stories); Marcello Nizzoli, Albe Steiner and Carlo Scarpa (two fundamental essays by Sergio Polano deal with his love of letter design). How is the wide territory of graphic design looks like and how hard it is defining it is the theme that Sergio Polano tells about with words and Paolo Tassinari with images that melt in this book.
