A survey of avant-garde cultural and political magazines and journals.

At Dwell, we're staging a minor revolution. We think that it's possible to live in a house or apartment by a bold modern architect, to own furniture and products that are exceptionally well designed, and still be a regular human being. We think that good design is an integral part of real life. And that real life has been conspicuous by its absence in most design and architecture magazines.

Graphic Design Theory is organized in three sections: "Creating the Field" traces the evolution of graphic design over the course of the early 1900s, including influential avant-garde ideas of futurism, constructivism, and the Bauhaus; "Building on Success" covers the mid- to late twentieth century and considers the International Style, modernism, and postmodernism; and "Mapping the Future" opens at the end of the last century and includes current discussions on legibility, social responsibility, and new media. Striking color images illustrate each of the movements discussed and demonstrate the ongoing relationship between theory and practice. A brief commentary prefaces each text, providing a cultural and historical framework through which the work can be evaluated. Authors include such influential designers as Herbert Bayer, L'szlo Moholy-Nagy, Karl Gerstner, Katherine McCoy, Michael Rock, Lev Manovich, Ellen Lupton, and Lorraine Wild. Additional features include a timeline, glossary, and bibliography for further reading. A must-have survey for graduate and undergraduate courses in design history, theory, and contemporary issues, Graphic Design Theory invites designers and interested readers of all levels to plunge into the world of design discourse.

At Dwell, we're staging a minor revolution. We think that it's possible to live in a house or apartment by a bold modern architect, to own furniture and products that are exceptionally well designed, and still be a regular human being. We think that good design is an integral part of real life. And that real life has been conspicuous by its absence in most design and architecture magazines.

A unique look at how Futurism influenced and changed twentieth-century graphic design In the early decades of the twentieth century, European artists, poets, and designers called for the destruction of outdated assumptions about vision and language. Numerous manifestos resulted, demanding new artistic forms. None of these manifestos was more aggressive and poetic, or wider in scope than Filippo Tomasso Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto of 1909. Painting, sculpture, literature, architecture, theatre, cinema, and music were all caught up in its net. Typography--until then a distant relative in the arts--also played a major role in Marinetti's program. Written by leading design scholar Alan Bartram, this fascinating book examines the rise and evolution of the Futurists' approach to typography and graphic design, placing it within the context of contemporary artistic and literary movements. The volume features examples of some eighty Futurist books or other designs for print, many of them relatively unknown or previously unpublished, accompanied by new translations of over twenty of the featured texts. Bartram illuminates the complicated meanings of the Futurist designers' graphic works in order to provide a new understanding of their extraordinary and influential visual language.