Archive · 2007–2018
Journal posts, 2007–2018.
Kept for the often excellent reader comments. Find new writing in the newsletter, and current identity work at davidairey.com.
2018
2017
- Ivan Chermayeff, rest in peace 2 comments
- The first Annual Brand of the Year 2 comments
- Desk space and design kit 15 comments
- France passes law that says Photoshopped images must have a disclaimer 4 comments
- On recycled paper and “green” printing
- Milton Glaser in conversation with Debbie Millman
- Tadao Ando’s Hill of Buddha
- Good design makes you happy
- Why is so much of design school a waste of time?
- Where do ideas come from?
- Natural fireworks
- The posters of Abram Games
- The damage that online advertising has had on the credibility of our news media
- Adding colour to historical photos 3 comments
- Villa Ypsilon, by LASSA 1 comment
- The future of branding 5 comments
- A few thoughts on passive income 1 comment
- Being an independent designer 14 comments
- Poetry and magic from Boa Mistura
- “How do you storyboard a smile?” 1 comment
- Alan Kitching on his life in letterpress 4 comments
- What Clients Think 2017 10 comments
- Design in Tech Report
- It’s okay to change your mind 6 comments
- Haunted by data 1 comment
- Paula Scher on pro bono
- “The appointment of a design consultant needn’t always culminate in change.” 4 comments
- Analogue Loaders, behind the scenes
- The Met makes 375,000 images free
- Bowie on design ideas
- Saul Bass: Style is Substance 2 comments
2016
- Good Hair Day Pasta 14 comments
- G’ ay Mate 17 comments
- The five constraints 7 comments
- Swim the other way 5 comments
- Calvin Seibert’s modernist sandcastles 1 comment
- Illustrated gifs capture post 9/11 NYC
- Last Call aims to eliminate restaurant food waste 5 comments
- 27inch iMac vs 32inch BenQ BL3201PT 20 comments
- Appreciative 2 comments
- Girls’ Life vs Boys’ Life 7 comments
- The Drinkable Book 3 comments
- Vlooybergtoren
- The Typography Idea Book
- Love Wins 1 comment
- Shop Art Theft 3 comments
- Ogilvy on meeting clients and prospects 1 comment
- How it’s made: producing a bus blind 1 comment
- Scott Naismith landscape art 7 comments
- Six brand questions for clients to answer 4 comments
- For services to typography and road safety 1 comment
- Dronescape
- Talent is overrated 13 comments
- Greggs, advertising on another level
- Mona Hatoum: The Negotiating Table 3 comments
- All For a Few Good Waves 4 comments
- Koyaanistocksi 1 comment
- What makes a good logo?
- Things Organized Neatly, the book 2 comments
- MIN: The New Simplicity in Graphic Design 4 comments
- On starting sentences with “And” 12 comments
- 180,000 public domain images, free to download and reuse 1 comment
- Glasgow High Street mural, by Smug 10 comments
- Digital Print. A Bigger Spectrum. 1 comment
- On late client payments, sticking to the brief, and the value of design 6 comments
- Rainbows through the Smithsonian with 60 miles of thread
2015
- Logo Design Love in Spanish 8 comments
- Footage of Renoir and Monet painting 3 comments
- Five things
- New business cards by Dayfold 26 comments
- The Process: A New Foundation in Art and Design 1 comment
- Fontself turns your type drawings into a font 1 comment
- Trade Marks & Symbols, 1973 3 comments
- Adrian Frutiger, 1928-2015
- It is always now 4 comments
- It’s All Our Blood, by Harry Pearce 6 comments
- Giving voice to ideas 3 comments
- On getting paid 9 comments
- Pigeon Loft, by Schmidt Architects
- The Art of Hermann Zapf 2 comments
- Perpetual black water whirlpool 1 comment
- Fontstand launches 2 comments
- Typefaces for people with dyslexia 11 comments
- Printing Flaunt
- New York skyline: 1500-2015
- Renoir, My Father
- Samsara 9 comments
- Marginalising creativity 6 comments
- Virgin, Run a Holiday 3 comments
- Two Hulls 5 comments
- The craft of neon sign-making 2 comments
- Homelessfonts 7 comments
- Outgoings in design self-employment 20 comments
2014
- Identityworks retirement 10 comments
- Lassa road fashion 2 comments
- Typeface combinations used in design books 10 comments
- Ask me anything #2 11 comments
- Things I’m sent 6 comments
- How to persuade 8 comments
- Remember those great Volkswagen ads? 1 comment
- Ask me anything #1 14 comments
- OPENING, by Christopher Willits 2 comments
- Antisocial media marketing 14 comments
- Drone over Burning Man 2 comments
- Keep experimenting 6 comments
- G . F Smith, 1885 onwards
- Mike Dempsey on “the graphic designer and ethics” 12 comments
- Creative people say no 8 comments
- Context is key 3 comments
- Wigan Little Theatre’s little known facts 4 comments
- Food art pairings 5 comments
- Beyond the logo 2 comments
- The Geometry of Type 6 comments
- A few Adobe alternatives 20 comments
- On negotiating your design salary 14 comments
- The ubiquity of Helvetica 4 comments
- Brand naming resources 14 comments
- Giving better design feedback 10 comments
- You (generally) get what you pay for 19 comments
- Is it still important to sketch as a designer? 22 comments
- No, No, No, No, No, Yes. 5 comments
2013
- We could really do with £50k 11 comments
- Graphic Icons: Jan Tschichold 6 comments
- The influence of colour in brand identity 3 comments
- LiveSurface Context 28 comments
- Measuring design’s return on investment 8 comments
- Originality in design 12 comments
- Eliodomestico: a solar household still for developing countries 8 comments
- The computer’s a dangerous instrument… 11 comments
- Guinness Extra Cold posters 10 comments
- Blank Slate: A Comprehensive Library of Photographic Templates 15 comments
- The Design Method 46 comments
- On communication between designers and clients 13 comments
- The financial value of side projects 25 comments
- A short lesson in perspective 9 comments
- Banknotes for the visually impaired 9 comments
- Picasso and pricing your work 35 comments
- Diogene 6 comments
- Design pricing for non-profits 16 comments
- The Fortune Cookie Principle 8 comments
- One breath at a time 3 comments
- Double-use billboards 5 comments
- 15 Years, 115 Projects 4 comments
- Thoughts on design crowdsourcing 21 comments
- Paul Jarvis shares good advice for designers 8 comments
- A billboard that turns air into drinkable water 12 comments
- More on unpaid internships 10 comments
- Only 4% of women consider themselves beautiful 12 comments
- Fontfabric free fonts 4 comments
- Popular Lies About Graphic Design 14 comments
- Alan Watts on the dream of life 7 comments
- SODAE house 4 comments
- Reflections on design self-employment 15 comments
- On selling websites 23 comments
- Interactive mind maps 5 comments
- A new flag for Northern Ireland 20 comments
- Artfully visualising our humanity 2 comments
- Defining iconic brands 8 comments
2012
- Wild Geese Skydiving on the north coast of Ireland 11 comments
- On trading design services 8 comments
- When selling design is like selling furniture 6 comments
- Self-filling water bottle 3 comments
- What if money was no object? 16 comments
- Massoud Hassani, mine sweeper 9 comments
- Chalet C7, Portillo, Chile 15 comments
- Stop motion. Behind the scenes. 5 comments
- The ideal design process? 5 comments
- 10,000 hours 16 comments
- Buzludzha monument, Bulgaria 13 comments
- Book Mountain, by MVRDV 8 comments
- When pro bono design pays off 6 comments
- When what you’re selling isn’t what you’re selling 9 comments
- On designers critiquing designers 25 comments
- Ask about the budget 10 comments
- Steal Like an Artist 9 comments
- On finding design work in a new country 18 comments
- “Nobody bought the cheapest option.” 15 comments
- Bob Gill, so far. 5 comments
- Bob Gill 5 comments
- Studio Culture at the Design Museum 7 comments
- Nicolas Ritter: One 12 comments
- Designer headaches 35 comments
- The Tate Gallery by Tube
- Anti-abortion ad campaign and morals in design 18 comments
- USB microphone recommendation 14 comments
- “You can’t tell me you’ll know it when you see it.” 11 comments
- Shape as a brand attribute 5 comments
- You don’t have to be as good as everyone else 12 comments
- What employers look for #5 2 comments
- The Rhein-Herne slinky 7 comments
- Ethics in design, and who you won’t work with 38 comments
- Two memorable business cards 14 comments
- Milton Glaser on Donald Trump 12 comments
- Using sound symbolism in branding 14 comments
- What convicts can teach us about branding 18 comments
- Creative Penguin book covers 5 comments
- Tien-Min Liao’s handmade type 9 comments
- Will Pearson’s 360 panoramic tours 3 comments
- Boa Mistura: Luz nas Vielas 10 comments
- The smallest business cards ever 12 comments
- A manifesto on writing for design 13 comments
- When designing a book cover… 9 comments
- Paper from G . F Smith 14 comments
- The design company is not the only place to be a designer 23 comments
- Be Bold 101 15 comments
2011
- Penguin, in Champions of Design 13 comments
- Blanch font family, free download 47 comments
- Thoughts on the designer / client relationship 7 comments
- Design by Nature 14 comments
- Advice for authors 11 comments
- TIME magazine covers: worldwide differences 24 comments
- Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design 8 comments
- Remove the logo. Know the brand. 18 comments
- Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits 8 comments
- Why do so few designers join professional design organisations? 22 comments
- When asking for a design critique 15 comments
- What employers look for #4 31 comments
- What employers look for #3 2 comments
- What employers look for #2 11 comments
- What employers look for #1 13 comments
- Identify, by Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv 8 comments
- How to get 87,698 blog subscribers in five years 48 comments
- The stories behind car brand names 12 comments
- A short break in Tenerife 18 comments
- Where to find the right designer 14 comments
- How do you deal with unpaid invoices? 64 comments
- You are the map maker 10 comments
- Dalton Ghetti, lead sculptor 14 comments
- Handling the client approach 29 comments
- Smirnoff Caipiroska packaging 15 comments
- On creative block 24 comments
- Arwey notebooks 15 comments
- How to package elastic bands 13 comments
- Boat Magazine 12 comments
- Design on the side 29 comments
- Patterns in design 17 comments
- Symbol, by Angus Hyland & Steven Bateman 8 comments
- Too many ideas 36 comments
- If design was an iceberg 23 comments
- “The Coca-Cola Conspiracy” and ethical design 80 comments
- Letterheady 5 comments
- One month of online advertising earnings 32 comments
- Don’t build websites using Flash 116 comments
- Designing Brand Identity 25 comments
- Boycotting GoDaddy 92 comments
- Business goals and my “painted picture” 47 comments
- Michael Wolff on creativity 8 comments
- Framing your design brand 34 comments
- Type foundries worth a look 21 comments
- Universal wrapping paper 42 comments
- Pairing typefaces in book design 25 comments
- Things Organized Neatly 17 comments
- Arcano Type 48 comments
- You don’t need a designer 51 comments
- Photos from New York 35 comments
- On unpaid internships 61 comments
- Be brilliant at the basics 24 comments
- Amazon Associates: helping designers look sharp 22 comments
2010
- iMac buying tips 54 comments
- Colour in branding 23 comments
- Quality vs quantity 27 comments
- Responding to spec work requests 164 comments
- Design blogs I subscribe to 40 comments
- The Win Without Pitching Manifesto 20 comments
- Showing sketches to clients 61 comments
- When small is good 23 comments
- A short course in audio branding 12 comments
- Chinese proverbs for the design profession 19 comments
- I wish I’d known that 54 comments
- Qualities to achieve in identity standards 3 comments
- Recommended UK commercial printers 41 comments
- Ten principles for good design 17 comments
- Noisy Decent Graphics 11 comments
- You don’t always need to show the product you’re selling. 34 comments
- Self-employment advice for designers 57 comments
- The WordPress plugins I use 45 comments
- How to convince your clients they need a brand, not just a logo 47 comments
- Best use of a shop window postcard space 18 comments
- House among trees 14 comments
- Forth Rail Bridge 12 comments
- Olympic pictograms through the ages 14 comments
- The myth of constructive criticism? 56 comments
- How I became a self-employed designer 75 comments
- How pro bono design improves your portfolio 60 comments
- Philip Bloom’s five days in Dubai 14 comments
- What graphic design schools are lacking 67 comments
- Hatch Show Print 19 comments
- Studio Culture 17 comments
2009
- The Known Universe 22 comments
- Don’t ask, don’t get. 33 comments
- The design responsibility 22 comments
- Prepress tips for graphic designers 40 comments
- The design pricing formula 62 comments
- AIGA President Debbie Millman on spec work 35 comments
- The origami of Sipho Mabona 20 comments
- Getting your foot in the door 60 comments
2008
- Guinness TV ads through the years 24 comments
- Affiliation in the design profession 19 comments
- It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be. 33 comments
- How 20 designers charge their clients #3 24 comments
- How 20 designers charge their clients #2 18 comments
- How 20 designers charge their clients 68 comments
- The Art of Looking Sideways 39 comments
- Edward de Bono 33 comments
- Fifteen graphic design interview tips 141 comments
- Decoding Design, by Maggie Macnab 22 comments
- Marks of Excellence by Per Mollerup 35 comments
2007
- Site restored, thank you! 201 comments
- Google’s Gmail security failure leaves my business sabotaged 619 comments
- 50 graphic design blogs 226 comments
- The hypocrisy of Unilever advertising? 37 comments
- How I reversed my Google ranking penalty 147 comments
- Spec work: bad for client, bad for designer 56 comments
- How ethical are your design practices? 42 comments
- Seven blog mistakes to avoid 165 comments
- Graphic Design as a Second Language 48 comments
- The vortex house of Dan Havel and Dean Ruck 22 comments
- The fine art of Octavio Ocampo 48 comments
- The anamorphosis of Julian Beever 25 comments
- Chase Jarvis photography in motion 16 comments
- Typography tips for graphic design students 57 comments
- American Psycho business card 24 comments
- Typography School 1 comment