The telephone as a tool for the graphic designer

This is one of the few old books that I've conscientiously sought out - and well worth the effort it was too.

As much about the business of being a graphic designer as the "art", when Garland wrote this classic in the mid-sixties certain things were, of course, massively different to how they are today, like most of the section on "the designer's tools" (it's all Rotrings and rolling parallel rulers. Actually, I'd bloody love one of them. Has anyone got one that they don't want?). The exception being the bit about the telephone (he emphasises the importance of clarity and accuracy).

Many things are just the same, like the bit about "useful redundancy"; where Garland suggests that there are times when the urge to simplify should be resisted. And the page on "establishing verticals in the image without a rising front"; the photographic technique of distorting the image within the plate camera to ensure verticals stay vertical. A technique I've never used but a result I've often obtained through the gift of Photoshop (I do like my verticals to be vertical and, for that matter, my horizontals to be horizontal).

And look! There's grumpy old Harry Beck; Garland dedicated the book to him. He doesn't look very happy about his map.
Incidentally, Ken's written a book about Harry's map. Mr Tufte recommends it. Buy your copy here.

Garland Update: By great coincidence, he's on the Thoughtful blog today.

Comments

[Paul Mison]

As well as Garland's book on Beck's work, I'd highly recommend the sequel-of-sorts, Maxwell Robert's Underground Maps After Beck. Beck's diagrams had a wide range of experimentation and styles (often imposed from without), but the post-Beck history is much less radical, more evolutionary, yet to me, no less interesting. After all, the diagram today is recognisably a descendant of Paul Garbutt's 1960s designs.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Underground-Maps-After-Maxwell-Roberts/dp/1854142860

Roberts also has a supporting website, which contains a piece demolishing Underground map myths which I found an interesting read.
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~mjr/underground/myths.html