Eye Magazine

David King

Links

davidkingdesigner.com

Recent articles about David King

Exposing the menaceIssue 95, Winter 2018
Feature
David King’s posters integrated type and image with power and uncompromising political commitment.…
Scissor actionIssue 91, Spring 2016
Review

	John Heartfield: Laughter is a Devastating Weapon (David King and Ernst…
      
The retoucher’s accidental artIssue 88, Summer 2014
Feature

	The reworked press photos now being discarded are unique objects and compellingly strange images.…
Club-runner graphicsIssue 5, Winter 1991
Review

	In the mid to late 1980s we would be out every night at some club or other…
      
Union of Soviet socialist imagesIssue 71, Spring 2009
Review

	Cover design for Red Star Over Russia (Tate).

	In 1970 David King was in…
      
StrikethroughIssue 69, Autumn 2008
Feature
The act of erasure, or striking out, can add new, unintended meanings to the images and information…
One week in picturesIssue 73, Autumn 2009
Feature

	Now we are deluged with more images than ever, we have lost faith in the power of the photo to…
Right and wrong ways to borrowIssue 10, Autumn 1993
Review

	Borrowed Design analyses the field of graphic design as a history of credits and…
      
Reputations: David KingIssue 48, Summer 2003
Feature

	‘You develop a visual style as you would a handwriting one … The content is what you concentrate…

Recent blog posts by David King

From analogue to activism

11 November 2020

magCulture Live goes digital next week, for a two-day conference that celebrates the creative and social powers of magazines

Dividing its focus between ‘activism’ and ‘analogue’, magCulture 2020 shows that even in difficult, disruptive times, printed magazines keep their fingers on the pulse of the moment, writes Alex J. Todd.

David King: Ranged Left!

1 September 2020

Eye’s next Type Tuesday, ‘David King: Ranged Left!’ will celebrate the life and work of David King (1943-2016)

Please join us for the next Type Tuesday at 6pm (British Summer Time) on 8 Sept 2020. This online event marks the publication of Rick Poynor’s new book David King: Designer, Activist, Visual Historian (Yale), designed by Eye’s Simon Esterson.

David King: Books of blood and laughter

25 May 2016

Rick Poynor meets David King, a genuine designer-author driven by an overriding need to lock horns with meaningful subject matter

Stepping across the threshold of David King’s North London house is like plunging into a history lesson, wrote Rick Poynor in 1998. King has devoted 30 years to amassing what may be the world’s largest private collection of photographs, books and magazines documenting the history of Russia and the Soviet Union.

David King, 1943-2016

22 May 2016

‘It was always my idea to get across complex or difficult subjects to a wider audience. That’s what visual people like us can do.’

British designer, author and archivist David King died on 11 May 2016.

Getting away with murder

2 February 2012

Good, bad and ugly cover ‘tributes’: a new spin on the death of music design.

The album cover may have lost its mojo as far as contemporary culture is concerned, but its classic era (from Blue Note to 4AD, say) maintains a powerful grip on the imaginations of music-loving designers, writes John L. Walters.

Xerox factor

25 August 2010

The short-lived graphic energy of punk fanzines and posters

In ‘Scribble and strum’, just published in Eye 76, Andrew Losowsky took us through the design of a selection of notable music magazines, past and present.

Jan van Toorn at the Mermaid

29 March 2009

‘Collecting images is not enough. How democratic is it?’

In a very polite, and very Dutch way, writes Simon Esterson, Jan van Toorn used the latest D&AD lecture to remind the audience at London’s Mermaid Theatre about graphic design’s social possibilities. He told us we should break out of our design stereotypes because, ‘it’s boring to produce neat things’.