Soon: Brands of Tomorrow
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Graphic Design
Soon: Brands of Tomorrow Details
About the Author Lewis Blackwell is International Creative Director at Getty Images. Formerly publisher and editor of Creative Review, he is the author of numerous critically acclaimed books. Chris Ashworth has held senior creative positions at MTV Europe and Ray Gun magazine, as well as formed the studios, Substance and Still. He is currently Design Director of gettyone design studio, a division of Getty Images in London, England. Read more
Reviews
I feel the need to counterpoint the solitary and dated reviews on both Amazon listings for this title. As a librarian and futurist, in the realm of graphic design I am especially interested in postmodern and early-web era graphic design from the 1990s. The period between 1993 to 2001 is a time capsule for a rapid evolution of our own concept of what the future was and could be. Taken in that light, this book is an excellent collection and showcase and a bargain at its price. From the heat-sensitive cover to the (what would now be called) design fiction of DNA-sensing products, SOON fills a niche on my shelf of graphic design books from this era, when the future was unwritten and its overwhelming complexity could still be glimpsed and rendered in decaying fonts and imagery in crisis. Particularly given the direction the future is headed, to have some case studies in the earliest graphic versions of what the future might be like is a potent reminder that the future is always unwritten. Notably, although apparently published in February 2002, all the dated text (for instance at the ends of introductory bits) I can find in the text place its writing as “August 2001” which, as we now realize, marked a cliff edge for the western world’s concept of itself and the scope of its future possibilities. Even the most jaded and ironic of postmodern meta-whimsies now seems like subtle and nuanced and thoughtful design in the blunt, brutal, post-fact, alt-truth age that’s come to be since September 2001. If in reading this review you are pretty sure this book may be for you, then it probably is.