Note: I am currently hustling to wrap up work on a book about the new minimalist, brutalist and modernist typographies. I have a few entries on designers left to write and since I find blogging less intimidating than Microsoft Word I will be writing these last entries on jnamdevhardisty.com. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Thanks, Namdev
All images courtesy Daniel Eatock except “Six Years” book cover.
Cover of “Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object: 1966-1972” by Lucy Lippard (designer unknown)
Daniel Eatock regularly refers to Lucy Lippard’s book on conceptual and minimal art Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object (Praeger, 1973) as his favorite book. I recall seeing him lecture at the Walker Art Center where he showed a slide of it’s cover and talked about discovering conceptual art in college and the huge influence it had on him. I was struck by a secondary factor—the cover of the book. Six Years has a solid red cover with white sans serif type that fills the whole surface. The cover actually reads “Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972: a cross-reference book of information on some esthetic boundaries: consisting of a bibliography into which are inserted a fragmented text, art works, documents, interviews, and symposia, arranged chronologically and focused on so-called conceptual or information or idea art with mentions of such vaguely designated areas as minimal, anti-form, systems, earth, or process art, occurring now in the Americas, Europe, England, Australia, and Asia (with occasional political overtones), edited and annotated by Lucy R. Lippard”.
I think it’s telling that Eatock’s favorite book would not just be a seminal text but be a book whose very cover embodies the ideas within. The cover of Six Years begins with an idea—to communicate explicitly what is within the book in the most direct manner possible. To say that there are parallels with Daniel Eatock’s work is an understatement.
From the series “Considered Accidents” 2000–2009
People don’t usually talk about Daniel Eatock’s typography because typography is not the point. The ideas that form Eatock’s work have been hugely influential since his now defunct Foundation33 website first showcased his unique approach to design. There are scores of students whose websites document some phenomena inspired by an Eatock project like the “Considered Accidents”, a series of photographs documenting “complementary” dents on Fiat cars. Indeed, he invites people to contribute to some of the on-going projects on eatock.com. But his influence extends beyond the conceptual—the current interest in Swiss Typography is due in no small part to the formal qualities of Eatock’s most iconic design work. In the late 90’s, he produced pieces like the “Utilitarian Poster”, a generic template with pre-formatted spaces to allow anyone to create a poster for an event without needing to know how to design. Besides fulfilling some of the practical concerns of late Swiss Typography—that of function, systems and standards—it is also a visual example of classic Swiss Typography (albeit with a sense of humor). Sans serif type, a clear and organized grid, and a hierarchy system based off the rational ordering of information. There is nothing flashy about Eatock’s design, it only does what it needs to. The piece even contains the philosophy that governs his work—“Say YES to fun & function & NO to seductive imagery & color”, a philosophy that is clearly at work.
“Utilitarian Poster” 1998
“Million Edition” postcard, 2002
In 2002, he created “the world’s largest signed and numbered limited edition artwork”, a million edition postcard. This and the “Utilitarian Greeting Cards” (2003) are even more cemented in the framework of Swiss Typography right down to all lower-case Akzidenz Grotesk of the million edition. His use of a dogmatic Swiss style was never about aesthetics but to get past aesthetics. Many would argue (and rightfully so) that any choice of typeface or color or composition is an act that colors the reading of a text. Eatock’s use of a Josef Müller-Brockmann-like approach isn’t inherently neutral or “un-designed” because its white, black and red and set in sans serif type. But, it is a collection of strategies that indicate that his primary goal is for you to read the text, not debate or appreciate the typography or to look for a metaphor in the letter-spacing. He takes the development of late-Swiss Typography stripped down to its barest essentials as a set of circumstances that say “read me”. But, over the last five years of Helvetica—The Movie and daily blog posts dedicated to posters about Akzidenz Grotesk, Eatock’s “un-designed” works no longer read as pure concept and instead run the risk of being one more cool thing to blog about.
Spread from “Imprint” 2008
“Price Label Gift Wrap” 2003
Its for this very reason, I believe, that Eatock has steadily moved away from this “look”. A few years ago he produced a t-shirt that read “Fuck Graphic Design”. Set in a “default” underlined italic Courier it clearly sums up his ideas about being concerned with form. Recent graphic design work like his Imprint monograph has used a less recognizable sans type with virtually no variance in size and weight, clearly downplaying the visual aspect of the work. Throughout his career, Eatock has been dedicated to ideas that “allow concepts to determine form”* and it seems as though his further stripping away of “superfluous”* elements is bringing his graphic design ever more in line with the sculptures, lists and photographs that make up so much of his work.
