Die Gestalten Verlag, 2007
ISBN: 978-3-89955-185-3
£30
Review by Adrian Shaughnesssy
I’m not the right person to review this book. I have to declare a bias. I’ve known the Non-Format duo – Norwegian Kjel Eckorn and Brit Jon Forss – for a number of years. I like their work and I like them. When I was invited to edit Varoom my first task was to ask them to design and art direct the magazine. When they published a slim book of their work in 2006 they commissioned me to write the introduction, and they make a flattering comment about me in the pages of this, their recently published monograph. So, I’m hardly a disinterested observer.It all sound very cosy – except it’s never cosy with Non-Format. They are opinionated and stubborn. They don’t suffer in silence: if they don’t like something you’ve done, they tell you. Working with them can be – challenging. But, to quote the words of a friend of mine who was once confronted by an aggressive dog – I like a dog that bites.
With this handsome book Non Format cement their status as the darlings of idealistic designers who see graphic design as art, and relish free flowing expressiveness above the traditional values of design – rationality, the suppression of personality and problem solving. As you flick through the rich stew of decorative and seductive work on display here, it’s easy to see why they are so popular with the romantic wing of visual culture.
True to form, Non Format reject the notion of themselves as self-gratifying, “me-me-me” designers. They see themselves in the grand tradition of problem solving professionals: if they propose a decorative solution, it is because that is what they believe to be the correct response to the brief. Whether they convince us of that in the pages of this book is a matter for individual conjecture. The fact that Non Format have a recognisable style – although it is a fluid and endlessly evolving style – seems to me to cancel out their desire to be regarded as pure problem solvers: problem solvers are anonymous, adopting the styles appropriate for each task.
The second thorny issue this book throws up is the question: are Non Format illustrators or graphic designers? My view is they are a throwback to Push Pin, the wonderfully inventive group formed by Seymour Chwast and Milton Glaser in New York in 1954, and which came to an exuberant climax in the 1960s and 1970s. Not only do Non Format make extensive use of the chunky art deco letterforms that Glaser pioneered four decades ago, but they share Push Pin’s easy accommodation of design and illustration under the same roof. In the book The Push Pin Graphic by Seymour Chwast, Steven Heller writes in the introduction: “Push Pin revived the once seamless intersection of art and typography – illustration and design – deemed passé by modernists who revered machine age tools and aesthetics.”
Except Non Format don’t reject the “machine age aesthetic.” They brilliantly meld decorative “drawn” elements with precise and coherent typography, as their tenure as art directors of the Wire attest. And when you factor in their art direction of photography, I’d say on balance that they are more graphic designers than they are illustrators. Yet it is the illustrative elements that catch the eye in Non Format’s work. And unusually amongst young design groups they commission a great many illustrators, as their numerous vivid and expressive record covers featured in this book, demonstrate.
Non Format are amongst the best half dozen young graphic designers to emerge in the new millennium. They are at the forefront of a new unnamed and spontaneous movement to reunite design and illustration. They have a distinctive voice, and a body of elegant, seductive, and thoughtful work that makes buying this book an enriching experience. But as I said, don’t listen to me. I’m biased.
