Rob Harland's welcome, original and ultimately provocative book considerably widens the range of objects deemed to be urban/graphic design and provides some sophisticated analytical and critical tools with which to explain those objects. If they have any sense, it will be welcomed and used by graphic/urban designers, design theorists, urban and cultural geographers, as well as town and city planners. ... Read more
Malcolm Barnard, senior lecturer in visual culture at Loughborough University, UK
Robert Harland has done nothing less than redefine graphic design as a spatial practice. He shows how an intricate text of words and images mirrors the flux of people and capital through urban space. Graphic design touches nearly every transaction in the life of a city.
Ellen Lupton, Senior Curator at the Smithsonian Design Museum and Director of the MFA Graphic Design Program at Maryland Institute College of Art, USA
Graphic Design in Urban Environments shines light into the little-explored areas between architecture, urban design and graphic design. The light reveals tantalising new ways to frame discussions of how cities function, and are designed, conceived and experienced. Its audience is as broad as the subject areas it covers - urban geography, architecture, urban design, graphic design, and it offers a critical lens for reconsidering ideas of legibility and imageability in the built environment. Most interestingly, Graphic Design in Urban Environments challenges prevailing conceptions about how we experience, understand and read cities, architecture and places. The discourse has been enlivened by this engaging book.
Neil Stacey, Senior Lecturer in Architecture at Leicester School of Architecture, UK
The main discussions proposed by Harland... are original and timely. He very convincingly explains how graphic and communication design in the urban environment have been underrepresented or even ignored in graphic design historiography and in academic and educational definitions of the field, particularly in the UK. He also effectively demonstrates the difficulties faced by urban theorists who tried to describe the presence and relevance of graphic design artefacts in the public sphere, and the gaps and shortcomings of their approach. The careful descriptions and analysis presented in the book offer a framework for thinking about urban graphic interventions in multiple scales and settings. The result is a relevant contribution to design research, and should stimulate further and welcome debates on the interface between graphic design, communication, and urban design.
The Design Journal
Graphic Design in Urban Environments should be useful to anyone interested in innovative design theory and practice.
S. Skaggs, University of Louisville
CHOICE
Show Less