Rian Hughes

The battle for your mind has already begun. At Jodrell Band in England Observatory in England, a radio telescope has detected a mysterious signal of extraterrestrial origin--a message that may be the first communication from an interstellar civilization. Has humanity made first contact? Is the signal itself a form of alien life? Could it be a threat? If so, how will the people of Earth respond? Jack Fenwick, artificial intelligence expert, believes that he and his associates at tech startup Intelligencia can interpret the message a find a way to step into the realm the signal encodes. What they find is a complex alien network beyond anything mankind has imagined. Drawing on Dada, punk and the modernist movements of the twentieth century, XX is assembled from redacted NASA reports, artwork, magazine articles, secret transcripts and a novel within a novel. Deconstructing layout and language in order to explore how idea propagate, acclaimed designer and artist Rian Hughes's debut novel presents a compelling vision of humanity's unique place in the universe, and a realistic depiction of what might happen in the wake of the biggest scientific discovery in human history. Propulsive and boldly designed, XX is a gripping, wildly imaginative, utterly original work.

Culture is your local consensus reality; your clothing, cuisine and hairstyle, the music you listen to, the films you see; your values, ideas, beliefs and prejudices. Culture, unlike race, is not quite an inevitability of birth, but ultimately, in its choice of statements, an intellectual position. Today culture has a powerful new vector: the internet. Ideas--from a YouTube video to a viral marketing phenomenon or a fundamentalist religion--are traveling further and faster, and changing the cultural landscape like never before. In a new electronic democracy of ideas, cultural power is devolving to the creative individual. Amid our symbol-drenched existences, we desperately need a way of decoding the messages that bombard us. Written and designed by author and artist Rian Hughes, and sporting such design features as a faux-leather cover, die-cuts and tip-ins, Cult-ure is the culmination of a decade's research into why and how we communicate. Revealing how ideas are transmitted through words, symbols and gestures, how such ideas gain cultural currency via the theory of the meme, this book provides a provocative exploration into media convergence within our digital age and an insider's guide into the changing nature of communications, perceptions and identities; it is the twenty-first century's answer to Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore's seminal graphic collaboration The Medium Is the Massage(which punned on McLuhan's famous motto "the medium is the message" to suggest the ways in which media directly tweaks our sensorium). Cult-ureis a guide to surviving the new media revolution. Rian Hughes is an award-winning graphic designer, typographer and author. He studied graphic design at the London College of Printing before working for iD magazine and a number of record sleeve design companies. In 1994 he founded his own studio, Device. Hughes is described by Roger Sabin of Eyemagazine as "one of the most successful and prolific British designer-illustrators of the past 20 years," and by writer David Quantick as "a luminescent pop culture demon."

Cult-ure

RIAN HUGHES COLLECTED COMICS

YESTERDAY'S TOMORROWS

Alex White

Ron Miriello

Margo Chase

So what does make a logo "really good"?

Really Good Logos, Explained focuses on the nuts and bolts of good design--the specific decisions designers make every day, which result in logos that are either thoughtful and purposeful, or logos, that fall short of the mark. Filled with succinct yet tremendously informative critiques of 500 logos designers and clients alike will get a rare glimpse inside the mind of top creatives, whose comments provide practical, effective advice for improving and creating your own designs.

Four internationally acclaimed designers were presented with this challenge of explaining, in five sentences or less, what makes each design effective or how the design could have been improved. The rules were simple: No jargon. No fluff. No pretentious designer-speak. The result is a collection of razor-sharp insights from some of today's top creative minds.

Really Good Logos, Explained examines the aesthetics of good logo design, and points out, with wonderfully specific detail, exactly what makes each design sing--what makes them "really good."
--back cover

Top Design Professionals Critique 500 Logos and Explain What Makes Them Work

Really Good Logos Explained

Grant Morrison

Branding Pop Culture - Logos and Design for Comics, Music, Toys and More

Logo-A-Gogo

London is built from concrete, steel and the creative urge. Old technology gives way to the new. Progress is inevitable - but is it more fragile than its inhabitants realise? A strange anomaly is uncovered in the new top-secret Crossrail extension being built under Buckingham Palace. It is an archeological puzzle, one that may transform our understanding of history - and the origins of London itself. And if our modern world falls, we may have to turn to the technology of the past in order to save our future.

The Black Locomotive

Jay Strongman

It's the long, hot summer of 1958, and on the surface, everything is swinging in Los Angeles, the City of Angels. But for struggling private eye Johnny Davis, behind the ring-a-ding-ding veneer of sharp suits, bottle blondes and Tiki bars lies something far more unsettling and sinister. What starts out as just another case quickly turns into a nightmare of mind-altering drugs, deception, lust and murder. And, in an era when the old certainties are being challenged, the biggest betrayal of all is yet to come as Johnny begins to question his own loyalties.

Ritual of the Savage

The battle for your mind has already begun. At Jodrell Band in England Observatory in England, a radio telescope has detected a mysterious signal of extraterrestrial origin—a message that may be the first communication from an interstellar civilization. Has humanity made first contact? Is the signal itself a form of alien life? Could it be a threat? If so, how will the people of Earth respond? Jack Fenwick, artificial intelligence expert, believes that he and his associates at tech startup Intelligencia can interpret the message and find a way to step into the realm the signal encodes. What they find is a complex alien network beyond anything mankind has imagined. Drawing on Dada, punk and the modernist movements of the twentieth century, XX is assembled from redacted NASA reports, artwork, magazine articles, secret transcripts and a novel within a novel. Deconstructing layout and language in order to explore how ideas propagate, acclaimed designer and artist Rian Hughes's debut novel presents a compelling vision of humanity's unique place in the universe, and a realistic depiction of what might happen in the wake of the biggest scientific discovery in human history. Propulsive and boldly designed, XX is a gripping, wildly imaginative, utterly original work.

Ten years. 500 fonts. 138 families. 34,000 characters. An unthinkably large number of kerning pairs. This is the unique and complete Device Fonts collection, 1995-2000. |Rian Hughes is brit-pop for typography at its best.| - signalrau.com |Chances are you've seen his work somewhere if you're at all plugged into pop culture. Dazzling, rife with style and energy.| - Buddy Jarjoura |[An] influential designer.| - The Guardian

Ten Year Itch

Device Fonts

Lifestyle Illustration of the 60s is a stunning survey of magazine artwork from the Swinging Sixties. It not only gives a fascinating insight into the extraordinary artistic talents of the illustrators featured, but also reveals the social aspirations of

Lifestyle Illustration of the 60s

When everyone has a number, everyone knows their place. Lower numbers are better, higher numbers are less important, and that’s just the way it is. But what if that number could change? You might try to buck the system and assert your individuality… or you might end up with a big fat zero.

I Am a Number

Carlton Books

David Roach

A stunning survey of magazine artwork for the 1960's. Giving insight into the extraoridinary talents of the illustrators featured as well as revealing the social aspirations of this era of political optimism and sexual freedom.

Lifestyle Illustration of the 1960s

Rian Hughes, aka Device, is a gifted and often-copied illustrator, with his trademark catalogue style of classic 50s and 60s Martini ads and a trained eye for vital details he creates consistent, self-contained settings. Personally responsible for every single detail--from Panton-inspired furniture to the smallest ashtray--Device also shows Hughes as a master of font design with a hand-picked selection on the enclosed CD.

"Art, Commercial"

Device

Rayguns and rockets! Spacesuited dames caught in the tentacles of evil insectoid aliens! Who could resist such wonders? Science fiction paperbacks exploded over the 1940s and '50s literary landscape with the force of an alien gamma bomb. Titles such as Rodent Mutation!, Beyond the Galaxy, Dawn of the Mutants and Mushroom Men from Mars appeared from fly-by-night publishers making the most of the end of postwar paper rationing. They were brash and seductive - for a shilling the future was yours. Despite the punishing deadlines and poor pay, the books' cover artists managed to produce artworks of multihued, brain-bending brilliance, and collected here is some of the best of their output during an unparalleled period of brash optimism and opportunism in book publishing. Beware the space fiend!

Vintage Science Fiction Book Cover Art

Rayguns and Rocketships

Alex W White

A collection of 500 great logos critiqued by a panel of internationally acclaimed designers In Really Good Logos Explained, some of today's top creative minds critique and appraise over 500 examples of truly exceptional logos, and explain what makes them work. The insight provided by these four outstanding editors is - like the logos themselves - succinct, specific and effective. Their comments provide a rare and insightful glimpse into the inner workings of excellent design, and offer a new understanding that is immeasurably useful to anyone working within the creative fields today.

Rian Hughes

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