The new edition of Forgotten Graphics has landed.
This issue focuses on educational print—drawing together graphic work from the mid-century through to the 80s, a period where complex ideas were distilled into bold diagrams, visual systems and striking conceptual imagery.
Featuring material from Doubleday Anchor Press, Open University, MIT Press, Fontana Books and more, it’s a snapshot of a time when print did the heavy lifting—making information clear, memorable and, at its best, genuinely engaging.
36 pages, full colour. Initial run of 100.
A small reminder of why print is still king.
Link In Bio
#ForgottenGraphics #PrintCulture #GraphicDesignArchive #EditorialDesign #DesignHistory
Teaching as a Subversive Activity Penguin Education, 1969 Cover illustration by Jim Russell
A wonderful visual pun that perfectly captures the spirit of the book—juxtaposing the humble apple (long associated with teachers) with a stick of dynamite.
It’s a simple, punchy idea that reframes education as something disruptive rather than passive—less about quiet consumption, more about challenging, questioning and reshaping the world around you.
#ForgottenGraphics #PenguinBooks #BookCoverDesign #GraphicDesignHistory #VisualPun
Fantastic Alphabets Dover Publications, 1976 Jean Larcher
This brilliant Dover publication by French typographer Jean Larcher presents 24 complete alphabets, each built around a single idea—letters formed from bubbles, zips, grass, neon and optical patterns—transforming type into something playful, systematic and visually striking.
Larcher approaches letterforms as modular visual systems rather than just carriers of language, pushing them into pattern, illusion and abstraction. A great example of how far typography can be stretched when concept leads the form.
#ForgottenGraphics #TypographyDesign #AlphabetDesign #OpArt #PrintCulture
Mathematics in Schools
Various Issues from the 70s and 80s
Design: Colin Barker
Publisher:The Mathematical Association
Currently working on the long-overdue next edition of Forgotten Graphics, I happened to stumble across an almost complete collection of Mathematics in School.
I was immediately struck by how bold the covers are—unexpected for a publication rooted in what could easily be seen as a dry, academic subject.
There’s very little information online about the designer, Colin Barker, but it’s clear he poured real thought and energy into these covers—creating work that is both conceptually sharp and visually arresting.
#ForgottenGraphics #GraphicDesignArchive #EditorialDesign #PrintCulture #DesignHistory
Mathematics in Schools
Various Issues from the 70s and 80s
Design: Colin Barker
Publisher:The Mathematical Association
Currently working on the long-overdue next edition of Forgotten Graphics, I happened to stumble across an almost complete collection of Mathematics in School.
I was immediately struck by how bold the covers are—unexpected for a publication rooted in what could easily be seen as a dry, academic subject.
There’s very little information online about the designer, Colin Barker, but it’s clear he poured real thought and energy into these covers—creating work that is both conceptually sharp and visually arresting.
#ForgottenGraphics #GraphicDesignArchive #EditorialDesign #PrintCulture #DesignHistory
Mathematics in Schools
Various Issues from the 70s and 80s
Design: Colin Barker
Publisher:The Mathematical Association
Currently working on the long-overdue next edition of Forgotten Graphics, I happened to stumble across an almost complete collection of Mathematics in School.
I was immediately struck by how bold the covers are—unexpected for a publication rooted in what could easily be seen as a dry, academic subject.
There’s very little information online about the designer, Colin Barker, but it’s clear he poured real thought and energy into these covers—creating work that is both conceptually sharp and visually arresting.
#ForgottenGraphics #GraphicDesignArchive #EditorialDesign #PrintCulture #DesignHistory
Dynamic Graphics logo.
Designer and year unknown
The more I look at this, the more I like it.
On the surface it’s just a chunky little dg — no flourish, no clever negative space trick, no attempt to be fashionable. But sit with it for a minute and you realise how well it’s built. Same stroke weight throughout. Hard 90° turns. A solid base line holding it steady.
It feels engineered rather than drawn.
There’s something deceptively simple about marks like this. They don’t shout, they don’t perform. They just exist. Reproducible, photocopiable, scalable — built to survive being stamped across a thousand catalogues and reduced on a cheap copier without losing their shape.
A proper working logo for a working graphics service.
No drama. No ego. Just geometry doing its job.
#forgottengraphics #logodesign #graphicdesign #identitydesign #1980sdesign
I was doing some client work earlier this year that leaned into the aesthetics of original rave flyers — which were made, often by hand, with clip art, Letraset, a scalpel and a photocopier. So I set out to buy some clip art from the late 80s, and found this epic, almost A2-sized book from Dynamic Graphics.
Dynamic Graphics Inc. Clipper (c. 1986–87)
Before Adobe. Before stock libraries. Before dragging and dropping.
Clipper was a commercial art subscription service — a camera-ready toolkit for designers working in the paste-up era. Printed large and packed with line art, symbols, diagrams, ornaments and full illustrations, all intended to be literally cut out and stuck down onto mechanical artwork.
This wasn’t “clip art” in the lazy digital sense we think of now. It was a working designer’s resource. Anonymous, work-for-hire illustration made to be used, reconfigured and given a second life.
Scalpel. Spray mount. Rubylith. Deadline.
An artefact from that in-between moment — when design was still physically assembled, but mass-produced imagery was becoming widely accessible.
#forgottengraphics #clipart #predigital #pasteup #1980sdesign
Pelican Books
Launched in 1937 as Penguin’s non-fiction imprint, Pelican was built on a radical idea — serious thinking, properly edited and properly designed, made affordable for everyone.
From Edward Young’s early colour systems and branding discipline, through Jan Tschichold’s typographic rigour, to Germano Facetti’s modernist art direction in the 60s, Pelican wasn’t just publishing ideas — it was designing knowledge. Clean grids, bold geometry, photography, abstraction — all wrapped around subjects that shaped post-war Britain.
These weren’t luxury objects. They were 3/6 paperbacks bought in railway stations and high street bookshops. Portable education. Modernism for the masses.
I’ve pulled together a stack from my archive and over the coming weeks I’ll share a few personal favourites in more detail.
#forgottengraphics #vintagegraphics #vintagedesign #penguinbooks pelicanbooks #printculture
For Adults Only
Vitadisc Records, 1955
“A musical extravaganza of night life in Jamaica”
A wonderful mid-century Calypso LP from Vitadisc, complete with stage curtains, playful type and that brilliant slightly risqué theatrical framing.
Calypso, born in Trinidad and carried across the Caribbean, has always been about storytelling — satire, politics, gossip, rhythm. By the mid-50s it was travelling well beyond the islands, helped along by the growing fascination with steel pan (or steel drum), itself a relatively young (and revolutionary) instrument at the time, forged from oil drums and ingenuity in the 1930s and 40s in the face of British Colonial censorship of previous forms of music that brought communities together in celebration of heritage, culture and language.
What really elevates this copy though are the hand-typed lyric sheets tucked inside — uneven baselines, over-inked letters, that faint emboss where the keys struck the paper. Before lyric inserts were slick offset prints, someone sat at a typewriter and made these.
#forgottengraphics #graphicdesign #vintagegraphics #vintagedesign #ephemera #calypso #steelpan
Hiragana Learning Tiles
Japan, date unknown
Plastic educational tiles used to help children learn hiragana — Japan’s phonetic alphabet. Unlike the more common wooden sets, these feel closer to oversized Lego or Duplo bricks, chunky and built to last.
Each tile pairs a character with a simple object or animal illustration — apple, frog, lion, kettle — rendered in bold primary colours with thick black outlines. What I particularly love is the slightly misregistered screen printing; reds drifting off their edge, yellow halos peeking out where they shouldn’t. Tiny production imperfections that make each piece feel human.
There’s something reassuring about educational graphics from this era — clear, optimistic, un-ironic. Designed to teach, but doing so with a quiet confidence in colour and form.
Functional objects, but also a perfect little archive of mid-century instructional design.
#forgottengraphics #graphicdesign #vintagegraphics #hiragana #educationdesign
The International Sound Effects Library - Humans
Chesterpress Ltd, 1983
Design and Artwork LGSW
Bought last week purely for the chaotic and over designed cover, which I absolutely love. The recordings are great too, mind blowing to consider that the babies and children recorded are now well into their 40s.
The sleeve is remarkable, they have thrown everything at that type, and I love the graphic icons and the maximalist layout. However it’s the centre sticker on the record itself that I fell in love with the most, the type and layout just screams science fiction, maybe something a bit Soylent Green about seeing humans written that way!
#forgottengraphics #graphicdesign #vintagegraphics #vintagedesign #ephemera
