David King
Designer, Activist, Visual Historian
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Yale University Press
Published:8th Sep '20
Should be back in stock very soon
Exploring an unjustly overlooked figure in 20th-century British visual culture
This book offers a comprehensive overview to the work and legacy of David King (1943–2016), whose fascinating career bridged journalism, graphic design, photography, and collecting. King launched his career at Britain’s Sunday Times Magazine in the 1960s, starting as a designer and later branching out into image-led journalism. He developed a particular interest in revolutionary Russia and began amassing a collection of graphic art and photographs—ultimately accumulating around 250,000 images that he shared with news outlets. Throughout his life, King blended political activism with his graphic design work, creating anti-Apartheid and anti-Nazi posters, covers for books on Communist history, album artwork for The Who and Jimi Hendrix, catalogues on Russian art and society for the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, and typographic covers for the left-wing magazine City Limits. This well-researched and finely illustrated publication ties together King’s accomplishments as a visual historian, artist, journalist, and activist.
“[A] vital addition to the King collection, assembling for the first time work from across his fields. It is a link, through the artist and archivist, to a history that continues to inspire today.”—Yuri Prasad, Socialist Worker [Newspaper]
“Rick Poynor neatly ties together King’s journey from designer to activist to archivist while sharing plenty of his work. It’s a unique and remarkable story, and its physical appearance in terms of design and production is the perfect homage to King.”—Jeremy Leslie, MagCulture
“This gorgeous collection of his life’s work with explanatory text is a great introduction and a fitting legacy.”—Barry Healy, Green Left
“Rick Poynor’s beautifully-produced monograph wonderfully reflects King’s work and is an evocative transport to the days when the off-set litho appeared to be history’s locomotive.”—Tim Dawson, National Union of Journalists Newsletter
“It is worth following the lead of Rick Poynor in his new book...and revisiting the work of this British designer, photojournalist and all-round graphics genius...Poynor’s David King lives up to its subject’s magnificent achievement.”—James Woudhuysen, Spiked
"A rich and comprehensive look at one of our finest visual communicators and it deserves to be in the library of every design school."—Mark Noad, Forum 41
“An enthralling visual document of King’s work...The book gives access to a wealth of material I had never seen, lovingly curated and meticulously reproduced.”—Marker Porter, Eye
"A remarkable, stunning, and essential book, Rick Poynor’s rich volume was a revelation for me, as I imagine it will be for many readers."—Prem Krishnamurthy, curator, designer and director of Wkshps
“Rick Poynor explores the expansive nature of David King’s career through an appropriate combination of verbal and visual intelligence. His study is well researched, collaborative and cross-disciplinary.”—Tim Marlow, director of the Design Museum, London
“This is a long-needed study of a unique editorial voice, mapping David King’s development from passionate young designer to authoritative archivist.” Jeremy Leslie, founder of magCulture
"David King’s design is shocking, inspiring, original and always beautiful: a great example in these turbulent times of how to create work you believe in for subjects you care about."—Jonathan Barnbrook, designer and founder of Barnbrook
ISBN: 9780300250107
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
240 pages