BOOK REVIEW
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Designer Portraits
By Melchior Imboden, published by Hesign, Berlin (DE) / Shanghai (CN) (September 2007), available from Verlag Niggli, Sulgen (CH); 532 pages, 30 x 20 x 4 cm, 128 full page bw photos and 256 full page color reproductions; softcover; ISBN 978-3-9810544-8-4; in english; CHF 79 (about US$ 70) Portraits of 128 graphic designers made by the photographer and graphic designer Melchior Imboden, together with 2 works (mostly posters), and a short biography of each designer. |
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Melk Imboden, born 1956 in Switzerland, started out as graphic designer, but his passion for travel and photography soon became an
important part of his life.
In 1992, he published a book of portraits of people from his neighbourhood "Nidwaldner Gesichter", followed by "Jazz Portraits" in 1999.
I met him around 1993 at the Chaumont poster festival, and remember well how Niklaus Troxler encouraged him to take more pictures of poster
designers, so we know how they look like. I think I have never seen Melk without his camera, so he hardly needed Troxler's push, however,
this was the starting point of my own interest in designer portraits. I have learned a lot from Melk, both by asking how he does it,
and by watching him work. His most important advice was "Do your own thing", and when I wanted to know if I should pose my subjects or let them
choose their own position and expression, he was equally precise and profound: "Do both". Melk always shoots his portraits where he meets the people,
on the street, in a bar, at an exhibition, but carefully sets them up, so background and lighting and focus are perfect. All his portrait work is on
black and white film.
Melk Imboden is also a very successfull poster designer who is often invited, as prize winner or jury member, to international meetings of graphic designers, so over the years, Imboden's collection of designer portraits grew to over 500. After showing some of them in exhibitions in Lucerne in 2002 and Berlin in 2005, he has now published about 130 of them together with two posters and a short biography from each designer. |
Here are some samples of the portrait and biography pages:
 Vladimir Chaika |
 Jianping He |
 Pierre Mendell |
and some samples of the poster pages:
 Georg Staehelin |
 Tadanori Yokoo |
 Mervin Kurlansky |
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The book launch on September 7, 2007, was accompanied by an exhibition
Designer Portraits at the Design Center D4 in Lucerne, Switzerland, for which
two of Prof. Imboden's students, Jeff and Andrew Goldstein, made the catalogue and the exhibition poster:
Here are some of my pictures of the guests at the opening party, most of the designers are featured in the book:
home more reviews new publications page created on December 31, 2007 / this section is part of Rene Wanner's Poster Page / |
