Obey The Giant: Life in the Image World

by Rick Poynor
August, London, 2001.
224 pp., illus. Paper, $ 28.00.
ISBN 3-7643-6565-x.

Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent,
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent,
Belgium

stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be

Rick Poynor is a design writer and founder and former editor of Eye magazine. His previous publications include books about Brian Eno and architect Nigel Coates and an essay collection, 'Design without boundaries'. His biotope is the magazine column and his realm is design, magazines, advertising and television, all very metropolitan, cool and sophisticated. Existence starts and stops at the borders of the great cities: London, New York, Los Angeles, Sao Paulo perhaps, but certainly not the beuatiful city of Gent, where some of the century old facades are not covered by massive LED advertising boards and where some of the air is not filled with muzak but with the sounds of a real bronze carillon. Appropriately, Poynor chose 'Life in the Image World' as a subtitle for this book. It is indeed a collection of short chapters, six or seven pages on average, on phenomena from the 'ambivalent reality beneath the seductive surface of contemporary visual culture.' And the back cover continues: 'Ranging across design, advertising, photography, publishing and art, these incisive, entertaining essays challenge received wisdom, dismiss sacred cows and pose challenging questions about key issues and trends - from graphic memes and the poverty of 'cool' to culture jamming, designer sex and death, and the pleasure of imperfection.'

Dear, dear! And I have come to live in times when one man can do all that in seven pages a topic.

But, on second thoughts, haven't I seen the received wisdom Poynor challenges being defeated and defused before? Weren't the supposedly sacred cows desecrated and even butchered and boned, their meat ground and turned into hamburgers a long time ago? Was it in the sixties or the seventies? Didn't I hear those questions asked by high school students after a few beers or pops in the cafeteria of their sports grounds? Admittedly, Poynor ask those questions with style, he kills the cows single-handedly and with a smile, and he challenges wisdom with a flourish, but that is all there is to this book. It is a well designed exercise in stylish writing for stylish magazines, read by stylish yuppies wearing stylishly worn clothes and having cool drinks in some fashionable underground 'watering hole' (ugh, how I hate those Americanisms!). It is a very well designed recycling of ideas that have been around for ages, applied to some more recent examples. And the worst thing is, Poynor doesn't even seem to be aware of the fact that some of 'his' ideas are not original at all. Or, to put it in his own terms, that he has been infected by memes as well as the designers he is pointing his finger at.

Obey The Giant is a good read and anyone who has it on the coffee table will surely cut a fine figure, but I'm afraid the editors would have made a wiser choice if they hadn't printed it on acid-free paper.