Mark Porter

On friday, SND Italia moved to Rome for a conference in — weirdly — a building where I lived in the 1990s when I was working on Colors magazine. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m in Italy for the first SND conference of the new Italian chapter. It was Milan today, and I’ve just got the train to Rome for a meeting at Internazionale tomorrow, and another day of talks (same speakers) in Rome on Friday. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently visited Ljubjana to be a jury member for the 4th Slovenian Biennale of Visual Communication, and give a talk. It was a fascinating, if exhausting, few days. For a small country (2m inhabitants — London alone has 7.5m) theres a thriving design scene, and we saw some great work. Ljubjana also has some terrific restaurants (and we had the good fortune to be there during the truffle season), so it was a rewarding trip in many ways.

While I was there, I gave a few interviews, one of which you can find here. I can’t understand a word of it, but if anyone reads Slovenian, please let me know if I said anything stupid.

I’ve just got back from Rome, where I spent the last few days launching a new project — a redesign of a weekly news magazine called Internazionale. Read the rest of this entry »

An ex-Guardian designer who’s currently passing through Vietnam on a world tour sent me this pic today; that titlepiece looks strangely familiar.

I’m building up quite a collection of these now, if anyone sees any more please sent them to me!

I was one of two foreign judges at the Russian Newspaper Design Competition in Moscow at the weekend. Read the rest of this entry »

I was in Madrid yesterday speaking at a conference on newspaper design. I was asked to talk almost entirely about print, which hasn’t happened for a while, but the panel discussion at the end went the way these things usually go nowadays, much soul-searching about newspapers in crisis, journalism in the digital world etc. No conclusions were reached. Read the rest of this entry »

Just got back from a couple of beautifully sunny days at the Crash news design seminar in Copenhagen. Its a really lovable city with a great design culture. I was talking at Arne Jacobsen’s Radisson SAS Royal Hotel, opened in 1960. Jacobsen designed everything down to the door handles; its been made over since then but the lobby is still pretty authentic, and its a great Danish design experience — lots of Egg and Swan chairs, Poul Henningsen lighting, and Vola taps. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m currently preparing a talk for the Crash 2008 news design seminar in Copenhagen later in the month, and I’m making a real effort to collect and synthesise my thoughts about what editorial design means in the digital world. These ideas have been evolving over the last year or so, and are constantly developing as I read and talk to some of the great designers around the world I’m lucky enough to meet and spend time with. Read the rest of this entry »

Its been a mind-expanding few days in New York. A taste of the luxury end of the design world catching up with Luke Hayman at Pentagram’s amazing studio overlooking Madison Square – the building is an old bank (the vaults are still in the basement) which seems strangely appropriate. I also did a talk for the design team at wsj.com at the behest of Laura Holder, while Rupert was on the floor looking at pages from their impending site redesign. Read the rest of this entry »