Rick Poynor is a British writer on design, media and visual culture. He was the founding editor of Eye, which he edited from 1990 to 1997, and he has contributed a column since 1999. His articles, essays and reviews have also appeared in Blueprint, I.D., Metropolis, Domus, Creative Review, Icon, Frieze, Adbusters, Harvard Design Magazine, The Guardian, Financial Times, and many other publications. He has been a regular columnist for Print since 2000.

Poynor’s books include Typographica (2001); No More Rules: Graphic Design and Postmodernism (2003); and three collections of his essays, Design Without Boundaries (1998), Obey the Giant: Life in the Image World (2001) and Designing Pornotopia: Travels in Visual Culture (2006). His latest book is Jan van Toorn: Critical Practice (2008), a monograph about the radical Dutch designer.

In 1999, Poynor was a co-organiser of the “First Things First 2000” manifesto: the text was published in many countries and debated around the world. In 2003, he was a co-founder of Design Observer, which rapidly became a leading weblog for design discussion. He wrote for it regularly for two years and remains a contributor.  In 2004, he was curator of “Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties” at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, and editor of the Communicate book. The exhibition travelled to China and Switzerland.

Poynor is a former visiting professor at the Royal College of Art in London and has been a research fellow at the college since 2006. He lectures widely about design matters at public events, conferences and design schools in Europe, the United States, Australia and China.