I’ve often thought that architecture is almost invisible to the layperson because it’s all around us and can be taken for granted. However, graphic design may top that, as we are inundated with imagery from as small as a postage stamp to as overwhelming as a billboard. Like a great architect whose building will stop you in your tracks, it takes a super-talented graphic artist to do the same. Frazier is a great example, with his bold, evocative, clever, and often humorous designs and illustrations. The first-person narratives give a look into Frazier’s history and process—the journey from free-handing a Mercator projection of the earth in third grade to establishing his San Francisco-based design firm to shuttering it in favor of becoming a freelance illustrator. His main “character” is Joe Human—a cross between Magritte’s bowler-hatted dandy and a large-suited David Byrne. It’s fascinating to see him represent a huge range of moods, products, and events; an observation only afforded in a compilation such as this. He is rendered with both minimalism and monumentality, with subtle movements that communicate so much. As Frazier notes: “I want to leave just enough signals so that the viewer can find a story that means something to them.” Also included in the text are “colleague remarks” from the upper echelons of the graphic arts world, including designers Ivan Chermayeff, Kit Hinrichs, and Michael Schwab, along with critic and prolific design writer Steven Heller.
