In this issue, we visually confront you with a lot of bad taste and kitsch. A roaring dinosaur, staged by Luciano Paccagnella in the worst airbrush technique – with this calculated provocation, the Memphis group advertised their first exhibition in 1981. And how is "good design" doing today? Some say the question is obsolete – anything goes. But there is a rule of thumb: If tastelessness is elevated to a design principle in graphic design, the results are often irritating and pointed. If product design glitters and flaunts, then marketing has probably won once again. In our cover story, Annette Tietenberg describes how the perception of good and bad design has changed over the last hundred years and what efforts have been made in Germany to improve mass taste.

September/ October 2010, form Verlag, 114 pages, 23 × 29.8 cm, softcover, German/ English edition