If you’ve ever wanted to peer into the creative process of that dirty art known as graphic design then you need to look at Layer Tennis.

It’s an invention of Coudal Partners. The first round occurred last Friday Sep 28th. Layer Tennis is played by two graphic designers.

One gets to serve an original design as the masthead at the top of this page. Once that goes up, the other designer has 15 minutes to respond with another design for the masthead. This continues for 10 rounds. The public gets to vote on the winner.

You can really follow the thought processes of each designer as they respond to each other’s design. The language is visual with some intrusions of text. I am staggered by the many different ways a designer can respond to another. It is a wit of a a definitively non-verbal type.