Graphic Design Trivia
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99 free Graphic Design trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
42 free Graphic design trivia questions with answers. Graphic design hides in plain sight on every logo, poster and screen you look at, and this quiz covers the people and ideas behind it. It runs from Gutenberg and the Bauhaus to the Swiss grid: Helvetica's real name, Futura's geometry, Times New Roman's newspaper, Gill Sans and the London Underground, Garamond, Trajan on film posters, Comic Sans and Microsoft Bob, kerning, serifs, CMYK and lorem ipsum. Then the designers and their marks: Paul Rand's striped IBM, Saul Bass's title sequences and the AT&T globe, Milton Glaser's taxi-cab I Love NY, Massimo Vignelli's subway map, Carolyn Davidson's $35 Swoosh, Lindon Leader's FedEx arrow, Frank Robinson's Spencerian Coca-Cola, Susan Kare's Mac icons, Peter Saville's Factory sleeves, Neville Brody, David Carson, Shepard Fairey's Hope poster, Chermayeff & Geismar, Adrian Frutiger and Jan Tschichold. It finishes with the tools: Bezier curves from Renault, PostScript, PageMaker and the birth of desktop publishing, Photoshop's Knoll brothers, and Pantone's Color of the Year. Easy questions ask what CMYK stands for and who designed the Swoosh. Medium ones cover typefaces and famous logos. Hard ones want the concert hall behind Muller-Brockmann's posters, the car company behind Bezier curves, the photographer behind the Hope poster and the town where Pantone is based. Every answer has been checked against reference articles on design history, typefaces and designers, and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Under what name was the typeface Helvetica originally released?
Neue Haas Grotesk
Neue Haas Grotesk was drawn by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas Type Foundry in Münchenstein; parent company Stempel renamed it Helvetica to sell it in Germany and abroad.
Q 02The name 'Helvetica' is Latin for what?
Swiss
Swiss is what the Latin adjective Helvetica means; the first proposal was Helvetia, the Latin name for Switzerland, but Eduard Hoffmann objected that a sewing machine maker and an insurer already used it.
Q 03Which is a hallmark of the International Typographic Style of the 1950s?
Asymmetric layouts on a grid with flush-left text
Asymmetric layouts on a grid with flush-left text marked the style taught by Armin Hofmann and Emil Ruder; its designers chose photographs over illustration because they wanted to present information objectively.
Q 04Futura, the geometric sans-serif released in 1927, was designed by whom?
Paul Renner
Paul Renner began sketching Futura in 1924 for the Bauer foundry, building it from near-perfect circles, triangles and squares; it became tied to the Bauhaus, though he never belonged to the school.
Q 05Stanley Morison's serif typeface, first printed in a newspaper in October 1932, took its name from which paper?
The Times of London
The Times of London commissioned Times New Roman after Stanley Morison of Monotype criticised its printing; Victor Lardent, a lettering artist in the paper's advertising department, drew it under his direction.
Q 06Gill Sans grew out of Edward Johnston's corporate typeface for which organisation?
London Underground
London Underground commissioned Edward Johnston's lettering; Eric Gill, who had studied lettering under Johnston and worked on that design, later reworked its ideas into Gill Sans for Stanley Morison at Monotype.
Q 07Which serif typeface family is named after a 16th-century Parisian punchcutter?
Garamond
Garamond honours Claude Garamond, who died in Paris in 1561, yet several famous revivals sold under his name were really copied from types cut in the next century by Jean Jannon.
Q 08Carol Twombly's 1989 typeface, modelled on classical capital letters, is based on the inscription on what?
Trajan's Column in Rome
Trajan's Column in Rome was erected in AD 113; Carol Twombly drew her typeface Trajan from a copy of a full-size rubbing of the inscription on its base, which her team hung on a hallway wall.
Q 09Vincent Connare designed Comic Sans in 1994 for which software product, then missed the deadline?
Microsoft Bob
Microsoft Bob's cartoon dog Rover spoke in speech bubbles set in a formal serif; Connare drew a replacement modelled on comics such as The Dark Knight Returns, but it missed Bob's release and shipped with Windows 95 Plus! instead.
Q 10In typography, what does 'kerning' adjust?
The space between two specific characters
The space between two specific characters is what kerning adjusts, such as tucking an A under a V; in metal type a kern was the part of a letter that overhung its body, like the head of an f.
Q 11In the CMYK printing model, what does the K stand for?
Key (black)
Key (black) is the K: on old presses the key plate, usually inked darkest, carried an image's detail and contrast; CMYK is subtractive, its inks cutting the light reflected from white paper.
Q 12The placeholder text 'Lorem ipsum' is a scrambled version of a work by which Roman author?
Cicero
Cicero wrote De finibus bonorum et malorum in 45 BC; a garbled passage from its first book became the printers' placeholder, and Letraset transfer sheets spread it in the 1960s.
Q 13Wim Crouwel's 1967 experimental typeface, built only from horizontal and vertical strokes, is called what?
New Alphabet
Q 21What is hidden in the negative space between the E and the x of the FedEx logo?
A right-pointing arrow
A right-pointing arrow sits in the white space between the E and the x; Lindon Leader of Landor drew a proprietary blend of Univers and Futura in 1994 so the two letters would meet cleanly.
Q 22The Coca-Cola logo, credited to bookkeeper Frank Mason Robinson, uses which handwriting style?
Spencerian script
Spencerian script was devised around 1840 as a quick, clear hand for business, which is why a bookkeeper wrote in it; Robinson, who also named the drink, thought the two Cs would look well in advertising.
Q 23Susan Kare drew the first Macintosh icons on what?
Graph paper
New Alphabet was Wim Crouwel's 1967 response to early cathode-ray typesetting: every letter is built from horizontal and vertical strokes on a grid, so it is barely legible and was meant as a provocation, not for everyday reading.
Q 14Paul Rand's defining corporate identity, designed in 1956 and striped in 1972, was for which company?
IBM
IBM hired Paul Rand in 1956 to redraw its logo; his 1972 version sliced the letters into eight horizontal bars, and the company has kept that basic design unchanged ever since.
Q 15Saul Bass made his name with the animated title sequence for which 1955 film about drug addiction?
The Man with the Golden Arm
The Man with the Golden Arm starred Frank Sinatra as an addict; Bass's animated cut-out arm for director Otto Preminger turned the usually static opening credits into part of the film.
Q 16Which of these logos was designed by Saul Bass's firm?
The AT&T globe (1983)
The AT&T globe (1983) came from Bass's firm because the breakup of the Bell System made the company give up the bell symbol, which the same firm had redrawn in 1969.
Q 17Where did Milton Glaser first sketch the I Love New York logo?
In the back of a taxi
In the back of a taxi, Glaser scribbled the mark on an envelope that is now in the Museum of Modern Art; he designed the state tourism logo for free.
Q 18Milton Glaser co-founded which influential New York design firm in 1954?
Push Pin Studios
Push Pin Studios was founded in 1954 by Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast, Reynold Ruffins and Edward Sorel; its artists drew on comics, modern art and revived historical styles in a playful reaction to strict modernism.
Q 19Massimo Vignelli's 1972 New York subway map was criticised for what?
Sacrificing geographical accuracy for clarity
Sacrificing geographical accuracy for clarity was the charge: Vignelli's 1972 diagram drew Central Park almost square and stations seemed misplaced, and after a flood of complaints the MTA replaced it in 1979.
Q 20How much was Carolyn Davidson paid in 1971 for designing the Nike Swoosh?
$35
$35 was Davidson's fee for the 1971 Swoosh, billed at two dollars an hour as a Portland State design student; in 1983 Phil Knight gave her a gold Swoosh ring and Nike shares.
Graph paper was her pixel grid: the on-screen icon editor had not been coded yet, so Kare pencilled the scissors for Cut and the paintbrush for MacPaint into a notebook, one square per pixel.
Q 24Peter Saville designed record sleeves for Joy Division and New Order as a partner in which label?
Factory Records
Factory Records was set up in Manchester by Tony Wilson and partners including Saville; as a co-founder and its art director, he was left unusually free to design sleeves however he wanted.
Q 25Neville Brody made his name as art director of which British style magazine in the early 1980s?
The Face
The Face, launched by Nick Logan in 1980, made Brody's name; he has called punk the biggest influence on the rule-breaking typography he brought to it before moving on to Arena.
Q 26David Carson, the 'grunge typography' pioneer of Ray Gun magazine, had which earlier career?
Professional surfer
Professional surfer was Carson's first career, with a top-ten world ranking; he was teaching high school when a two-week design class in his mid-twenties set him on the path to Beach Culture and Ray Gun.
Q 27Shepard Fairey's Obama 'Hope' poster drew a copyright claim from which news agency, whose photo he had used?
Associated Press
Associated Press said the poster copied an April 2006 photo by its freelancer Mannie Garcia; Fairey sued first, later admitted destroying evidence about which image he had used, and the two sides settled in 2011.
Q 28Which New York firm, founded in 1957, designed logos for Chase, Mobil and National Geographic?
Chermayeff & Geismar
Chermayeff & Geismar began in 1957 as Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar and took its shorter name when Robert Brownjohn left for London; Yale graduates Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar then made corporate identity their speciality.
Q 29Jan Tschichold, author of Die neue Typographie, later directed the visual identity of which publisher?
Penguin Books
Penguin Books hired Tschichold from 1947 to 1949 to restyle some 500 paperbacks; by then the author of the modernist rulebook had turned against his own early doctrine and gone back to traditional, classical typography.
Q 30Herbert Bayer's 'universal' typeface for the Bauhaus was notable for what?
Being all lowercase
Being all lowercase was the point: Bayer dropped capitals to make writing and printing more efficient, drawing his geometric Universal letters as a single set, though the design was never cast as metal type.