50 free Graphic Design trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 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 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Helvetica was originally released in 1957 under what name?
Neue Haas Grotesk
Linotype renamed it in 1960 after Helvetia, the Latin name for Switzerland; Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann designed it.
Q 02The name 'Helvetica' is Latin for what?
Swiss
It cashed in on Switzerland's reputation as the home of ultra-modern graphic design and became the face of the International Typographic Style.
Q 03Which of these is a hallmark of the Swiss or International Typographic Style?
Asymmetric layouts on a grid with flush-left text
Sans-serif faces such as Akzidenz-Grotesk and Helvetica were the other signature.
Q 04Futura, the geometric sans-serif released in 1927, was designed by whom?
Paul Renner
It was built from near-perfect circles, triangles and squares as part of the New Frankfurt project.
Q 05The serif face Stanley Morison created for a newspaper in 1931 took its name from which paper?
The Times of London
Stanley Morison of Monotype conceived it with Victor Lardent of the paper's advertising department, basing it on Plantin.
Q 06Gill Sans (1928) grew out of Edward Johnston's corporate typeface for which organisation?
London Underground
Eric Gill had assisted Edward Johnston on the 1916 'Underground Alphabet' as a young artist.
Q 07Garamond typefaces are named after a Parisian engraver of which century?
16th
Many 20th-century 'Garamond' revivals were actually based on the later punchcutter Jean Jannon.
Q 08Adobe's 1989 typeface by Carol Twombly, ubiquitous on film posters, is based on the inscription on what?
Trajan's Column in Rome
Carol Twombly designed it in 1989 from the Roman square capitals.
Q 09Vincent Connare designed Comic Sans in 1994 for which software product, then missed the deadline?
Microsoft Bob
He thought Times New Roman looked too formal in the cartoon speech bubbles, and drew on Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns.
Q 10In typography, what does 'kerning' adjust?
The space between two specific characters
The word comes from the French 'carne', a projecting angle; a kern was the part of a metal letter that overhung its block.
Q 11In the CMYK printing model, what does the K stand for?
Key (black)
It is a subtractive model: inks reduce the light reflected from white paper.
Q 12The placeholder text 'Lorem ipsum' is a scrambled version of a work by which Roman author?
Cicero
It comes from De finibus bonorum et malorum; Letraset transfer sheets popularised it in the late 1960s.
Q 13In European typography, sans-serif faces were traditionally called what?
Grotesque
'Gothic' is the equivalent term still used in East Asia and in names such as Franklin Gothic.
Paul Rand's defining corporate identity, designed in 1956 and striped in 1960, was for which company?
Q 21What is hidden in the negative space between the E and the x of the FedEx logo?
A right-pointing arrow
Lindon Leader of Landor drew a proprietary typeface based on Univers and Futura in 1994 to make it work.
Q 22The Coca-Cola logo, created in 1885 by bookkeeper Frank Mason Robinson, uses which handwriting style?
Spencerian script
Robinson also came up with the name; the script was the dominant formal hand in 19th-century America.
Q 23Susan Kare drew the first Macintosh icons on what?
Graph paper
She mocked up 32 by 32 pixel grids in a $2.50 notebook, producing the scissors for 'cut' and the paintbrush for MacPaint.
IBM
The stripes were a half-toning trick to make the heavy letters lighter; an eight-stripe and a thirteen-stripe version exist.
Q 15Saul Bass's first celebrated title sequence, a cut-out of a heroin addict's arm, was for which 1955 film?
The Man with the Golden Arm
He went on to do North by Northwest and Psycho, plus logos for AT&T, Bell System and Hanna-Barbera.
Q 16Which of these logos was designed by Saul Bass's firm?
The AT&T globe (1983)
The firm also did the Geffen Records logo and the sixth Bell System bell.
Q 17Where did Milton Glaser sketch the I Love New York logo in 1976?
In the back of a taxi
He drew it in red crayon on scrap paper for a state tourism campaign by Wells Rich Greene.
Q 18Milton Glaser co-founded which influential New York studio in 1954?
Push Pin Studios
With Seymour Chwast he ran it for twenty years; his 1966 Bob Dylan poster is another landmark.
Q 19Massimo Vignelli's 1972 New York subway map was criticised for what?
Sacrificing geographical accuracy for clarity
He also designed the American Airlines logo (1967-2013) and the subway signage while at Unimark.
Q 20How much was Carolyn Davidson paid in 1971 for designing the Nike Swoosh?
$35
She was a Portland State design student; Phil Knight later gave her shares and she became known as 'The Logo Lady'.
Q 24Peter Saville designed record sleeves for Joy Division and New Order as a partner in which label?
Factory Records
He co-founded it with Tony Wilson in 1978; his Closer sleeve, showing an entombed Christ, was controversial after Ian Curtis's death.
Q 25Neville Brody made his name as art director of which British style magazine in the early 1980s?
The Face
He later designed Arena and redesigned The Guardian and The Observer.
Q 26David Carson, the 'grunge typography' pioneer of Ray Gun magazine, had which earlier career?
Professional surfer
He was art director at Beach Culture before joining Ray Gun in the early 1990s.
Q 27Shepard Fairey's Obama 'Hope' poster was based on a photograph taken by whom?
AP freelancer Mannie Garcia
The stencil portrait in red, beige and blue appeared with the words 'progress', 'hope' or 'change'.
Q 28Which New York firm, founded in 1957, designed logos for Chase, Mobil, PBS, NBC and National Geographic?
Chermayeff & Geismar
Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar were Yale graduates; Sagi Haviv is now a partner.
Q 29The Swiss designer of Univers and Avenir also created which humanist sans-serif bearing his surname?
Frutiger
The Swiss designer called sans-serifs his 'main life's work'; Univers pioneered the consistent wide-ranging type family.
Q 30Jan Tschichold, author of Die neue Typographie, later directed the visual identity of which publisher?
Penguin Books
He fled Nazi Germany in 1933 after being arrested, and designed the typeface Sabon.