Jessica Helfand

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Global Curse of Comic Sans

In this coastal region slung just below the Pyrenees, one might expect to see evidence of the enduring cultural tensions between Spain and Catalonia — different kinds of signs or symbols, for instance â€" but on the …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Right Stuff

Illustration by Nick Dewar, 2004.I once worked for a man who marched past my cubicle each morning shouting "Coffee!" without so much as a sidelong glance in my direction. Each day for nearly eight months I did indeed get him his coffee, …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Right Stuff

Illustration by Nick Dewar, 2004.I once worked for a man who marched past my cubicle each morning shouting "Coffee!" without so much as a sidelong glance in my direction. Each day for nearly eight months I did indeed get him his coffee, …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Absolut Signage

Photograph by Jessica Helfand, 2006.You'd have to have been asleep for a good part of the last decade to miss the Absolut advertising campaign that has plastered the world (and which, for that matter, has left the world that much more …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Crafting All The Way To The Bank

Craft is a tricky word. When we feel ourselves pulled in by the unforgiving vortex of digitized everything, we plead for craft, throwing it out like a life preserver — a desperate appeal to the forgotten soul. In those moments, it …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

"Oui, Oui, Oui" All The Way Home

Drawings by Fiona Drenttel. Our children delight in the retelling of the story of my apprehension when, as a child, I embarked on my first airplane trip. Marking the ceremonious start of our family's four-year stay in Paris, it heralded a …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Annals of Academia: The New Exoticism

It's May — the month of hay fever, television sweeps and final reviews. Of the first two, I can say only this: as a veteran allergy sufferer, I watched the swan-song episode of The West Wing in an antihistamine-induced haze, and it …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Disaster Relief 101: No Door Hanger Left Behind

Door hangers seem the perfect metaphor for FEMA’s failure: they’re one-dimensional, unnecessarily complicated, and basically useless.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Art of Thinking Through Making

I am at heart an irrepressible classicist who likes my type justified and prefers Merchant Ivory to Miramax. I'm an incorrigible Anglophile, a devoted Francophile and I am utterly convinced that my DNA is heavily weighted toward the first …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Propensity for Density

T-Shirt Detail, 2006. Designer unknown.On a recent trip to Los Angeles, we stayed with a friend whose remarkable art collection included work by Robert Mapplethorpe, Joel-Peter Witkin and the painter Squeak Carnwath, prompting more than a …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

A Sequence in Time

Euripedes, the Greek playwright, once observed that time would explain it all. It was a poetic suggestion, yet to date, remains somewhat inconclusive. True, the passage of time might be said to characterize everything from the Mexican …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Give Me Privacy or Give Me an ID Card

Illustration by Paula Scher for Subjective Reasoning, issue entitled "Useless Information," published by Champion Paper, 1992.When I was 11 years old, I saw my mother's passport for the first time. This seemingly inconsequential event was, …