Category: Essays

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Death 'N' Stuff

Smoking Kills: The label days it all. Or does it?

DJ Stout|Essays

Remembering Ann Richards

Cover of Texas Monthly, art directed by DJ Stout, photographed by Jim Myers, July 1992In the late spring of 1992, when I was the art director of Texas Monthly magazine, I sat down with the editorial team to brainstorm ideas for an upcoming …

Kenneth Krushel|Essays

The Face Of Oblivion

Photograph by Kenneth Krushel, 2006I am the family face;Flesh perishes, I live on,Projecting trait and traceThrough time to times anon,And leaping from place to placeOver oblivion.— Thomas Hardy, HeredityThey're in every supermarket …

Tom Vanderbilt|Essays

Small Worlds

One of the first things I like to do upon visiting a new city is to visit the scale-model version of itself. From Havana to Copenhagen, I’ve hunted down these miniature metropolises in dusty historical museums and under-visited …

Michael Bierut|Essays

This is My Process

Designers often describe our work processes in terms that are dated and ill-suited for the activities that we actually undertake. Is there a model for the way that artists work that would be intelligible in a business context?

John Thackara|Essays

War as a Brand [September 2006]

Report on Doors of Perception 9, conference at the India Habitat Centre, service design principles, transfering knowledge from media labs, Picnic in Amsterdam, and more.

William Drenttel|Essays

What Ever Happened to Half.com, Oregon?

But back in 1999, in its Netflix-like heyday, Half.com was hot. And it did something quite remarkable. As a publicity stunt, it bought a town and renamed it. Someplace in Oregon. I wondered what ever happened to Half.com, Oregon — …

Rob Giampietro|Essays

On Arranging Books by Color

Left: Conway Library, London. Right: Witt Library, London. Photographs by Candida Höfer, 2003-5. (Via The Nonist.) When it comes to the organization of knowledge, a lot is revealed by the system of organization that's used. For most …

Michael Bierut|Essays

Helmut Krone, Period.

One of the greatest designers that ever lived was an advertising art director: Doyle Dane Bernbach's Helmut Krone. A new book celebrates his life and work.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Ovalization of The American Mind

Left: A typical standardized test. Right: DNA blood sample.As a graduate student at Yale in the late 1980s, I studied with many of the great, late European masters who preached (among other things) the virtues of geometry. Back in those …

Dmitri Siegel|Essays

World 6.0: Same as the Old World?

Screenshot from 2 Days to Vegas, developed by Steel Monkeys, 2006.Designing anything synthetic is driven by the opposing desires to replicate and transcend reality. On one hand, the virtual is compelling only in so far as it connects to …

William Drenttel|Essays

Threat Advisory Pandemic Alert System (TAPAS)

Last week, the London airline liquid-bomb threat elevated the Homeland Security Advisory System to red, the Severe Risk of Terrorist Attacks zone. This week we're back down two stages to Elevated Risk — or yellow. We have Tom Ridge …