Category: Essays

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 …

John Thackara|Essays

Doors 9 on "Juice" Call for Projects [July 2006]

Report on Doors of Perception 9 call for project case studies, doctor-patient interactions, the Aspen Design Summit, the Young Foundation's manifesto, Desins of the Time Explorers Club, and 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 …

Dmitri Siegel|Essays

Designing Our Own Graves

DIY Coffin: You Can Kill Yourself Anywhere in the World for Under $399, Joe Scanlan, 2001A recent coincidence caught my eye while at the bookstore. A new book by Karim Rashid called Design Your Self was sitting on the shelf next to a new …

Kenneth Krushel|Essays

A Talisman of Prosperity

Almaty, Kazakhstan. Photograph by Kenneth Krushel, 2006The design of the Edelweiss Ansel Residences, according to their sales brochure, is informed by many architectural and technical criteria, including esthetics, attraction and expansive …

Rob Giampietro|Essays

Kafka & Typography

Walbaum, typeface design by Justin Erich Walbaum, 1804. Kafka's favorite typeface and the original used for Meditation.We get the word "koan" from Zen Buddhism, where in Japanese it translates literally as "a matter for public thought," …

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

Werner Herzog and the Deeper Truth

Compared to the newer technological advances that enable us to experience, and participate in, art and culture (television on cell phones, MP3 players, blogging websites), the DVD format appears almost antique. The first DVD players …

Michael Bierut|Essays

My Phone Call to Arnold Newman

Michael Bierut remembers a 25-year-old phone conversation with the late photographer Arnold Newman.

William Drenttel|Essays

The Red Hand : A Graphic History

Still from "Nancy Johnson Caught-Red Handed" television advertisement, May 2006. Produced and funded by MoveOn.org.My Congresswoman is Nancy Johnson, a twelve-term Republican from Connecticut. Despite reasonable positions on the …

The Editors|Essays

Redesign of Design Observer

We are pleased to present a new design for Design Observer.Our original design was humble: a default template in Moveable Type 2.6 called "Trendy." We've stuck with this design for over two years, despite many complaints that we were 1) …

Lawrence Weschler|Essays

Koppel to Cooper: Cool, Cooler, Cold

McSweeney's, Number 5, 2000; and Vanity Fair, June 2006. Back in the summer of 2000, when they were getting set to launch their fifth issue, the gentle hapless crew over at McSweeney's figured that maybe the problem was that they just …

Michael Bierut|Essays

The Road to Hell: Now Paved with Innovation?

Designers don't have many advocates as enthusiastic and highly-placed as Bruce Nussbaum. An assistant managing editor at Business Week, he's spearheaded the magazine's coverage of design and innovation for years, and has become an …