Category: Essays

Michael Bierut|Essays

The Unbearable Lightness of Fred Marcellino

Remembering Fred Marcellino, the designer and illustrator who dominated the look of quality fiction dustjackets in the 1980s.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Calling All Angels

Detail, Madonna di San Sisto, Raphael, 1519In traditional religions, the cosmological order of the universe recognized the primary function of the angel as a messenger of God. (The word "angelos" in Greek means messanger.) Angels were …

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

Charles Dickens and The BBC

Who would have guessed that a BBC costume drama would provide us with Exhibit-A in the defense’s case — that a mass audience can be engaged without pandering to base instincts?

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Face Value

Facial transplants mapping our future: how much is the world of design responsible?

Dmitri Siegel|Essays

Bartleby™

In his classic story of Wall Street, Bartleby the Scrivener, Herman Melville recounts the tale of a humble copyist employed by the story's narrator. Could Bartleby's perfectly crafted refrain be the appropriate response to a world where …

The Editors|Essays

2005 Holiday Reading List

The holidays are always a great time to catch up with reading, and to make gifts to friends and relatives. We've put together a list of some of our favorite books — recent and not so recent — by Donald Albrecht, Nicholson Baker, …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Cease and Design

When my daughter, Fiona, was five years old and first learning to write, she came home from school one day and set to work. Pencil gripped firmly in her tiny hand, she wrote a word — then plunked her first and second fingers down …

John Thackara|Essays

Designs of the Time (DOTT) [December 2005]

Report on the beginnings of Designs of the Time (Dott), Doors of Perception in Seoul, the Art Center Design Conference series, the Urband Eyes project, disposable diapers and more.

Lorraine Wild|Essays

Think Regional, Act Annual

Print Regional Design Annual, cover by Abbott Miller, 2005Flying from New York to Los Angeles last week, I spent the long hours at 35,000 feet doing something I had not done in years: I read Print Magazine's "2005 Regional Design Annual" …

Michael Bierut|Essays

Innovation is the New Black

Innovation is the latest buzzword to overtake the design profession. What does it mean?

William Drenttel|Essays

David Hughes: Caricaturist of Our Time

"Gulf War," illustration by David Hughes, Observer Magazine, 1991.In the 1970s, I worked at the Forum Gallery in New York City. My job was to sort through hundreds of unattributed portraits by David Levine — the caricaturist for the …

Rick Poynor|Essays

Emigre: An Ending

Issue 69 of Emigre will be the last. In its heyday, it was the most consistently interesting design publication produced by anyone, anywhere. By 1990, it was one of those magazines you simply had to get hold of and read straight away.