Category: Essays

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Greer Allen: In Memoriam

Designer, critic, pundit and historian, Greer Allen was Senior Critic in Graphic Design at Yale School of Art. He designed publications for The Houghton Library at Harvard, the Beinecke Library at Yale, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the …

Momus|Essays

Fresh Fruit in Foreign Places

A little survey of the visuals being produced for some of Europe’s independent labels just now.

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

The Designer as Buffoon

"Elite designer" Van den Puup from Ikea's UK advertising campaign.I recently attended a publisher's party. In a room above a smart London restaurant I spent a pleasant couple of hours drinking lukewarm Chardonnay and chatting about books …

Rick Poynor|Essays

Eduardo Paolozzi, 20th Century Image-Maker

If a visual artist created more concentrated, exhilarating images of science, technology and the media realm during the mid-20th century than British artist Eduardo Paolozzi, then I would like to see them. Paolozzi, who died on 22 April …

Michael Bierut|Essays

Me and My Pyramid

The redesign of the United States Department of Agriculture's Food Pyramid is neither satisfying nor nourishing from an information design point of view.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Extremely Young and Incredibly Everywhere: The Public Art of Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer published his first novel, Everything is Illuminated, to critical acclaim only three years after graduating from Princeton University, where he won the Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and Senior Creative Writing thesis …

Michael Bierut|Essays

The Supersized, Temporarily Impossible World of Bruce McCall

Illustrator Bruce McCall's vision of an exhuberant, overscale America is evoked by the opening of a new McDonald's in Chicago.

William Drenttel|Essays

Ten Years of Design Leadership: Richard Grefé

In 1995, the American Institute of Graphic Arts was an organization with 36 chapters, a new building on Fifth Avenue and 7,900 members. It was perceived by many as a New York City club, but it was slowly gaining a reputation as a trade …

Tom Vanderbilt|Essays

Leisurama: Design Within Reach

I have recently been fetishizing the "Muji House," a two-story, open-plan unadorned box designed by Kazuhiko Namba. Like the company itself — the "no-brand" company that even logo-allergic Cayce Pollard in Pattern Recognition could …

Lorraine Wild|Essays

The Faux-Tuscan Invasion: How LA’s Regional Architecture Is Being Erased

Where whole new neighborhoods are still being constructed Tuscan is the style du jour.

Rick Poynor|Essays

Wisconsin Death Trip: A Psychic History

Michael Lesy’s book Wisconsin Death Trip documented awful events in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, using a town photographer’s pictures. Years later, it remains a spellbinding piece of literary and photographic alchemy.

Michael Bierut|Essays

Homage to the Squares

The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum's exhibition Design is not Art provides a useful contrast to an simultaneous exhibition of the work of Josef and Anni Albers, and demonstrates differences between art and design.