Category: Essays

Michael Bierut|Essays

The Rendering and the Reality

The winners of a competition to redesign New York City’s High Line, Field Operations and Diller, Scofidio & Renfro, created architectural renderings that demonstrate both the discipline’s power and shortcomings.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Ladislav Sutnar: Mechanical Beauty

Dummy of dust jacket for Arnold Zweig's The Crowning of the King, 1938. Drawing, pencil and tempera paste-up. Last spring, we spent several days in Switzerland en route to Italy — a detour which was largely unremarkable except that …

Rob Walker|Essays

The Filth Epiphany (Dyson Vacuums)

The Dyson vacuum cleaner, a hit product in England and elsewhere in Europe, was introduced to the American market in 2002 by way of a commercial featuring its inventor, James Dyson.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

An Instrument of Sufficiently Lucid Cogitation

The legendary French photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson, who died on Tuesday at his home in the South of France, always carried a sketchbook with him. Today's obituary in The New York Times alleges that he described drawing as …

Michael Bierut|Essays

Eero Saarinen's Forty Year Layover

John Thackara|Essays

Social Innovation Observatory [August 2004]

Report on Doors of Perception 8: New Delhi, the 2004 Open Doors Project Challenge, the 2004 Project Observation workshop, nuclear security in CrytoGram, an idea from Pieter Burghart at LogicaCMG, and more.

Rick Poynor|Essays

Britain and America: United in Idiocy

What do Brits and Americans think of each other? In Us & Them, a book by the satirical British illustrator Paul Davis, the two countries have one thing in common: they are both equally stupid. That’s not saying much.

William Drenttel|Essays

Penmanship: The Voice of A Future Designer

Reading handwriting is an old art: graphology is one of the more articulated forms of divination, and handwriting analysis has long had the trappings of a science with its history and court experts.

Michael Bierut|Essays

The Bodoni Conspiracy

Eerie parallels between the cover designs of the reports of the 9/11 Commission and the Monicagate investigator Kenneth Starr suggest a conspiracy that can be traced back to sixteenth-century type designer Giambattista Bodoni.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Graphic Design: The Movie

Above Left: Paul Rand, No Way Out, 1950; Right, production still from The Manchurian Candidate, 2004.Some time ago, I pondered about the future of graphic design as a reality show, but recently I've become convinced that its real future …

Michael Bierut|Essays

Pablo Ferro Offers You His Protection

The title design for the film Napoleon Dynamite, credited to Pablo Ferro [although designed in fact by actor Aaron Ruell], provoke an assessment of Ferro's influence in the world of motion graphics.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Design Gone Mad

Readers of Martha Stewart Living generally fall into two categories: those who take the time to tie each canapé with a single chive, and those who don't. The first category boasts a wide range of personality types, from the …