Category: Essays

Steven Heller|Essays

The Swastika: Symbol of Enduring Hate

There is no greater visual slur than the swastika.

Kathleen Meaney|Essays

Co-Teaching with Eustace Tilley

What the New Yorker can teach us about understanding images

Brian LaRossa|Essays

Graphic Design is a Literary Discipline

Writers, editors, and designers speak the same language.

Maya P. Lim|Essays

Ineffable Eloquence: The Design of Roses

Rose hybridizer Ping Lim and his daughter, a graphic designer, reflect on the science and art of designing the most communicative of flowers—the rose.

Ken Gordon|Essays

Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, a Novel… with a Short, Useful Illustration of Empathic Design

That’s right: Philip Roth, designer manqué!

Cheryl Heller|Essays

Conflict as a Tool For Social Change

To be passionate about change requires unconquerable optimism, fed by a vision of the better thing ahead.

Eric Heiman|Essays

Necessary Frictions

Want to get an immediate, on-the-ground sense of a new city in all its multicultural glory? Use its public transit.

Antonio Alcalá|Essays

Looking Harlem in the Eye

Designer Antonio Alcalá explains his strategy for creating the exhibition catalogue for the Harlem Heroes: Photographs by Carl Van Vechten exhibit at the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum

Steven Heller|Essays

Bad Design, Great Signs

The signs held by participants of all the women’s marches that took place throughout the world were not designed to win awards. They were made to convey truths.

Ken Gordon|Essays

Recognizing the Designer’s Ego

Designers, on the whole, are a humble lot; they have high standards and a great sense of professional pride, but they know the ethical and economic implications of bragging, and they avoid it. Ego is traditionally the prerogative of, …

Christopher Simmons|Essays

How Shepard Fairey’s HOPE Poster Helped Elect Donald Trump

On the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration, it’s useful to consider how the poster that helped propel Obama to the presidency laid the framework for Trump’s ascendancy as well

Steven Heller|Essays

The Specious Thesis

Dear Student: your email interview questions are general, uninspiring, and painful to answer.