Arts + Culture

Alice Twemlow|Essays

Graphic Design at the Museum

The work of Graphic Thought Facility, a London-based graphic design consultancy, is on exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago until August 17. It’s the first time the Art Institute has staged a show solely on contemporary …

Andrew Blauvelt|Essays

Over the Rainbow

June marks the start of a month-long series of LGBT Pride celebrations in cities around the United States and the world, as well as the 30th anniversary of the rainbow flag — the de facto symbol of the LGBT community. While the visual …

Andrew Blauvelt|Essays

Over the Rainbow

June marks the start of a month-long series of LGBT Pride celebrations in cities around the United States and the world, as well as the 30th anniversary of the rainbow flag — the de facto symbol of the LGBT community. While the visual …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Reflections on The Ephemeral World, Part One: Ink

Half-size manila blank paper notebooks with "makeready" covers by Trip Print Press, TorontoI was on a press check recently, deliriously inhaling the pervasive aroma of ink (don’t knock it until you’ve tried it) whereupon, feeling very …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Iron Man: The Screen Behind the Screen

Robert Downey, Jr. in Iron Man. 2008, Paramount Pictures. Photographs courtesy of Hollywood Chicago.In Barry Levinson’s 1994 thriller, Disclosure, Demi Moore plays a computer specialist who is sued for sexual harassment. (Michael Douglas …

Debbie Millman|Audio

Spoken Word Broadcast

All spoken word show featuring poems, prose and a short story.

Adam Harrison Levy|Essays

The Passion of George Lois

How adman George Lois chronicled the sixties with his cover designs for Esquire magazine, with a peek behind the scenes at the legendary famous Muhammad-Ali-as-St. Sebastian photoshoot.

Tom Vanderbilt|Slideshows

Blast-Door Art: Cave Paintings of Nuclear Era

Photograph by Robert Lyon, courtesy of Daniel FrieseAt the back of what looks like an enclosed porch of an unpretentious ranch house near Wall, South Dakota, a steel-runged ladder leads down a 30-foot concrete access shaft. At the bottom, …

Michael Bierut|Baseball

The (Faux) Old Ball Game

Since 1992, every ballpark in America has been designed on the nostalgic model of Baltimore's Camden Yards, including the new parks for the Yankees and the Mets. Why is it impossible to build a baseball stadium that looks like it belongs …

Steven Heller|Essays

The Magic of the Peace Symbol

Antiwar rally in Heroes' Square, Budapest, Hungary, March 20, 2005. Photo by Zsolt Szigetvary.The symbol for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is 50 years old this year, and despite all the wars fought since its birth, none of them have …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Viewer Discretion Advised

Identification card for Anny-Yolande Horowitz, deported to Auschwitz on September 11, 1942. She was seven years old.Early last month, French President Nicholas Sarkozy proposed a new education plan in which every fifth grader would have to …

John Thackara|Essays

From MySpace to Fake Space

Traveling without moving has become an economic and environmental imperative. Matter is more expensive than energy; energy than information; it is cheaper to move information, than people or things. So what is to stop us moving less and …