Arts + Culture

William Drenttel|Essays

What Ever Happened to Half.com, Oregon?

But back in 1999, in its Netflix-like heyday, Half.com was hot. And it did something quite remarkable. As a publicity stunt, it bought a town and renamed it. Someplace in Oregon. I wondered what ever happened to Half.com, Oregon — …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Ovalization of The American Mind

Left: A typical standardized test. Right: DNA blood sample.As a graduate student at Yale in the late 1980s, I studied with many of the great, late European masters who preached (among other things) the virtues of geometry. Back in those …

Dmitri Siegel|Essays

World 6.0: Same as the Old World?

Screenshot from 2 Days to Vegas, developed by Steel Monkeys, 2006.Designing anything synthetic is driven by the opposing desires to replicate and transcend reality. On one hand, the virtual is compelling only in so far as it connects to …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Global Curse of Comic Sans

In this coastal region slung just below the Pyrenees, one might expect to see evidence of the enduring cultural tensions between Spain and Catalonia — different kinds of signs or symbols, for instance â€" but on the …

William Drenttel|Essays

Move It Down . . . A Little to the Right

Detail, Guggenheim Museum facade under renovation. Photograph by Chris Kasabach, 2006.One of the great artifacts of American architecture is being renovated in New York City. Scaffolds are up, and paint and surface stucco are being …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Right Stuff

Illustration by Nick Dewar, 2004.I once worked for a man who marched past my cubicle each morning shouting "Coffee!" without so much as a sidelong glance in my direction. Each day for nearly eight months I did indeed get him his coffee, …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Right Stuff

Illustration by Nick Dewar, 2004.I once worked for a man who marched past my cubicle each morning shouting "Coffee!" without so much as a sidelong glance in my direction. Each day for nearly eight months I did indeed get him his coffee, …

Rob Giampietro|Essays

Kafka & Typography

Walbaum, typeface design by Justin Erich Walbaum, 1804. Kafka's favorite typeface and the original used for Meditation.We get the word "koan" from Zen Buddhism, where in Japanese it translates literally as "a matter for public thought," …

Debbie Millman|Audio

Paola Antonelli

An interview with Paola Antonelli, curator in the department of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art.  

Lawrence Weschler|Essays

Koppel to Cooper: Cool, Cooler, Cold

McSweeney's, Number 5, 2000; and Vanity Fair, June 2006. Back in the summer of 2000, when they were getting set to launch their fifth issue, the gentle hapless crew over at McSweeney's figured that maybe the problem was that they just …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

"Oui, Oui, Oui" All The Way Home

Drawings by Fiona Drenttel. Our children delight in the retelling of the story of my apprehension when, as a child, I embarked on my first airplane trip. Marking the ceremonious start of our family's four-year stay in Paris, it heralded a …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Annals of Academia: The New Exoticism

It's May — the month of hay fever, television sweeps and final reviews. Of the first two, I can say only this: as a veteran allergy sufferer, I watched the swan-song episode of The West Wing in an antihistamine-induced haze, and it …