Graphic Design

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Gone, Baby, Gone (Things, Part II)

Things, as we all know, connect us to the world we inhabit. Big or small, expensive or insignificant, our attachments to other people and places begin with things. As infants, we navigate by smell and touch; with the social and verbal …

Steven Heller|Essays

Wilhelm Deffke: Modern Mark Maker

Hansa und BrandenburgishenThe modern corporate logo was born in Germany shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, the direct descendent of burgher crests, coats of arms, trade and factory marks. In the 1920s members of the Bauhaus …

Andrew Blauvelt|Essays

The Work of Task

Cover of Task #1, designed by Emmet Byrne, Alex DeArmond & Jon Sueda, 2007A large, black poster hangs on the wall with the reassuring statement: "Don't worry it's going to be great." Posted among the everyday clutter of someone's …

Michael Bierut|Essays

Will the Real Ernst Bettler Please Stand Up?

In the late 50s, Swiss designer Ernst Bettler created a series of seemingly harmless posters that brought down a drug company with a Nazi past. It's a great story, but it never happened. Why do we need to believe in Ernst Bettler?

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Remembering Paul Rand

My graduate thesis at Yale was a long, dissertation-style treatise on the history of the square. Only one member of the graduate faculty actually took the time to read it — and that was Paul Rand. "With what little time I've had to …

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

Graphic Editorship

Cover of Bibliodyssey: Amazing Archival Images from the Internet, based on the weblog by PK; designed, edited and published by FuelAre graphic design skills transferable? Does being a graphic designer equip a person to do anything other …

Michael Bierut|Essays

How To Be Ugly

Whether reactionary spasm or irrevocable paradigm shift, the new trend is making design that looks ugly. The trick is to surround it with enough attitude so it will be properly perceived not as the product of everyday incompetence, but …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Type Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry

About a year ago, I participated in a student portfolio review involving nearly a dozen American schools, many (most?) exhibiting the classic projects that characterize all undergraduate design programs — the color studies, the …

William Drenttel|Slideshows

Stephen Doyle: A Few Words

Stephen Doyle, "WAS/SAW Poster," American Center for Design, 1994Between 1985 and 1997, I was partners with Stephen Doyle and Tom Kluepfel at Drenttel Doyle Partners in New York City. While Tom stayed home to mind the shop, Stephen and I …

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

The Designer's Virus

"Bubonic Plague," in Albert Fournier, Atlas de Bactériologie, ca. 1910. (Collection: Winterhouse)I took part in the recent Eye magazine debate in London on the relationship between design and marketing. Also on the panel was a …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Science and Design: The Next Wave

Michael Bierut|Essays

May I Show You My Portfolio?

My art school portfolio has sat in a box, largely untouched, in the closets and basements of the three places I've lived in the last 27 years, sort of like a slowly decaying design time capsule. A few weeks ago, I opened it up for the …