Graphic Design

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Separated at Birth: Method? Or Madness?

Left: Packaging by Karim Rashid. Right: Unknown.method© was begun in 1999 by a chemical engineer and a graphic designer, with an aim to create totally biodegradable, environmentally sound cleaning products. With packaging designed by …

Debbie Millman|Audio

Bill Grant

Bill Grant founded the Atlanta-based Grant Design Collaborative in 1996 and has worked with clients including Adobe Systems, Georgia-Pacific Papers and Steelcase, among many others.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Civilian Typography: The Power and The Fury

Left: Cover of Spoiled, Tom Varisco, 2005; Right: Photograph by Steph Goralnik, 2005.John Updike once wrote that the "itch" to make dark marks on white paper is shared by writers and artists. As for designers, that same itch translates to …

Lorraine Wild|Essays

Good Font, Shame About The Reporting

A critical look at how mainstream media misreports typography and film design, ignoring historical accuracy and the designers behind the visuals that shape culture.

Michael Bierut|Essays

The Unbearable Lightness of Fred Marcellino

Remembering Fred Marcellino, the designer and illustrator who dominated the look of quality fiction dustjackets in the 1980s.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Cease and Design

When my daughter, Fiona, was five years old and first learning to write, she came home from school one day and set to work. Pencil gripped firmly in her tiny hand, she wrote a word — then plunked her first and second fingers down …

Lorraine Wild|Essays

Think Regional, Act Annual

Print Regional Design Annual, cover by Abbott Miller, 2005Flying from New York to Los Angeles last week, I spent the long hours at 35,000 feet doing something I had not done in years: I read Print Magazine's "2005 Regional Design Annual" …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Shock Of The Old: Rethinking Nostalgia

Nostalgia has always been a bad word for designers. Like "retro" and "vintage" it smacks of a sort of been-there-done-that ennui — looking backward instead of forward, nostalgia presents as the very antithesis of the new. Even …

Michael Bierut|Essays

The Great Non-Amber-Colored Hope

A student design for a prescription pill bottle takes a metoric rise to mass production and becomes an instant icon in the world of graphic design.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

On Citizenship and Humanity: An Appeal for Design Reform

It has been a hectic month here in the United States: a month of unspeakable hurricane devastation, two Supreme Court nominations and just this morning, a national address by our President reinforcing the White House's steadfast support of …

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

"Can you make the type bigger?"

Judging by the design blogs, the chatter at conferences and award ceremonies, and the rhetoric in the magazines, graphic design is a profession where insecurity and doubt are rife. Whenever graphic designers get together, the talk …

Paula Scher|Essays

Remembering Henryk Tomaszewski

Henryk Tomaszewski, Amsterdam, Holland, 1991Photograph by Almar SeinenDesigner Henryk Tomaszewski died on Sunday in his native Warsaw at the age of 91. In his lifetime, Henryk Tomaszewski accomplished the nearly impossible: he made a body …