History

Alexandra Lange|Essays

Standard Operating Procedure

From the earliest days of the High Line hoopla, the park’s future was literally entwined with that of Andre Balazs’s first ground-up hotel, the Standard New York. The reason the Standard is so good is that it is a 21st Century …

Mark Lamster|Essays

Defending Alice

The new Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center opens on Sunday — it looks great — and the reviews are starting to flow in. The response has been overwhelmingly positive and fairly dismissive of the original hall, by Pietro …

Virginia Smith|Essays

Two Dutch Logos

The Hague's new logo, designed By Anton CorbijnThere are so many graphic designers in The Hague that it came as something of a surprise when the city commissioned its logo from Anton Corbijn, a music video and film director. The logo — …

Rick Poynor|Reviews

Barney Bubbles: Optics and Semantics

“Get Happy!!” poster for Elvis Costello and the Attractions, 1980Barney Bubbles has a unique place in British graphic design. Even more than Robert Brownjohn, who also died much too soon, Bubbles feels both known and unknown. If only …

Andrew Blauvelt|Essays

Towards Relational Design

Bionic Hamster, using the iRobot Create kit, c. 2006 Is there an overarching philosophy that can connect projects from such diverse fields as architecture, graphic and product design? Or are we beyond such pronouncements? Should we even …

William Drenttel|Essays

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Universal Declaration of Human Rights poster series, Amnesty International, design by Woody Pirtle, 2002Today, December 10th, is the 60th Anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Adopted by the member …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Posters of Padua

Graduation poster, photographed in Padua, March 2008You’d be hard pressed to find tangible evidence of graphic design back in, say, the thirteenth century (though evidence of creative productivity is an unarguable Medieval conceit) but …

Steven Heller|Essays

Charles Peignot: Man Behind the Faces

Peignot typeface designed by A.M. Cassandre for Deberny & PeignotIn 1929, Charles Peignot, director of the French type foundry Deberny & Peignot, sponsored A.M. Cassandre's experimental new display typeface called Bifur. Its complex …

Thomas de Monchaux|Essays

Remembering Yves St. Laurent

 Yves St. Laurent, photo: World News AustraliaWhat does it mean to design? What does it mean to have been designed? In one sense, the word is entirely superfluous: every artifact of human invention, assembly, adaption, or production, …

Alice Twemlow|Essays

A Look Back at Aspen, 1970

Saul Bass and Ralph Caplan at the IDCA.  All images are stills from Aspen: 70, a documentary made by Eli Noyes and Claudia Weill, 1970The scene is a glorious mid-summer’s evening on the first day of the 1970 International Design …

Glen Cummings|Essays

Athos Bulcão, The Artist of Brasilia

Concrete relief, Teatro Nacional, Brasilia, 1966In 1956, Brazilian President Juscelino Kubitschek was sworn into office, boasting a campaign promise to deliver half a century of progress in the space of five short years. In an effort to …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

First In A Series: Cartophily

Ogden Optical Illusion Cards, early 1930sThe practice of saving cigarette cards — a sub-genre of collecting known as cartophily — formally lies somewhere on the spectrum between postage stamps and posters. (If they resemble the former …