History

Michael Bierut|Essays

Fitting

Charles Brannock only invented one thing in his life: that metal thing in shoe stores that the salesman uses to measure your feet. Is it the most perfect invention of the 20th century?

Jessica Helfand|Essays

National Scrapbooking Day

Scrapbook kept by Frederick Nixon-Nirdlinger, Philadelphia, PA 1909. Special Collections, University of Delaware Library.Today, scrapbooking enthusiasts across the United States celebrate National Scrapbooking Day, heralding the meteoric …

Steven Heller|Essays

The Sky Is Falling

Atomic test at Bikini Atoll, 1955Remember the scene in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall in Dr. Flicker’s examining room where Alvy Singer’s angst-ridden mother tells the doctor her son is depressed? As the doctor furiously puffs on a …

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.

Steven Heller|Essays

Underground Mainstream

"Psychedelic Dingbats," designed by Hendrike. Courtesy Wikimedia CommonsCommercial culture depends on the theft of intellectual property for its livelihood. Mass marketers steal ideas from visionaries, alter them slightly if at all, then …

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 …

Steven Heller|Essays

Swastika Humor?

Sam Gross, cartoon from We Have Ways of Making You Laugh: 120 Funny Swastika Cartoons, 2008The swastika is not intrinsically funny. Yet, for some, anything can be made into a joke, including this Nazi logo. Nonetheless, there is …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Animal Magnetism

Magazines are the sole industry in which you cannot help but judge a book by its cover.

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 …

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?