History

Steven Heller|Essays

Memory of an Eclectic Modernist: Ivan Chermayeff

Remembering Ivan Chermayeff, who died this past Saturday, December 2. He was 85.

Steven Heller|Essays

Nuclear Fear

Remembering the late Robert Blakeley, designer of the fallout shelter symbol, and the nuclear fear of the 50’s.

Michael Bierut|Essays

I Love the 80s

Miami Vice: the quintessential postmodern design artifact, in all its glory and all its disgrace.

Steven Heller|Essays

Designing for the Masses

The ultimate case for anti-design: The Communist Manifesto

Lilly Smith|Interviews

Assessing the Past; Looking Toward the Future

How the new AIGA Google Art Project “Across Borders: A Look at the Work of Latinx Designers” revealed insights about archived Latinx work of the past—and clues to its ascendance in the future of design.

Sean Adams|Evidence

The Meticulous Bruce Rogers

Classical structure and typography, paired with a modern aesthetic, typified Bruce Rogers work.

Sean Adams|Evidence

Gateway Drug of Dessau

The typography and graphic design at the Bauhaus represent the most religious allegiance to Modernism. But, it is the photography at the Bauhaus that serves as a gateway drug.

Steven Heller|Essays

Earnest Elmo Calkins: Founder of Modern Advertising and a Designer You Probably Don’t Know

“It is arguable that without the puritanically raised Calkins, Modern art would never have washed up on American advertising’s shores, creative advertising teams might not have existed, and graphic design would be a different …

John Foster|Accidental Mysteries

An Archive of Czech Film Posters

Real life #TBT: a publicly accessible database with over 6,000 original, vintage posters from all periods of cinema.

Bill Shaffer|Essays

Modern Survivor

An enormous, glorious, digital clock: a quintessential expression of the design ethos of the 1960s.

Steven Heller|Essays

Victims of the Image: Yellow Peril

Visual hazing in popular art and design of Asians was long maintained for different purposes.

Steven Heller|Essays

Victims of the Image: Black Smears

The power of mainstream, routinely accepted, racial and ethnic stereotype images widely published in the United States during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries did more to foster the stigma of being different than even more …