History

Sean Adams|Evidence

Manifesto of Surrealism: 3 Tragedies

We pass through our days creating fictions to make sense of the world.

Steven Heller|Books

Cosmos of Signs

The universe of signs and symbols devised throughout the ages of human history is head-spinningly immense and forever expanding.

Manuel Lima|Books

Visualizing Spheres of Knowledge

The circularity exhibited in nature turned out to be much more than a source of wonder. It soon became a chief guiding principle of human culture, emulated and reinvented in art, religion, language, technology, architecture, philosophy, …

Sean Adams|Evidence

The Most Viewed Modernist Mural in the World? Mary Blair at Disney’s Contemporary Resort

Mary Blair’s Grand Canyon Concourse mural in the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World is a super-graphic that transforms the architecture.

Louise Sandhaus|Essays

Her Story Meets His Story: Janet Bennett, Charles Kratka, and the Long Road to Credit at LAX

In any case, this story is complicated.

Sean Adams|Evidence

Phyllis Tanner

“It is a cut-throat business. Be good at negotiating. It is not just about ART.”

Sean Adams|Slideshows

Pan Am: History, Design, & Identity

Matthias Huhne tells the story of the world’s largest airline for much of the 20th century with images, printed artifacts, and the Pan Am identity.

The Editors|Collections

Women in Design History

March is Women’s History Month, and all month long Design Observer will be celebrating historical women and women making history in visual culture.

Eric Holzenberg|Essays

The Aesthetic Movement

The role of printing in the Aesthetic Movement.

Sean Adams|Evidence

Jennifer Morla: El Museo Mexicano, 1995

As a designer, does the work we create subjugate and presume superiority over another culture, or does it attempt to authentically represent it?

Sean Adams|Evidence

Marget Larsen

Marget Larsen’s design work bridged post-war American modernism and 1960s hedonist psychedelia.

Antonio Alcalá|Essays

Looking Harlem in the Eye

Designer Antonio Alcalá explains his strategy for creating the exhibition catalogue for the Harlem Heroes: Photographs by Carl Van Vechten exhibit at the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum