Social Good

Dmitri Siegel|Essays

Learning from North Philadelphia

Guild House, Friends' Housing for the Elderly, Philadelphia; Venturi and Rauch, Cope and Lippincott, Associates, 1960-1963. Photo by the author, 2008.I recently took the river-to-river drive down Spring Garden Street in Philadelphia from …

William Drenttel|Slideshows

Burma (Myanmar), 1989

William Drenttel, passport, 1989According to Wikipedia: 8888 Uprising was a national peaceful revolution demanding democracy that started on August 8, 1988, in Burma (now Myanmar), when university students started the initial …

Steven Heller|Essays

The Designer As Gumshoe

Near Union Square on Fourteenth Street, photograph by Nicolas Heller.During the Beatles' first U.S. tour in 1964, John Lennon marveled at how New York's sidewalks were paved with diamonds. He was referring, of course, to sparkling …

John Thackara|Interviews

Design for (Im)mobility: Interview with Domus

John Thackera defines and explains the importance of ethnoecology.

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

The 2012 Olympic Logo Ate My Hamster

Designers often bemoan the lack of coverage given to graphic design in mainstream media. Yet when design catches the attention of journalists and commentators it usually results in a vicious mugging rather than hearty praise.

Eric Nevin|Essays

Love Letters to Sub-Antarctic Islands

Assigned one portion of a world map, distributed in pieces by visiting critic Karel Martens to his graphic design students at the Yale School of Art, Eric Nevin created a booklet of love letters to the islands of the sub-Antarctic. The …

William Drenttel|Essays

Koolhaas and His Omnipotent Masters

Koolhaas recounts the story: he chose between working on NYC's Ground Zero and the Beijing CCTV project based on a fortune cookie he was given at a Chinese restaurant — in it, the goofy prognostication "Stunningly Omnipresent Masters …

Rick Poynor|Essays

Dancing to the Sound in Your Head

We might not appreciate advertising conducted like a saturation bombing campaign in public spaces. Yet now, to complicate things, the personal stereo is being used as a way of reasserting spontaneity, exuberance and passion in …

Kurt Andersen|Essays

Heyday

Cover of Heyday, design by Gabrielle Bordwin, 2007."In the middle of the nineteenth century, modern life is being born: the mind-boggling marvels of photography, the telegraph, and railroads; a flood of show business spectacles and …

David Stairs|Essays

That (Other) 1970's: The Last King of Scotland

Faber & Faber book cover, The Last King of Scotland, detail of illustraton by Steve Caplin, 1998.The Last King of Scotland, director Kevin McDonald's film about Idi Amin's notorious presidency (1971-79), recently opened in Uganda to great …

Lorraine Wild|Slideshows

Sister Corita: The Juiciest Tomato

In Daniel Berrigan’s words, Sister Corita is a "witch of invention." And there is no doubt that at least in those tumultuous years of the 1960s, her powers of invention seemed supernatural, if not divine... Corita’s work stands …

John Thackara|Essays

Global Place — Or is it a Hat?

We must view the world with a new slant and take advantage of a huge design opportunity to create sustainable structures for the future.