Technology

Rob Walker|Essays

Dumb and Dumber 2.0

American consumers have long shown an “exceptional willingness” to buy, for instance, technology products before their utility is clear.

Debbie Millman|Audio

Jessica Helfand

Jessica Helfand discusses growing up in a family of collectors, her love of visual biography and why history should be more important to designers than it seems to be.

Dmitri Siegel|Essays

Design by Numbers

Business reporter Stephen Baker’s new book The Numerati explores the way that marketers and retailers are leveraging personal data to create customized experiences and targeted messages. The book details the staggering amount of data we …

Gong Szeto|Interviews

Interview with Brian Oakes

It’s not often that graphs and numbers take center stage in a popular film, but in the brilliant hands of graphic designer Brian Oakes, information design is not a backdrop but a main character in the recently released documentary …

Tom Vanderbilt|Essays

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do

This article is adapted from Tom Vanderbilt’s new book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (Knopf).Once, on a driving trip in rural Spain, I decided to take a shortcut. On the map, it looked like a good idea. The road turned out …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Reflections on The Ephemeral World, Part One: Ink

Half-size manila blank paper notebooks with "makeready" covers by Trip Print Press, TorontoI was on a press check recently, deliriously inhaling the pervasive aroma of ink (don’t knock it until you’ve tried it) whereupon, feeling very …

Matthew Peterson|Essays

The Cuckoo Bird and the Keyboard

Easily the most maligned key on your computer’s keyboard lies just to the left of “return” and represents what appear to be single and double quotation marks. It is a cuckoo’s egg in the designer’s nest. It doesn’t belong. …

John Thackara|Essays

From MySpace to Fake Space

Traveling without moving has become an economic and environmental imperative. Matter is more expensive than energy; energy than information; it is cheaper to move information, than people or things. So what is to stop us moving less and …

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

Look and Feel / Nip and Tuck

I first heard the term "look and feel" in the early days of web-design. I found it an odd phrase. When web developers used it I couldn't be sure if they were talking about graphic design or some new hybrid form of design for the web and …

Cheryl Towler Weese|Essays

Is Apple Soft on Crime?

In its now-ubiquitous campaign, the iPod holds the promise of cool: silhouetted figures dance on a colored field, brandishing their sleek white iPods, serving alternatively as dance partners, status symbols and fashion accessories. It's a …

Steven Heller|Essays

What's In A Name?

In Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare wrote a "rose by any other name would smell as sweet," suggesting the meaning of something is more important than what it is called. By extension, the content of a blog post or comment is more …

Richard Turley|Essays

Off the Grid

Photo: Martin Godwin/GuardianSo there we were. Standing in a vast field at the Worthy Farm, the home of the Glastonbury Festival, armed with a laptop, rain pouring down, sodden jeans, welly boots welded to our feet, the ground turning into …