Episode 56: All the Presidents’ Libraries

Designer Tobias Van Schneider updated Dieter Rams’ Ten Principles for Good Design 2017 Tech Industry Edition and posted it in on Twitter, where it got widely circulated. It’s a jaundiced indictment of the abuses of design, but will everyone read it that way?

Jessica isn’t so sure:

I have to say, when I saw this thing—and some of the comments are brilliant, as you say, Michael, and wonderful, and you see immediately that it’s framed with irony. But I found myself wondering if everybody who saw it in their feed would understand he was being sarcastic.

Also mentioned:

The Obama Presidential Center

Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library & Museum

Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum

Chicago Tribune coverage of the Obama Presidential Center

ArchDaily, Billie Tsien Discusses Design Ideas for Obama Presidential Library

National Archives, History of Presidential Libraries

The Fyre Festival pitch deck

Wikipedia, List of presidential libraries

Ai Weiwei, How Censorship Works

Justin Davidson, A Portrait of I. M. Pei at (Nearly) 100

Alexandra Lange on Late Modernism

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By Michael Bierut & Jessica Helfand

Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer and a former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Communications Arts and Eye magazines. A member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and a recent laureate of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame, Helfand received her B.A. and her M.F.A. from Yale University where she has taught since 1994.