PROFILE

Jessica Helfand


About

Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer. A former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Eye and Communications Arts magazine, she is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale and a recent laureate of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame. Jessica received both her BA and MFA from Yale University where she has taught since 1994. In 2013, she won the AIGA medal.

Books

book cover Scrapbooks: An American History
Jessica Helfand
Yale University Press, 2008

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Combining pictures, words, and a wealth of personal ephemera, scrapbook makers preserve on the pages of their books a moment, a day, or a lifetime. Highly subjective, rich in emotional meaning, the scrapbook is a unique and often quirky form of expression in which a person gathers and arranges meaningful materials to create a personal narrative. This richly illustrated book is the first to focus close attention on the history of American scrapbooks — their origins, their makers, their diverse forms, the reasons for their popularity, and their place in American culture.

Jessica Helfand, a graphic designer and scrapbook collector, examines the evolution of scrapbooks from the nineteenth century to the present, concentrating particularly on the first half of the twentieth century. She includes color photographs from more than 200 scrapbooks; some made by private individuals and others by the famous, including: Zelda Fitzgerald, Lillian Hellman, Anne Sexton, Hilda Doolittle and Carl Van Vechten. Scrapbooks, while generally made by amateurs, represent a striking and authoritative form of visual autobiography. Helfand finds when viewed collectively they offer a unique perspective on the changing pulses of American cultural life.

Published with assistance from Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.

A Winterhouse Edition. Designed by Winterhouse Studio.


book cover Reinventing the Wheel
Jessica Helfand
Princeton Architectural Press, 2006

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As inventive as instructive, information wheels — or volvelles — have been used since the fourteenth century to measure, record, predict, and calculate everything form time and space to military history and recipes. In this fascinating book, designer and critic Jessica Helfand offers an in-depth look at these unique artifacts, which are not only clever and amusing-where else could you dial-in ingredients to concoct "Creamed Oysters and Celery"? — but, Helfand argues, relevant as a model for modern interactive design.

From circular mathematical slide rules to Captain Marvel phonetic decoders; from nuclear bomb blast calculators to gestational breeding planners; and from astronomical planispheres to presidential trivia plotters, Reinventing the Wheel demonstrates the astonishing range and remarkable utility of these ingenious "interactive" tools.

This book was designed at the Winterhouse Studio, Falls Village, Connecticut, by William Drenttel, Jessica Helfand, Rob Giampietro and Kevin Smith. The typeface used is Hightower, designed by Tobias Frere-Jones.

Published by Princeton Architectural Press & Winterhouse Editions. 9.5 x 7.5 inches — 160 pages— 180 illustrations


book cover Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture
Jessica Helfand
Princeton Architectural Press, 2001

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Jessica Helfand has emerged as a leading voice of a new generation of designers. Her essays—at once pithy, polemical, and precise—appear in places as diverse as Eye, Print, ID, The New Republic, and the Los Angeles Times. The essays collected here decode the technologies, trends, themes, personalities, and visual phenomena that frame contemporary design theory and practice, addressing topics as far-ranging as talking Barbies, mindless manifestoes, scratchy typography, reality television, de Stijl geometry, chicken nuggets, and sex on the screen. Her first two books, Paul Rand: American Modernist and Six (+2) Essays on Design and New Media, became instant classics in the field. This new compilation looks critically at "the new media" and provides a road map of things to come. Designers, students, educators, visual literati, and anyone else looking for an entertaining and insightful guide to the world of design today will not find a better or a more approachable book.

This book was designed at the Winterhouse Studio, Falls Village, Connecticut, by William Drenttel and Kevin Smith. The typeface used is Thesis, designed by Luc(as) de Groot in 1994. 8 x 5.25 inches. 2001. Published by Princeton Architectural Press.


book cover Paul Rand: American Modernist
Jessica Helfand
Winterhouse Editions, 1998

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These two long essays explore one of the most influential modern American graphic designer's and his crucial role in the new visual language which revolutionized design in America as both a service and as an art. Helfand's fresh research into Rand's tenacious interests in the European avant garde, art history, and the enduring relevance of his theory for "Play Instinct" bring to light fascinating contradictions that make his legacy all the more distinct.

Jessica Helfand's first book, Six (+2) Essays on Design and New Media was published in 1995. A contributing editor to Eye and ID magazines, she is visiting lecturer in graphic design at Yale School of Art; formerly an adjunct assistant professor at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications program; and has lectured at The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Columbia University School of Journalism and The Netherlands Design Institute. She lives in Falls Village, Connecticut.

This edition is set in Filosofia, a font designed in 1996 by Zuzana Licko of Emigre based on a geometric interpretation of Bodoni. Book design is by William Drenttel, Jessica Helfand and Jeffrey Tyson. It has been imaged from a Macintosh file by Red Ink Productions, New York City, on Mohawk Options. Printing and supervision is by Michael Josefowicz. 7 x 4.5 inches. 1998.

Articles + Essays

Interviews with Jessica Helfand

Interview & Critique, October 2010
Interview with David Womack for Adobe, August 2009
Vintage Image Craft, July 2009
NPR, March 2009
STEP, Fall 2008
Ephemera, May 2007
Daidala, 2002


Selected Columns, Articles + Essays

De Stijl, New Media, and the Lessons of Geometry
Originally published in Eye 24, Spring 1997, later reprinted in SCREEN

Electronic Typography: The New Visual Language
Originally published in PRINT 48, May/June 1994, later reprinted in SCREEN

Anne Sexton's Scrapbook
Excerpt from introduction to Scrapbooks: An American History, published on the Poetry Foundation website

Sensory Montage
Originally published in Eye 82, 2001



Observed


Coming soon to the Center for Contemporary Arts In Berlin, an exhibition featuring more than100 original posters by one of Japan’s most influential and internationally renowned graphic designers and poster artists, Shigeo Fukuda

The Design Newsroom is a new digital platform designed to streamline the interaction between award-winning designers, brands, and the global media landscape.

“The idea was to create a sanctuary in the center of the city where anyone is welcomed, no matter their faith, religion, what brings them there, or their backgrounds, “ observes Krista Nightengale, Executive Director of Better Block, a placemaking nonprofit based in Dallas. Read more about their newest initiative: a design competition to combat loneliness. Elswehere in Texas, Icon—an Austin-based startup—launched own competition, inviting professionals to design homes that could be built for $99,000 or less “without sacrificing beauty, dignity, comfort, sustainability, or resiliency”.

Two Australian First Nation artists, Naminapu Maymuru-White and Daniel Boyd, are uniting at Art Basel Hong Kong to present complex and contrasting views of Indigenous identity. 

March 21st was the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. We may need more than one day for this.

Ryan O’Rourke, Alberto Ponte, and Dan Sheniak are responsible for some of the most iconic ad campaigns Nike ever produced. The Wieden+Kennedy veterans are heading out on their own with Someplace, a new LA-based, full-spectrum creative, brand, identity, and design shop. “We wanted to challenge ourselves in a new way,” says Sheniak. “What does our next chapter look like? How do we push ourselves and make ourselves uncomfortable to create something? From there, we just started getting excited about what we could dream up together.”

Along with Ann Demeulemeester, Dirk Van Saene, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dirk Bikkembergs, and Marina Yeeone (originally known as the Antwerp Six), renowned Dutch designer Dries Van Noten—whose clothes are known for their simplicity, elegance, and drape—makes a graceful exit.

Enzo Mari saw design as the production of knowledge (as opposed to consumption). The Italian theorist, ethicist, and spirited provocateur—who died in 2020—is the subject of a new show opening next week at London’s Design Museum, and running through September.

Are you lying awake at night pondering the future of the world—and in particular, of design? “And when it doesn’t seem to matter, suddenly it really does..” The extraordinary Forest Young weighs in.

Prospective students working at the nexus of virtual reality, video games, political campaigns, or even on the next Hollywood blockbuster, look no further. A new one-year Masters program at Sci-Arc in Los Angeles may be just what you're looking for.  

Designing an app for a … (wait for it) … parrot.

Fast Company's Most Innovative Design Companies for 2024 include Adobe—"for embracing generative AI the right way—and a shortlist of tech, product, and branding firms.

While human-centered design was once the pinnacle of progressive ambition, a tricky question now confronts us all: what about the rest of life? Working with John Thackara and Caterina Castiglioni, at the School of Design of the Politecnico di Milano twenty international design students were asked to design an urban ecology tool, place, equipment, or experience, that would enhance the interdependence of all of life in practical ways. Their conclusions are diverse, inspiring, and powerful. (Read the full report here.)

Reports of discrimination (and a lawsuit) at Harvard's Graduate School of Design.

Native American graphic design: a primer.

Cheryl Holmes's next book documents the history of the question she has been asking for decades—where are the Black designers?— along with related questions that are urgent to the design profession: where did they originate, where have they been, and why haven't they been represented in design histories and canons? With a foreword by Crystal Williams, President of Rhode Island School of Design, HERE: Where the Black Designers Are will be published next fall by Princeton Architectural Press.

Can ballot design be deemed unconstitutional? More on the phenomenon known as "Ballot Siberia," where un-bracketed candidates often find themselves disadvantaged by being relegated to the end of the ballot.

Designing the Modern World—Lucy Johnston's new monograph celebrating the extraordinary range of British industrial designer (and Pentagram co-founder) Sir Kenneth Grange—is just out from our friends at Thames&Hudson. More here.

Good news to start your week: design jobs are in demand!

An interview with DB | BD Minisode cohost and The State of Black Design founder Omari Souza about his conference,  and another about his new book. (And a delightful conversation between Souza and Revision Path host Maurice Cherry here.) 

What happens when you let everyone have a hand in the way things should look and feel and perform—including the kids? An inspiring story about one school’s inclusive design efforts

Graphic designer Fred Troller forged a Swiss modernist path through corporate America in a career that spanned five decades. The Dutch-born, Troller—whose clients included, among others, IBM, Faber Castell, Hoffmann LaRoche, Champion International, and the New York Zoological Society—was also an educator, artist, and sculptor. Want more? Help our friends at Volume raise the funds they both need and deserve by supporting the publication of a Troller monograph here.

The Independence Institute is less a think tank than an action tank—and part of that action means rethinking how the framing of the US Constitution might benefit from some closer observation. In order to ensure election integrity for the foreseeable future, they propose a constitutional amendment restoring and reinforcing the Constitution’s original protections.

Design! Fintech! Discuss amongst yourselves!

The art (and design) of “traffic calming” is like language: it’s best when it is extremely clear and concise, eliminating the need for extra thinking on the receiving end. How bollards, arrows, and other design interventions on the street promote public safety for everyone. (If you really want to go down the design-and-traffic rabbit hole with us here, read about how speculative scenario mapping benefits from something called “digital twins”.)

Opening this week and running through next fall at Poster House in New York, a career retrospective for Dawn Baillie, whose posters for Silence of the Lambs, Little Miss Sunshine, and Dirty Dancing, among countless others, have helped shape our experience of cinema. In a field long-dominated by men, Bailie's posters span some thirty-five years, an achievement in itself. (The New York Times reviews it here.)

Can't make it to Austin for SXSW this year? In one discussion, a selection of designers, policymakers, scientists, and engineers sought identify creative solutions to bigger challenges. (The “design track” ends today, but you can catch up with all the highlights here.)

Should there be an Oscar for main title design?

Design contributes hugely to how we spend (okay, waste) time online. But does that mean that screen addiction is a moral imperative for designers? Liz Gorny weighs in, and Brazillian designer Lara Mendonça (who, and we love this, also self-identifies as a philosopher) shares some of her own pithy observations.

Oscar nominees, one poster at a time.



Jobs | March 28