Observed | September 16
Eye candy? (Eye dairy?) Behold:
the Barcelona Butter Chair! [JH]
A
new exhibit at the Victoria & Albert museum reveals what objects people choose to repair—and how they want them fixed. [BV] []
Observed | September 09
NYC is looking for volunteer artists to
paint its garbage trucks. [JH]
Dezeen announces the
2022 award winners. [JH]
Artificial intelligence in the service of ... the skyscraper? [JH]
The Smithsonian announces
the winners of the National Design Award. [JH]
Wellness—for designers. [JH] []
Observed | August 13
Dizzying discs and obscene wordplay—
revisiting Marcel Duchamp’s 1926 film debut. [BV]
For Ben Watson, who leads MillerKnoll,
every great designer is an optimist. [JH]
Tina Charad—a Los Angeles-based South African by way of Britain—
on the challenges of graphic in film. [JH]
Entertainment for the dog days of August:
Focukups are digital mockups that show your work in, um, real conditions. [JH] []
Observed | July 29
Conceptual magazine covers, and why they matter. [JH]
[]
Observed | July 22
Deem is a design journal established upon the notion that design is fundamentally a shared experience that adds value to communities. [JH]
Fast Company shares its
favorite design books of summer. [JH]
Design and surrealism, an exhibition at the London Design Museum. [JH]
Claes Oldenberg, the Swedish-born American Pop artist known for his monumental sculptures of everyday objects, has died. He was 93. [JH]
Manuhuia Barcham, Managing Director, Archetekt, will be the next head of the AIGA Board of Directors. [JH]
[]
Observed | July 15
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About (Design And) Sex But Were Afraid To Ask. [JH]
“He’s even branched out into graphic design himself, with a little help from Naoto Fukasawa, in a bizarre collaboration that has yet to see the light of day.” Kanye West does design. (And doesn’t.) [JH]
Sreoshy Banerjea has been appointed by Mayor Eric Adams as the next Executive Director of the New York City Public Design Commission. [JH]
“He’s not just a designer,” Steve Jobs once said of
Jonathan Ive, then-design director at Apple. “He has more operational power than anyone at Apple, except me.” [JH]
[]
Observed | July 08
The American designer
Arnold Skolnick who—Inspired by Matisse’s cutouts—created the iconic Woodstock poster in 1969, has died. He was 85. [JH]
Where graphic design meets architecture:
Thonik’s new studio, in Amsterdam. [JH]
Marcus Fairs, the founder and editor-in-chief of Dezeen, has died. The well-known design journalist was 54. [JH]
2022 SEGD Award winners announced. [JH]
[]
Observed | June 17
Molly Young reviews Alexandra Lange’s new book,
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall. (
Read an excerpt here.) [JH]
Can you quantify creativity? [JH]
Zimbabwean born designer, visual artist, and educator
Nontsikelelo Mutiti has been appointed the next Director of Graduate Studies in Graphic Design at Yale School of Art. [JH]
[]
Observed | June 03
A
critique of poster design goes viral. [JH]
Colin Forbes—who, with Alan Fletcher, Theo Crosby, Mervyn Kurlansky and Kenneth Grange co-founded the international design firm, Pentagram, in the early 1970s—has died at 94. [JH]
Are school shootings a design problem? Texas Senator Ted Cruz thinks so. [JH]]
In the United States, there are
five requirements for design patentability. Do you know what they are? [JH]
Italian design legend
Riccardo Falcinelli on design philosophy—and reality. [JH]
Read It And Weep Department: Just when you thought a more diverse cast of characters (think women and people of color, for starters) might actually be on their way to getting some long-overdue airtime, Austrian brothers Jono and Benji Bergmann release a film on ...
Bruce Mau! [JH]
[]
Observed | April 29
Creatives for Ukraine, an open platform with over one thousand digital artworks submitted showing solidarity with Ukraine. [BV]
Trained as an Industrial designer at Notre Dame, Michigan state senator
Mallory McMorrow takes on the GOP. [JH]
Yup. [JH]
Designers! They’re just like us! “Grey’s friend Jamie Lee Curtis helped design the cover of
Out of the Corner, using what she described in a phone interview as
“D.I.Y. photoshop phone app skills.” [JH]
[]
Observed | April 26
Award-winning American artist and illustrator, Marshall Arisman, has died at 83.
Steve Heller’s tribute is here. [JH]
[]
Observed | April 08
Kevin Lippert, the founder of Princeton Architectural Press, has died after a long battle with cancer. He was 63. [JH]
Forbes offers “
graphic design on a budget” advise—in the name of leadership. [JH]
The saga to
redesign Rhode Island’s license plate continues, with design educators weighing in. [JH]
An early Easter gift for a grateful librarian:
Charles Darwin’s notebooks, long missing, mysteriously returned! (Via Jen Renninger) [JH]
Educator, artist, activist and civil rights era photographer
Doris Derby has died. She was 82. [JH]
[]
Observed | March 18
MIT announces
The Morningside Academy for Design, a new hub for cross-disciplinary education, research, and innovation across the design professions, and which will be housed at the School of Architecture and Planning. [JH]
Karen Hoffman, a seasoned educator and industrial designer, is named the next President of ArtCenter, in California. She will be the first female president in the college’s ninety-year history. [JH]
[]
Observed | March 11
The 2020 National Security Law, slogans, and the art of the pictogram:
a thread on Twitter. (via Blake Eskin.) [JH]
Owning the apple—one logo at a time. [JH]
[]
Observed | March 04
Emeline King, Ford’s first black female transportation designer, has a few things to say about trailblazing. [JH]
[]
Observed | February 25
The value of
well-designed work. [JH]
In Berlin:
Konstantin Grcic on design, function, and the new normal. [JH]
How to
design a bike lane. [JH]
[]
Observed | February 11
A love letter to Garamond. [JH]
Maria Nicanor is appointed director of the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York.[JH]
[]
Observed | January 28
An extraordinary list of speakers just announced for the
State of Black Design conference, at Texas State University. (h/t Rebecca Breuer) [JH]
When design fails—according to Reddit users. [JH]
When Build Back Better becomes
Design Back Better: a speculative scenario for employee retention, one “innovation space” at a time. [JH]
[]
Observed | January 21
How a design museum unearthed a treasure trove of
classic Slovak games. [JH]
“Someone out there ... came up with the emoji grid as a spoiler-free way of sharing her results with other people.” Josh Wardle, creator of the internet word game Wordle, on
the game’s minimalist design. (via Blake Eskin) [JH]
In other design news,
the green M&M has been redesigned so that she will be “better represented to reflect confidence and empowerment, as a strong female, and known for much more than her boots.” (via Jeffrey Kittay.) [JH]
Colgate’s designers have spent more than five years
redesigning their toothpaste tubes so they can be recycled in curbside bins. [JH]
[]
Observed | January 14
Cooper Union is looking for a
new architecture dean. [JH]
In a year of cancelled film and theatrical productions all over the world,
production design gets a nice shout-out. [JH]
Meet the woman preserving 125 years of black history in Baltimore. [BV]
[]
Observed | January 07
“It seems to me that designers, bringing evermore astonishing prowess to bear, too often outshine the work they are meant to support.”
Another pitch-perfect review by Jesse Green. [JH]
Design and the Chinese bookstore:
a saga! (h/t to Jen Renninger) [JH]
From
Mad magazine to B-Movies:
An Oral History of Beastie Boys’ Artwork. [BV]
[]
Observed | December 30
Book jackets as optical echoes. [JH]
Design and Healing, a new exhibition at Cooper Hewitt in New York, “helps us appreciate optimism amid hopelessness, and celebrates extraordinary accomplishments under duress”. [JH]
The long read: Craig L. Wilkins on the questionable role of
the architectural biennial. [JH]
Why is a typeface named
Jim Crow? (via Mike Errico.) [JH]
[]
Observed | December 23
“It’s something that should have been caught
in the design phase.” [JH]
A beautiful roundup of forty years of MTV logos, from our friends at
It’s Nice That. [JH]
Broken covers: Steve Goldman puts the world’s worst album art on show.[BV]
[]
Observed | December 17
Redesigning the euro—by 2024! [JH]
Brad Pitt, design obsessive, takes on
his latest project, in France. [JH]
Design at Apple in the post-Jony Ive era. [JH]
We normally avoid any incoming news item labeled “trends to watch” but there are actually some lovely things in here. ’Tis the season to look at ...
beer labels! [JH]
La Patria is a robust online archive of Uruguayan design that includes posters, postage stamps. book and record covers, and more. [JH]
[]
Observed | December 10
Design and traffic. [JH]
In Ghana,
a model for design, education, community—and sustainability. [JH]
Insecure—the acclaimed HBO series—makes
costume design history. [JH]
Ritesh Gupta launches
Useful School, a pay-what-you-can online design curriculum for people of color. [BV]
Spotify Wrapped: a design-cautionary tale. [JH]
[]
Observed | November 26
Dave Hickey, the author of Air Guitar and The Invisible Dragon, has died. The influential art and cultural critic was 82. [JH]
Rethinking design—as a transformative catalyst for change—in the circular economy. [JH]
[]
Observed | November 15
Bob Gill, “bomb-throwing revolutionary”“, “polemicist”, and, yes, the important and influential graphic designer, dies at 90. [JH]
Who designs the city? A compelling, inclusive, and actionable inquiry. [JH]
All hail the mighty ...
typewriter! [JH]
[]
Observed | November 12
Periplus* Workshops, offers a new and unique opportunity for emerging designers to respond to nature in the rural and ancient Mani Region, near Kalamata, in Greece. [JH]
A new retrospective of
Barbara Kruger’s “endlessly hashtaggable” work opens at the Art Institute of Chicago. [JH]
[]
Observed | November 05
Inspired? Revolutionary? Or just batshit crazy? A consulting architect on
a proposed new dormitory at the University of California Santa Barbara claims its design premise is "unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent, and a human being". [JH]
If you think you’re not part of this well-oiled machine of excess—and its dark underbelly—
you’re wrong. (Don’t miss the Swedish teapot man.) [JH]
[]
Observed | October 29
Black students make up only 9% of enrollment at 96 schools teaching art and design in the United States. But thanks to D’Wayne Edwards, that is about to change. [JH]
At just 61 years old,
Nigeria is still an emerging nation—and it’s a hotbed of design. [JH]
Humor, art, activism:
discuss amongst yourselves. [JH]
What do the words “design” and “delicatessen” have in common?
You’re about to find out! [JH]
[]
