Jessica Helfand on Brevity: Design Observer

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Ms. Parker also said: “That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can’t say No in any of them.” To be brief: “Don’t Multitask.” Happy Labor Day Jessica “!”

Carl W. Smith
09.02.13
10:43

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.

More from Jessica Helfand

The Look of Freedom
It was the American novelist William Faulkner who once observed that we must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it. So who am I to take issue with more contemporary interpretations of commemorative form?

Annals of Small Town Life: The Logo Stops Here
Working with Florence Knoll, Lucille McGinnis convinced her husband, Patrick B. McGinnis, that the New Haven Railroad needed a new logo. Enter Herbert Matter, Swiss-born designer, photographer and Yale professor whose own education was framed by apprenticeships with Cassandre, Léger and Le Corbusier.

The Next Stage
It’s time to distance ourselves from performance at the podium, time to move away from hero worship and hubris. And it starts by changing the conversation.

Design Competition as Bake-Off
The idea of book design rendered as a global free-for-all likens the act of cover design to a giant bake-off. But books are not brownies, and design, like literature, is not a sweet shop.

Paris One Forty: Week Eighteen

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