10.20.16
Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand | Audio

Episode 43: The End Is Near


On this episode, Jessica and Michael talk about the 2016 election, and what has changed over the years (viral videos replacing campaign ads) and what hasn’t (the way we vote). They look back at the Polling Place Photo Project from 2006 and 2008, a Winterhouse Studio effort to crowdsource images from the early days of smartphone cameras. “It revealed as much to us as to the people” who were voting, says Jessica.
It was also a beautiful digital proof that all politics is local.

Also mentioned:
  • Save the Day PAC, Quiet andImportant (feat. Mark Ruffalo) videos
  • When will people vote on mobile phones?
  • FiveThirtyEight election forecast
  •  What the electoral map would look like 
  • Jessica and Michael on Track Changes (Part 1; Part 2; (Subscribe on iTunes; follow on SoundCloud)
  • Jessica and Michael’s Creative Live course, Thinking Like a Book Designer 
  • Jessica Helfand and William Drenttel, Culture Is Not Always Popular
  • Ken Garland, First Things First manifesto
  • Jessica on David Pease (Part 1, Part 2
  • Holland Cotter on the Agnes Martin retrospective
  • James Blagden, The Best Last Best Plane Ride Ever 


    • Subscribe to The Observatory on iTunes() or your favorite podcast app, or follow Design Observer on Soundcloud. 


    Posted in: The Observatory



    Comments [0]



    Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand 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.

    Jobs | May 18