Jessica Helfand

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Karaoke Effect

The illusory bubble populated by thousands of fame-seekers who fervently believe in their own righteous, if highly fictional talent.

Jessica Helfand|Chronicles

The Pipeline

A Personal History as Told Through a Straight Line

Michael Bierut|Audio

Mind-Body Problems

Nutrition Facts, Mark Bittman’s food rating system, colon cancer screening, Time Well Spent, Peter Arno, Flat File

Jessica Helfand|Essays

On Memory

Pictures do not only speak louder than words but also are more likely to be remembered.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

On Consequence

What happens when we let things go?

Michael Bierut|Audio

The Good, the Flat, and the Ugly

Instagram, rainbows, digital brutalism, Design: The Invention of Desire, the Freewrite.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

On Patience

Nobler than beauty

Jessica Helfand|Essays

On Identity

To be human is to struggle with the unknowable. To design is to make things knowable.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

On Desire

Design matters because of the why, not the what: the sentiment, not the acquisition.

Michael Bierut|Audio

Prisons and Paradise

Solitary confinement, virtual reality, design thinking for prisoners, Drew Hodges’s Broadway, The Paradise, Prince’s unpronounceable glyph

Michael Bierut|Audio

High Maintenance

Innovators and maintainers, Bernie and Hillary, mapping and infrastructure, algorithms and Rembrandt

Michael Bierut|Audio

Shapes and Japes

Corporate design humor from Mic Drop to bland.ly, photoviz, remembering Zaha Hadid