Jessica Helfand

Jessica Helfand|Insights Per Minute

Jessica Helfand on Brevity

Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer, writer, and educator.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Our Shopping Lists, Our Selves

Jessica Helfand on lists: from the mundane to the historical, the shopping list to the Bill of Rights.

Jessica Helfand|My First Job

When Less Was More

Jessica Helfand reminisces about her first graphic design job.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Ezra Winter Project: Chapter Twelve

In the end, Ezra Winter was a man whose devotion to the classical world virtually underscored his every move: it explained his ineffable pursuit of youth, his enduring worship of women, his unyielding obsessions with fantasy and grandeur, …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Ezra Winter Project: Chapter Eleven

The 1930s would prove to be an enormously fertile period in Ezra Winter’s life: following the success of the Radio City murals, the artist embarked on major commissions for the United States Supreme Court, the Federal Reserve …

Jessica Helfand|Projects

Ezra Winter Project: Chapter Ten

In April, 1933, Ezra Winter delivers a fifteen-minute live radio talk on the subject of mural painting in relation to modern life, in which he tries desperately to convince himself that he has embraced the modern world.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Bill Moggridge 1943-2012

Jessica Helfand remebers Bill Moggridge.

Jessica Helfand|Projects

Ezra Winter Project: Chapter Nine

The Fountain of Youth would be Ezra Winter’s greatest achievement, an enduring cultural icon in the city he loved — and on every possible level, a simply insurpassable feat: it is an extraordinary painting precisely …

Jessica Helfand|Projects

Ezra Winter Project: Chapter Eight

The Spanish dancer Carola Goya falls in love with Ezra Winter, and almost ruins her career.

Jessica Helfand|Projects

Ezra Winter Project: Chapter Seven

As the gulf widens between the aspirational and the real — between the projected self and the authentic self — Ezra Winter immerses himself in all that is beautiful and lyrical and dream-like, including and especially the …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Ezra Winter Project: Chapter Six

In the Spring of 1926, publisher George Palmer Putnam organized an 8,500 mile expedition to Greenland in quest of specimens for the then-new Hall of Ocean Life in the American Museum of Natural History: the ship’s roster included an …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Why Write About Graphic Design?

Today, graphic design is no longer a function of pictures and words on paper, because graphic design is no longer only about being graphic. It operates on multiple cultural, linguistic and formal platforms, and its boundaries are porous …