Jessica Helfand

Michael Bierut|Audio

S5E10: Eddie Opara

Eddie Opara is a multidisciplinary designer and a partner at the design firm Pentagram.

Jessica Helfand|Audio

Episode 129: Spatial Justice

A conversation with De Nichols about cities, monuments, and designing for community.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

All Things Matter

His name was Herbert Matter, a man even the ornery Paul Rand described as possibly the least pompous person on the planet. When I was a junior in college, he taught me how to make a Photogram. He was 74 years old.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

A Stitch in Time: A Review of 9

The comically repetitive date of 090909 iss thought to be a lucky day, a day of optimism and interconnectedness. It was also the release date for the new animated film, 9.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Significant Objects: Elvis Chocolate Tin

Significant Objects is a much-discussed experiment conducted by Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker. The fifth of five stories is by Jessica Helfand...

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Can Graphic Design Make You Cry?

How can you create anything visually compelling if you don’t engage at some fundamentally human level — a place where memory and feeling are as valued as form and execution?

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Open Letter to Design Students Everywhere

My freedom thus consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned to myself for each one of my undertakings. I shall go even further: my freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I …

Jessica Helfand|Projects

Land in Crisis: The Antelope Valley Story

Llano Del Rio Commune, Antelope Valley, California. Photography by Matt Jalbert."If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water."Loran Eisely, The Immense Journey, 1957Under California law, property owners have …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

What's The Story?

And what becomes of all those dead tweets, anyway — all those long-expired, evaporated updates?

Jessica Helfand|Essays

My Facebook, My Self

But as projections of ourselves, one’s Facebook identity, made visible through one’s photo albums, inhabits a public trajectory that goes way beyond who and what we are.

Jessica Helfand|Slideshows

Cats and Their Designers

Behold: our collection of feline wonders, and the designers who named them.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Ten Things That Need to be Redesigned

Everyone has a list of things that need to be fixed. There are small things, like styrofoam containers that leak last night’s leftovers all over your desk, and then there are bigger things — the American health care system, for …