Jessica Helfand

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Illusion of Certainty

Allan McCollum, Each and Every One of You, 2004. 1200 digital inkjet prints. Photograph courtesy Barbara Krakow Gallery.Last fall, at a small gallery on West 22nd Street in New York, the artist Allan McCollum exhibited his new system for …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

I'm Not Ready to Make Nice

It's a tough time to be a critic. Everyone's got an opinion they're all-too-eager to deliver, and in today's wiki-esque maelstrom of information sharing, we're all supposed to be equal. In the best case scenario, knowledge aggregation is …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Not-So-Golden Age of Zero Tolerance

When I was a student, the assignments and their expected outcomes were intentionally conceived as chore-like, specific and frankly, narrow. This was the age of zero tolerance: deviation from a designated format was neither an approved …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

How Hollywood Nailed The Half-Pipe

Pixar and Animal Logic have mastered a particularly persuasive (and as it turns out, rather literal) form of spin that makes Road Runner look like dryer lint.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Into the Pink

In Western culture, new baby girls are welcomed into the world with rosy pink layettes. Over time, the pale hues of infancy fade away, giving way to more keenly saturated pastels as a child creeps toward toddlerhood. Later, pink is …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

What Makes A Good Poster?

"Designing Effective Posters," Design by Jeff Radel, PhD., Department of Occupational Therapy Education, University of Kansas Medical Center.At its core, the school science fair of my youth was an excuse to engage in two of my favorite …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

My Cup Holder Runneth Over

Mini-Cooper Cup Holder Console Set,  ©2005, Mini-Stuff, Inc.Glance through the door of any of the countless nail salons sprouting up on virtually any city block, and you'll see numerous women (and a fair number of men) getting …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Death 'N' Stuff

Smoking Kills: The label days it all. Or does it?

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Ovalization of The American Mind

Left: A typical standardized test. Right: DNA blood sample.As a graduate student at Yale in the late 1980s, I studied with many of the great, late European masters who preached (among other things) the virtues of geometry. Back in those …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Global Curse of Comic Sans

In this coastal region slung just below the Pyrenees, one might expect to see evidence of the enduring cultural tensions between Spain and Catalonia — different kinds of signs or symbols, for instance â€" but on the …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Right Stuff

Illustration by Nick Dewar, 2004.I once worked for a man who marched past my cubicle each morning shouting "Coffee!" without so much as a sidelong glance in my direction. Each day for nearly eight months I did indeed get him his coffee, …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Right Stuff

Illustration by Nick Dewar, 2004.I once worked for a man who marched past my cubicle each morning shouting "Coffee!" without so much as a sidelong glance in my direction. Each day for nearly eight months I did indeed get him his coffee, …