Michael Bierut

Michael Bierut|Essays

The World in Two Footnotes

Writing in Eye Magazine, Nick Bell observes that designers too often act as "agents of neutrality" or "aesthetes of style" and suggests that they focus more on their work's content.

Michael Bierut|Essays

First Person Shooter

News photographs from Iraq are eerily reminiscent of video game images.

Michael Bierut|Essays

Colorama

Grand Central Terminal's enormous Colorama displays by Kodak documented a suburban fantasy world for millions of commuters.

Michael Bierut|Essays

What We Talk About When We Talk About Architecture

Architectural critiques, such as those conducted at Yale University and documented in its student publication Retrospecta, can have the same drama as good theatre; like the public radio show "Car Talk" the subject at hand is merely a …

Michael Bierut|Essays

I Hate ITC Garamond

ITC Garamond, a popular typeface designed in 1975, is quite simply ugly, and I hate it.

Michael Bierut|Essays

Graphic Designers, Flush Left?

Are graphic designers as a class predisposed to favor left-wing politics?

Michael Bierut|Essays

The Graphic Design Olympics

The event graphics and pictograms created for the Olympics by designers such as Otl Aicher, Lance Wyman and Deborah Sussman are part of a historic tradition that continues to this day.

Michael Bierut|Essays

What is Design For? A Discussion

Rick Poynor and Michael Bierut discuss the purpose and promise of graphic design, in a conversation moderated by Creative Review editor Patrick Burgoyne.

Michael Bierut|Essays

The Rendering and the Reality

The winners of a competition to redesign New York City’s High Line, Field Operations and Diller, Scofidio & Renfro, created architectural renderings that demonstrate both the discipline’s power and shortcomings.

Michael Bierut|Essays

Eero Saarinen's Forty Year Layover

Michael Bierut|Essays

The Bodoni Conspiracy

Eerie parallels between the cover designs of the reports of the 9/11 Commission and the Monicagate investigator Kenneth Starr suggest a conspiracy that can be traced back to sixteenth-century type designer Giambattista Bodoni.

Michael Bierut|Essays

Pablo Ferro Offers You His Protection

The title design for the film Napoleon Dynamite, credited to Pablo Ferro [although designed in fact by actor Aaron Ruell], provoke an assessment of Ferro's influence in the world of motion graphics.