William Drenttel

William Drenttel|Essays

Bird in Hand: When Does A Copy Become Plagiarism?

Left: STEP Inside Design, Cover, Jan.-Feb. 2005. Right: Photograph by Victor Schrager.Every once and a while, the plagiarism of one artist's work by another crosses the line, or so I thought. I wrote a different piece for Design Observer a …

William Drenttel|Essays

In Remembrance of Susan Sontag

In Remembrance of Susan Sontag: a designer's twenty-five years of interaction with the legandary writer.

William Drenttel|Essays

My Country Is Not A Brand

Branding was originally an approach for creating reputations for commercial products. Over time, it has come to be applied to almost everything, from high school sports to school meal programs; from universities to research centers; from …

William Drenttel|Essays

On Making Things

Jessica gave me a book by Susan Neville last week for my birthday, and we both felt that the introduction was one of the more interesting pieces of design writing we'd come across recently. It is difficult, perhaps impossible to use …

William Drenttel|Essays

Does Aspen Have A Future?

From Aspen Magazine, Vol. 1 No. 1, 1965The American Center for Design was for many years the most dynamic, innovative design organization in America. It spearheaded conferences about interface design and business-design case studies. It …

William Drenttel|Essays

Font Forensics, Or Whether George W. Bush Is Hiding Something

Imagine a leading newspaper summarizing its main story in these terms: "It was the typefaces that consumed much of the news media." Meanwhile, Dan Rather, the anchor of CBS News, had to mount an aggressive defense "to protect the …

William Drenttel|Essays

Penmanship: The Voice of A Future Designer

Reading handwriting is an old art: graphology is one of the more articulated forms of divination, and handwriting analysis has long had the trappings of a science with its history and court experts.

William Drenttel|Essays

Posted Without Comment

Jessica Helfand and I were recently in Portland, Maine participating in a symposium and workshop at the Maine College of Art. During our stay, we witnessed the launch of the redesign of the Portland Press Herald. This letter, in response …

William Drenttel|Essays

Edward Tufte: The Dispassionate Statistician III

A year in advance of its publication, a chapter from Edward Tufte's next book, Beautiful Evidence, has been posted on his website under Ask E.T. "Sparklines: Intense, Simple, Word-Sized Graphics," makes a case for the "wonderful …

William Drenttel|Essays

Learning from Las Vegas: The Book That (Still) Takes My Breath Away

Why did its authors hate the design of Learning from Las Vegas so much?

William Drenttel|Essays

El Lissitzky for Pesach

We all have images in our mind of the work of the Russian artist El Lissitzky: formal modernism, geometric constructions, typographic abstractions. This image was enlarged when I encountered the wonderful illustrations from an early book …

William Drenttel|Essays

The Lying Game No. 2 (Or Vietnam Redux)

New York City - (AP Photo/Shawn Baldwin)In America, we are experiencing the most polarized populace since Vietnam. Millions of people may have disapproved of Bill Clinton's immoral behavior, but even at the height of his impeachment trial …