Arts + Culture

Michael Bierut|Essays

Would It Kill You To Smile?

Thoughts on the enduring influence of bershon, "how you feel when you’re 13 and your parents make you wear a Christmas sweatshirt and then pose for a family picture."

Chip Kidd|Essays

The Learners

Advertisement from The Learners: A Novel, design by Chip Kidd, 2008.OUR STORY: It is the fall of 1961, in New Haven, Connecticut. Happy, the narrator of The Cheese Monkeys, has graduated from State with a Bachelor of Art’s degree …

William Drenttel|Baseball

Any Baseball is Beautiful

Baseball spring training opens Tuesday. It is in this spirit that I stumbled upon the photographs of Don Hamerman. For the past few years, as he's walked his dog at a local park, he's picked up lost and forgotten baseballs. There are …

Rick Poynor|Essays

Lost America: The Flamingo Motor Hotel

I found this old photo in a box at the back of my attic. It shows a motel in Flagstaff, Arizona where I stayed for a couple of nights in May 1978. I was 20, it was my first visit to the US, and for three weeks I had been touring around on …

Debbie Millman|Audio

Vaughan Oliver

Legendary graphic designer Vaughan Oliver is also an artist and the author of several books, including Exhibition/Exposition and This Rimy River.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Gone, Baby, Gone (Things, Part II)

Things, as we all know, connect us to the world we inhabit. Big or small, expensive or insignificant, our attachments to other people and places begin with things. As infants, we navigate by smell and touch; with the social and verbal …

James Traub|Essays

Art Rogers vs. Jeff Koons

"I didn't do it, but I saw it, and that must count for something."

Rob Walker|Essays

Imitation of Life

Spend enough time looking at design and new-product Web sites and it’s easy to spot recurring themes. One of the most interesting is things that look like other things.

Cheryl Towler Weese|Essays

Is Apple Soft on Crime?

In its now-ubiquitous campaign, the iPod holds the promise of cool: silhouetted figures dance on a colored field, brandishing their sleek white iPods, serving alternatively as dance partners, status symbols and fashion accessories. It's a …

Michael Bierut|Essays

The Most Hated Holiday Song in the World

Ten years ago, Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid attempted to create the most irritating song in the world. It's now available online, and it's perfect for the holidays!

Rob Walker|Essays

Tobias Wong on Consuming Consumer Consumption

Tobias Wong on Consuming Consumer Consumption.

Michael Bierut|Essays

How To Be Ugly

Whether reactionary spasm or irrevocable paradigm shift, the new trend is making design that looks ugly. The trick is to surround it with enough attitude so it will be properly perceived not as the product of everyday incompetence, but …