Arts + Culture

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Annals of Ephemera: Town & Country Cookbook

Cover, Town and Country Cookbook, 1953Books are, by their very nature, often judged by their covers. Like miniature posters or single-frame film trailers, the book cover is the visual prologue to what lies beneath. Book cover designers are …

Debbie Millman|Audio

Maira Kalman

An interview with the remarkable Maira Kalman — the closest thing we in the United States have to a National Treasure.

Michael Bierut|Essays

Good at Art

Growing up in the sixties, I couldn’t throw or catch a baseball with authority, punch someone in the face, or shoplift. But I had something I could call my very own. I was good at art.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Art Director Ken

Art Director Ken © Mattel, 2003.Ken, who turned 46 yesterday, shares a birthday with eighteenth-century chemist Joseph Priestly, nineteenth-century astronomer Percival Lowell, and twentieth-century singer songwriter, Neil Sedaka. (And …

Dan Nadel|Essays

This is Not My Design Life Now

Mat Brinkman, Melt Banana and Lightning Bolt at Ft. Thunder, 1998In another life, I was a regular contributor to design magazines. But I grew less interested in that and more in simply writing and making books. So, interested in getting …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Lost, O Lost

Photograph of Evelyn Waugh by Douglass Glass."Literature is either the essential or nothing." — Georges BatailleThe English writer Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) is perhaps best known for his satirical portraits of the British upper …

Debbie Millman|Audio

Andrea Deszo

An interview with designer, artist and educator Andrea Deszo.

David Stairs|Essays

That (Other) 1970's: The Last King of Scotland

Faber & Faber book cover, The Last King of Scotland, detail of illustraton by Steve Caplin, 1998.The Last King of Scotland, director Kevin McDonald's film about Idi Amin's notorious presidency (1971-79), recently opened in Uganda to great …

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 …

William Drenttel|Slideshows

The Good Citizen's Alphabet

Cover design, Gaberbocchus Press, illustration by Franciszka Themerson, 1953.In these political times, so polarized with heated rhetoric, I was pleasantly surprised to stumble across a copy of Bertrand Russell's The Good Citizen's …

Adrian Shaughnessy|Essays

"I Sold My Soul And I Love It"

Creative Review cover, February 2007.The current issue of Creative Review is "guest edited" by hip British advertising agency Mother. As is the way with "guest editors," Mother hasn't actually edited the magazine; instead, they've …