Arts + Culture

Alissa Walker|Essays

War Is Over! If You Want It

Yoko Ono and John Lennon with peace campaign poster against the Vietnam War, 1969. Photograph by Frank Barratt/Getty Images.When the star of the documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon is asked by a reporter what he thinks Nixon should do to …

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.

Michael Bierut|Essays

New House

In 1967, just after my tenth birthday, we moved from a cramped 1940s bungalow in an older Cleveland suburb to up-and-coming Parma, Ohio. I had been walking the earth for a full decade, but that fall I felt I was finally assuming my …

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 …

Michael Erard|Essays

The G Word

Ten years from now, jokey newspaper articles about corporate follies will mention why the Chevy Nova didn't sell in Latin America, the hilarity that ensued when company names (e.g., Pen Island) became URLs, and how Google waded into the …

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 …

Michael Bierut|Essays

The Golden Age of American Commercialism

The encroachment of commercialism into everyday life seems like a peculiarly modern phenomenon. Yet around one hundred years ago, America began a romance with salesmanship that today seems almost delirious. A 1922 business directory shows …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Death 'N' Stuff

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

Billy Collins|Poetry

"Design" (1995)

I pour a coating of salt on the tableand make a circle in it with my finger.This is the cycle of lifeI say to no one.This is the wheel of fortune,the Arctic Circle.This is the ring of Kerryand the white rose of TraleeI say to the ghosts of …

William Drenttel|Essays

What Ever Happened to Half.com, Oregon?

But back in 1999, in its Netflix-like heyday, Half.com was hot. And it did something quite remarkable. As a publicity stunt, it bought a town and renamed it. Someplace in Oregon. I wondered what ever happened to Half.com, Oregon — …

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 …

Dmitri Siegel|Essays

World 6.0: Same as the Old World?

Screenshot from 2 Days to Vegas, developed by Steel Monkeys, 2006.Designing anything synthetic is driven by the opposing desires to replicate and transcend reality. On one hand, the virtual is compelling only in so far as it connects to …