Graphic Design

Tom Vanderbilt|Essays

Rise and Fall of Rock and Roll Graphic Design

Browsing recently through a collection of "band fonts," my memory drifted back to Middle School where I, plastic Bic in hand, would spend countless hours carefully inscribing the covers of my Mead notebooks with the logos and signature …

Michael Bierut|Essays

Authenticity: A User's Guide

Graphic designers take pleasure in simulation. This makes defining authenticity a tricky thing.

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.

Momus|Essays

Berlin Wheatpasting

"What is desirable in our field," said Milton Glaser in 2002, "is continuous transgression." Berlin wheatpasters know that. They're out there at night, come snow, come rain, risking fines or imprisonment to publicize semi-legal parties …

Michael Bierut|Essays

The Whole Damn Bus is Cheering

The familiar yellow ribbons stuck to cars urging us to "support our troops" have lots of competition and are horribly designed.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Donald Trump, Art Director: Not The Real Thing

It's been called refreshing, healthful, sparkling and delicious; scintillating, satisfying, and an aid to digestion. Over the past 106 years, its price has steadily risen to keep apace with economic growth, as has its logo evolved from …

Michael Bierut|Essays

Logogate in Connecticut, or, The Rodneydangerfieldization of Graphic Design: Part II

A new logo for the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism by Cummings & Good provokes a public controversy on the value of design.

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.

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 …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Rodneydangerfieldization of Graphic Design: Part I

Here in America, we have entered the home stretch of the campaign season. With a critical Presidential election only weeks away, the country is awash in partisan controversies, testy editorials and even testier debates, all of it fueled by …

Michael Bierut|Essays

Graphic Designers, Flush Left?

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

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Under The Microscope

It turns out that microscopy, like most things, has basically gone digital: no surprise there. But what did surprise me was the realization that scientific observation obliges its participants to engage in a kind of resistance to …