History

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Scrapbooking: The New Paste-Up

"Craft-born embellishments," note one supplier of scrapbooking products, "are penetrating an unexpected market: graphic design."

William Drenttel|Essays

Moving the Axum Obelisk

In the mid-1990s, I saw an exhibition at the New York Public Library of the greatest illustrated books of the 19th century. One book stood out for me: a massive tome by Henry H. Gorringe, titled Egyptian Obelisks and dated 1882. It’s …

Michael Bierut|Essays

Designing Under the Influence

The similarity of a young designer's work to that of the artist Barbara Kruger provides the starting point for a discussion of the role of influence in design, and whether it is possible for someone to "own" a specific style.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Our Bodies, Our Fonts

Family Tree ©2000 Zhang HuanBody markings — piercings, tattoos and so forth — have recently evolved into a kind of marginalized form of graphic expression, yet one that sheds an unusual light on some of the more mainstream …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The New Paper Chase: Cyberspace on The Auction Block

People who collect things are typically drawn to social history — the idea, for example, that an entire era can somehow be encapsulated in a single artifact. Collections of artifacts testify therefore to the notion that history …

Dmitri Siegel|Essays

Mysterious Disappearance of Carol Hersee

The story of Carol Hersee’s portrait as Test Card F: since it first appeared in 1967 on BBC2, Carol’s face has been on-air for over 70,000 hours.

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.

Tom Vanderbilt|Essays

Pleasures and Pathos of Industrial Ruins

A few months ago, I met with a contractor to discuss building a small bridge at my Catskills property in upstate New York. When I blanched at the price, he noted that steel, at the moment, was quite expensive. "It's all going to China," he …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Designibles

In the new Robert Zemeckis film, The Polar Express, Chris Van Allsburg's dreamy illustrations are animated by way of a new three-dimensional CGI technology called "performance capture." In this process, real actors (Tom Hanks plays most of …

Rick Poynor|Essays

Who's In and Who's Out of the Dictionary

A Dictionary of Modern Design gives exemplary treatment to industrial designers, furniture designers, and the organisations that served them. Once again, though, graphic design emerges as the also-ran of design.

Rick Poynor|Essays

Fear and Loathing at the Design Museum

James Dyson has accused the Design Museum in London of ruining its reputation with frivolous exhibitions. For many bemused onlookers, his complaints were out of touch with evolving public perceptions of design.

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 …