History

William Drenttel|Essays

Defamiliarization: A Personal History

In 1977, I wrote a college thesis about Michelangelo Antonioni. Fueled by illusions of scholarship, I attempted to evaluate this great Italian filmmaker through the lens of Russian formalist literary criticism. Out of nowhere, I single-handedly discovered that Antonioni's films …

Michael Bierut|Essays

Rob Roy Kelly’s Old, Weird America

The late educator and designer Rob Roy Kelly has had a lasting influence on the profession of graphic design, particularly through his landmark book "American Wood Type."

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Span of Casual Vision

William Drenttel|Essays

Adolf Wölfli Invents Design Brut?

[Adolf Wolfli, The Cevelar Mary (Funeral March, p.4038), (detail), 1929]Adolf Wölfli was a mad artist, a schizophrenic who molested three-year-old girls. Born in Bern, Switzerland in 1864, Wölfli died in 1930 at the age of 66. Thus, his life spanned the era of Bismarck, the …

Michael Bierut|Essays

The Forgotten Design Legacy of the National Lampoon

In a bookstore over the holidays I happened to come across a new edition of something had thought I would never see again: the legendary National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook. Originally published in 1971, the publication has at its heart what purports to be the yearbook of the …

William Drenttel|Essays

Shallow Water Dictionary

A number of years ago, I stumbled across an out-of-print tract called the Shallow Water Dictionary: A Grounding in Estuary English by John R. Stilgoe, a professor of landscape architecture at Harvard. This almost-a-book, really-a-long-essay, is of the type described by Lawrence …

Rick Poynor|Essays

Remember Picelj

The English-speaking world knows little about the design history of Communist Europe. Few will have heard of the distinguished Slovenian Ivan Picelj. His prints ask us to remember; they are full of yearning.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

On Visual Empathy

In a world besieged by unpredictable atrocities, don’t we all feel a little emotionally raw? Two recent articles in suggest that visual empathy may more critical to a productive imagination than we thought.

Rick Poynor|Essays

It's a Man's World

Adam Parfrey’s book shows hundreds of men’s magazine covers from the 1950s painted by artists who specialized in depictions of tough guys abusing terrified women. Have we outgrown this kind of thing? Heck no.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

The Real Declaration

It is the rare piece of journalism that considers the role of typography in history. Rarer, still, is the idea that such a piece leaves the ghetto of same-old design publications, and pierces the frequently inpenetrable veil of the so-called "popular" press. Boston-based designer and …

William Drenttel|Essays

Paul Rand: Bibliography as Biography

This is bibliography as biography, and a posthumous testament to the considerable scope — and ongoing life — of one designer's mind. A Selected Bibliography of Books from the Collection of Paul Rand