Politics

William Drenttel|Essays

Polling Place Photo Project 2008

The New York Times, politics page, January 2008A little more than a week before the November 2006 U.S. midterm elections, Design Observer and AIGA launched an online initiative in citizen journalism — voters across the country were asked …

Michael Bierut|Essays

Will the Real Ernst Bettler Please Stand Up?

In the late 50s, Swiss designer Ernst Bettler created a series of seemingly harmless posters that brought down a drug company with a Nazi past. It's a great story, but it never happened. Why do we need to believe in Ernst Bettler?

Nichelle Narcisi|Essays

Except You

Command X was supposed to serve as comic relief at the AIGA's Next Conference last month in Denver. Seven young designers from around the country were chosen to compete in a real-time design competition, taking on a series of assignments …

Elizabeth Tunstall|Essays

What If Uncle Sam Wanted You?

James Montgomery Flagg, lithograph, 1917. (Prints & Photographs Division, U.S. National Archives)What if Uncle Sam wanted you to design not posters, but services in the war zones of Afghanistan or Iraq? As a design anthropologist, I am …

Michael Bierut|Essays

DéjÁ Vu All Over Again

From Fifty Years of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, published over 40 years ago in 1966. Eerie.

William Drenttel|Essays

The Presidential Rash

Lyme Disease. No caption necessary.[Warning: Another occasional post on Design Observer that involves and invokes political content and satire. Do not read if you do not like your design commentary mixed with politics.]It was reported this …

William Drenttel|Essays

Al Gore for President

In Al Gore's just-released book, Assault on Reason, he argues that the Bush Administration has used "the language and politics of fear" to "drive the public agenda without regard to the evidence, the facts or the public interest." The key …

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 …

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 …

Lorraine Wild|Slideshows

Sister Corita: The Juiciest Tomato

In Daniel Berrigan’s words, Sister Corita is a "witch of invention." And there is no doubt that at least in those tumultuous years of the 1960s, her powers of invention seemed supernatural, if not divine... Corita’s work stands …

William Drenttel|Slideshows

Voting & Religion in America: A Slideshow

"Intermingling of Church and State," Boise, Idaho, anonymous photographer, 2006.I have voted in over twenty elections, including national, state and local elections. Two times I voted by absentee ballot from Europe. I have voted in three …

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 …