Science

Debbie Millman|Audio

Eric Kandel

Nobel prize winner Eric Kandel is a psychiatrist, neuroscientist and professor of biochemistry and biophysics at Columbia University. 

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Science and Design: The Next Wave

Jessica Helfand|Essays

My Dirty Little Secret

Photograph from "Beginner Gardening." Happy News Vol. 1 No. 1, 2007.I have become an obsessive gardener. Not that I am any good at it — in fact, quite the opposite. Yet I persist in what's become an endless struggle to tame our jungle of odd trees, peculiar perennials and insistent …

William Drenttel|Essays

International Polar Year

International Polar Year 2007-2008, logo, designed by Ralph Percival, Mouse in the House Graphic Design, 2006.In what may turn out to be the biggest international scientific project to date, an army of thousands of scientists will spend the next two years studying the Arctic and …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Death 'N' Stuff

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

William Drenttel|Essays

Threat Advisory Pandemic Alert System (TAPAS)

Last week, the London airline liquid-bomb threat elevated the Homeland Security Advisory System to red, the Severe Risk of Terrorist Attacks zone. This week we're back down two stages to Elevated Risk — or yellow. We have Tom Ridge to thank for this graphic innovation (he …

William Drenttel|Essays

Weather Report: 53 Degrees F. Heavy Snowfall Predicted

I was having dinner a couple of months ago with an old friend, a journalist I've know for over 20 years. Our common interests generally veer towards the darker sides of human nature, and it is more common for us to discuss Kafka, genocide — even cancer — than to venture into …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Face Value

Facial transplants mapping our future: how much is the world of design responsible?

William Drenttel|Essays

Maps of Cyberspace

AIGA Poster Designed by Corey McPherson Nash. Enlarge.When this poster for the upcoming American Institute of Graphic Arts conference in Boston arrived in the mail this past week, I immediately thought, oh, another map of cyberspace. It has that pseudo-internet-in-space look, …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Greer Allen: In Memoriam

Designer, critic, pundit and historian, Greer Allen was Senior Critic in Graphic Design at Yale School of Art. He designed publications for The Houghton Library at Harvard, the Beinecke Library at Yale, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and a number of other …

Rick Poynor|Essays

Eduardo Paolozzi, 20th Century Image-Maker

If a visual artist created more concentrated, exhilarating images of science, technology and the media realm during the mid-20th century than British artist Eduardo Paolozzi, then I would like to see them. Paolozzi, who died on 22 April aged 81, was first of all a sculptor, but the …

The Editors|Essays

Understanding and Action

The news from Southeast Asia seems to get worse with each passing day. It is a small consolation, but it seems that disasters, whether man-made or natural, bring out the best in our information designers. Perhaps in the face of helplessness there is some solace to be gained in advancing …