Michael Bierut, Jessica Helfand|Audio
September 27, 2019
Episode 111: The Great British Crit
Every single person Jessica spoke to at Design Observer’s The Design of Business | The Business of Design conference watches the Great British Bake Off — except Michael. But he should, Jessica says, both because of how it creates “a national conversation about something other than memory, trauma, forgetting and anger,” and for what you can learn from the bench crits.
Michael says:
The art of giving and getting a critique in a way that’s useful and productive and advances the work is not a small thing. And to learn how to do it well — to learn how to give the critique well and to learn how to get the most out to critique when it’s been given to you — is really a skill that is, I think, very underrated.
Also mentioned this week:
- Sophie Gilbert, Atlantic, The Great British Bake Off Keeps the Dream Alive
- Jacobin, The Great Socialist Bake Off
- How to Crit
- Noel Fielding Sings the Milk Song
- The Stedelijk Museum, Wim Crouwel: Mr Gridnik
- The Observatory: Episode 95, Crouwel and Jan van Toorn
- Design Observer, The Debate: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
- Rick Poynor, Design Observer, Wim Crouwel, The Ghost in the Machine
- Total Design, In Remembrance of Wim Crouwel
- Emily King, Fantastic Man, Wim Crouwel
- New York Times, Cokie Roberts obituary
- NPR, Cokie Roberts Pioneering Female Journalist Who Helped Shape NPR Dies at 75
- Nina Totenberg, NPR, The Personification of Human Decency
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Jessica Helfand is an artist and writer based in New England. A former critic at Yale School of Art and one of the founding editors of Design Observer, she is the author of several books on visual culture including Self Reliance, Design: The Invention of Desire, and Face: A Visual Odyssey.