Episode 43: The End Is Near

On this episode, Jessica and Michael talk about the 2016 election, and what has changed over the years (viral videos replacing campaign ads) and what hasn’t (the way we vote). They look back at the Polling Place Photo Project from 2006 and 2008, a Winterhouse Studio effort to crowdsource images from the early days of smartphone cameras. “It revealed as much to us as to the people” who were voting, says Jessica.
It was also a beautiful digital proof that all politics is local.

Also mentioned:

Save the Day PAC, Quiet andImportant (feat. Mark Ruffalo) videos

When will people vote on mobile phones?

FiveThirtyEight election forecast

What the electoral map would look like

Jessica and Michael on Track Changes (Part 1; Part 2; (Subscribe on iTunes; follow on SoundCloud)

Jessica and Michael’s Creative Live course, Thinking Like a Book Designer

Jessica Helfand and William Drenttel, Culture Is Not Always Popular

Ken Garland, First Things First manifesto

Jessica on David Pease (Part 1, Part 2

Holland Cotter on the Agnes Martin retrospective

James Blagden, The Best Last Best Plane Ride Ever

Subscribe to The Observatory on iTunes() or your favorite podcast app, or follow Design Observer on Soundcloud.

Observed

View all

Jobs

View all

Share on Social

By Michael Bierut & Jessica Helfand

Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer and a former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Communications Arts and Eye magazines. A member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and a recent laureate of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame, Helfand received her B.A. and her M.F.A. from Yale University where she has taught since 1994.

View more from this author

She the People

Aimee Allison|Audio

Episode 43: The End Is Near

The Halls and The Streets ft. Congresswoman Barbara Lee & One Fair Wage’s Saru Jayaraman

In the Work ft. L’Oreal Thompson Payton, Dr. Christina Bejarano, Dr. Wendy Smooth, & dancing

S11E10: Activism in AI with Google’s Ovetta Sampson

But Joy Cometh ft. L’Oreal Thompson Payton, Maya Wiley, & the DNC

The Halls and The Streets ft. Congresswoman Barbara Lee & One Fair Wage’s Saru Jayaraman

In the Work ft. L’Oreal Thompson Payton, Dr. Christina Bejarano, Dr. Wendy Smooth, & dancing

S11E10: Activism in AI with Google’s Ovetta Sampson

But Joy Cometh ft. L’Oreal Thompson Payton, Maya Wiley, & the DNC