Episode 95: Back to Basics

This week, Jessica and Michael continue the stormy discussion that designer Mirko Ilic started on Linkedin when he declared, “Interesting logos are being replaced by boring ones.”

Michael says this trend

is actually something that almost seems not just understandable but to a certain degree frighteningly inevitable…Designers and people building brands are well aware of the fact that there is still the requirement to have some indestructible kernel of identity that can travel across any platform or any channel.

Also mentioned this week:

Brand New on Burberry, Balmain, Berluti, Balenciaga (2017)
Gary Hustwit, Helvetica
excerpts from Wim Crouwel + Jan van Toorn, The Debate (2015)
Dezeen, Peter Saville to “do a YSL” for Kanye West
Episode 43: The End Is Near
Jessica’s catalog essay from David Pease: Notes from the Road
Nicholas Rougeux, Byrne’s Euclid
Yorgos Lanthimos, The Favourite

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Posted in: Arts + Culture, The Observatory

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Michael Bierut studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati, and has been a partner in the New York office of Pentagram since 1990. Michael is a Senior Critic in Graphic Design at the Yale School of Art.

Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer. A former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Eye and Communications Arts magazine, she is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale and a recent laureate of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame. Jessica received both her BA and MFA from Yale University where she has taught since 1994. In 2013, she won the AIGA medal.

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