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

Subscribe to The Observatory on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app, or follow Design Observer on Spotify or Soundcloud.

Posted in: Arts + Culture, The Observatory

Comments [0]

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.

More from Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand

S5E12: Dmitri Siegel
Dmitri Siegel is vice president of global brand at Sonos.

Episode 94: Women of the Year
Elena Ferrante’s My Beautiful Friend on HBO, Olivia Jaimes’ Nancy, Esperanza Spalding, Tierra Whack, Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace, Max Richter, Henry Cobb: Words and Works, Oddityviz, The True Size, Dunkin’, Stack, Pamela’s gluten-free graham crackers, Clausthaler Dry-Hopped Non Alcoholic Beer

S5E11: Renata Souza
Renata Souza Luque is the creator of Thomy, an insulin kit for children with Type 1 diabetes.

S5E10: Eddie Opara
Eddie Opara is a multidisciplinary designer and a partner at the design firm Pentagram.

Episode 93: I Spy, You Spy
Sergei Skripal, Jamal Khashoggi, Bellingcat, Malachy Brown, visual investigations, Pablo Ferro, Ricky Jay, William Goldman, Boy Erased, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Glenn Gould’s manuscript for the Goldberg variations

Jobs | January 21