The Design Observer Twenty




Music

Debbie Millman
Joan As Police Woman
 Joan Wasser shares her musical journey from a classically trained violinist to a solo singer, songwriter, and rock star known as Joan As Police Woman.
Debbie Millman
Jack White + Ben Jenkins
 On this episode of Design Matters with Debbie Millman music legend Jack White and design entrepreneur Ben Jenkins discuss craftsmanship, design, and baseball.
Debbie Millman
Best of Design Matters: Kaki King
 Rolling Stones has called Kaki King a genre unto herself—she joins to talk about her career path and even plays a song or two.
Debbie Millman
Toshi Reagon
 Shaped by music and activism, Toshi Reagon reflects on her upbringing and remarkable career writing, playing, singing, and producing music.
Steven Heller
Jonathan Barnbrook Jolts Electronic Music with Design
 An interview with Jonathan Barnbrook about taking refuge in electronic music, his new cd, and accompanying uniquely illustrated five-hundred-page book.
Steven Heller
When Good Humor Ice Cream was Hot
 The audio rebranding of Good Humor ice cream.
Jessica Helfand + Hrishikesh Hirway
Episode 131: Word by Word
 With Hrishikesh Hirway: games and puzzles, The West Wing Weekly, soap operas, Home Cooking
Steven Heller
Command Records’ Design Distinction
 Command Records covers are striking for the graphic and branding power of the abstract format.
Steven Heller
Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die
 New York-based (former musician, banker, and collector) Andrew Krivine is arguably the most passionate Punk music devotee in the world.
Debbie Millman
Lucy Wainwright Roche
 A conversation with Lucy Wainwright Roche about her musical family, her career as a singer-songwriter, and her musical tastes.
Jessica Helfand + Ellen McGirt
S7E12: Janelle Monáe
 Janelle Monáe is a singer, songwriter, actor, and producer.
Debbie Millman
David Lee Roth
 On this epsiode Debbie talks to David Lee Roth about his childhood, about his long career and his new skincare business, and about how he has avoided crashing, like so many other rock stars. “To be perfectly fair, I’ve had my wild excesses.”
Steven Heller
The Rolling Thunder Revue Unreview
 Steven Heller on the power artists and designers have to move us.
Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand
S5E12: Dmitri Siegel
 Dmitri Siegel is vice president of global brand at Sonos.
Debbie Millman
Shirley Manson
 Debbie talks to singer-songwriter Shirley Manson about her career, her music, and the long road that got her where she is today.
Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand
Episode 85: Midsummer Music
 Musical theater, soundtracks, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata in D Minor, and more.
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Paul Moore
 “Streaming has shocked new life into the music industry and the vinyl we all hold dear to our hearts. Now the platform is finding a new generation of ardent fans. As designers, that’s where we can influence a movement.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Emily Batson
 “A key part of my job is collaboration. I enjoy the negotiation of finding a concept that truly works.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Frank Ockenfels 3
 “I am a true believer of creating in the moment.”
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Lawrence Azerrad
 It‘s June, and you know what that means—the unofficial kick-off of summer concert season. This month, we examine design and music, and why fans everywhere benefit when these creative industries work in concert.
Debbie Millman
Erin McKeown
 Debbie talks to muscian, playwright, and activist Erin McKeown about the ups and downs in her career, and about writing a musical for the first time.
Jessica Barness
Dancin’ to a New Tune: The Subversive, Entrepreneurial Flexi Disc
 The story of the flexi disc vinyl record is an intertwining of manufacturing, form, content, and publication.
Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Julian Alexander
 What made Julian Alexander become a designer, and what was it like working with 50 Cent during the start of his career?
Debbie Millman
Kaki King
 Debbie talks to musician Kaki King about her collaborations, her career, and performing and composing.
Michael Bierut
I Love the 80s
 Miami Vice: the quintessential postmodern design artifact, in all its glory and all its disgrace.
Mark Kingsley
The Old Taylor Can’t Come to the Phone Right Now
 Taylor Swift’s new album, Reputation, may aspire to high art; its cover design is most definitely a step toward the middle.
Lilly Smith
New Album, Old School: Branding The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach
 “The appeal of my stuff is that it isn’t perfect. I don’t know how to use Illustrator. Some people are stoked by and some people are turned off by it.”
Debbie Millman
Design Matters from the Archive: Nico Muhly
 Debbie talks to composer Nico Muhly about his music and about the musicians who interpret it. "I always feel like they appreciate something that’s detailed on the page to indicate that I know what I’m talking about, but with room for them to continue the conversation when I’m dead."
Debbie Millman
Design Matters from the Archive: Amanda Palmer
 On this podcast Debbie talks to Amanda Palmer about her wild and wandering path to the rock stage, and about how behind her artistic ambition is the drive to feel real.
Lawrence Azerrad
Remix, Repeat, and Rediscover: Amplifying the Impact in Art and Music Through Change
 Design, like music, is accustomed to remixing.



Steven Heller
I Still Wish I Were a Beatle
 The Beatles have, over the course of my lifetime, become attached to my nerve endings. It’s a curious sensation, but one I’m glad I still have.
Adam Harrison Levy
An Interview With Philip Glass
 In 2005, Adam Harrison Levy interviewed Philip Glass for a BBC documentary film about Chuck Close. Glass was seated in front of the monumental painting Phil. This is their exchange.
Michael Bierut
All That Jazz: Posters by Niklaus Troxler
 Niklaus Troxler’s jazz posters can be viewed as a single, self-initiated project that has developed over five decades, a body of work with few precedents.
Rob Walker
Listening to Retail
 Disquiet Junto has been listening to retail, and it’s changing my ears.
The Editors
King of Pop
 Alex Steinweiss
Véronique Vienne
When the Soundtrack is the Message
 Music supervisor Beth Urdang
Steven Heller
Mad Music
 Back to a time before art, design, and humor had to be sophisticated to be good.
Blake Eskin
White Lines
 Shared Earbuds
Rick Poynor
The Art of Punk and the Punk Aesthetic
 Punk has two graphic histories: Punk: An Aesthetic and The Art of Punk. What conclusions do they draw?
Jessica Helfand
The Karaoke Effect
 The illusory bubble populated by thousands of fame-seekers who fervently believe in their own righteous, if highly fictional talent.
Debbie Millman
Nico Muhly
 Debbie talks to composer Nico Muhly about his music and about the musicians who interpret it.
Adrian Shaughnessy
Innovation in banality
 Searching the stacks of "library music"
Debbie Millman
Amanda Palmer
 Debbie talks to Amanda about her wild and wandering path to the rock stage, and about how behind her artistic ambitions is the drive to feel real.
Adrian Shaughnessy
Music by the Numbers
 Listening in the Digital Age
Rob Walker
An Album-Packaging Feast
 A delicious viral tribute to a gut-bomb ZZ Top album-packaging image from the vinyl era
John Foster
Accidental Mysteries
 This collection of underground music and culture events flyers come from the personal online collection of Chicago collector Marc Fischer.
Rick Poynor
Exposure: Cabaret de l'Enfer by Harry C. Ellis
 The ghoulish cavern in the villa of Ormen
Rick Poynor
Exposure: Grace Jones by Jean-Paul Goude
 Beauty, androgyny, and threat
Debbie Millman
Morley
 On this episode of Design Matters Debbie Millman talks to Morley about her songs of social change.
Rick Poynor
Exposure: Luigi Russolo’s Noise Machines
 Sonic conjurors of experimental music
Rob Walker
The Music Video, Rebooted
 How digital-era aesthetics are making music videos worth watching again
John Foster
Blues, Baptisms, and Prison Farms: The Lomax Snapshots of 1934-1950
 Blues, Baptisms, and Prison Farms: The Lomax Snapshots of 1934-1950
Rob Walker
Personal Packaging
 Fondly revisiting the look and feel of the mixtape.
Debbie Millman
Terry Teachout
 Terry Teachout discusses the early days of blogging, the poetics of theater and what it's like to be a drama critic for The Wall Street Journal.
Rick Poynor
From the Archive: Brian Eno, Artist of Light
 An early profile of ambient musician and producer Brian Eno’s parallel career as a visual artist.
Rick Poynor
Soft Machine’s Dysfunctional Mechanism
 An alternative cover for the French release of The Soft Machine’s first album alludes to the history of the machine in 20th-century art.



Observed
Classic Albums Reimagined as Books
 Christophe Gowans re-imagines well-known album covers as book jackets.



Observed
Speculative Sound Performance
 On Tuesday, November 27, at Apexart in NYC: an exercise in sonic branding.
Rob Walker
On Dapper Dan
 A look at the spectacular logo-remix aesthetic of rap-culture style pioneer Dapper Dan.
Rick Poynor
True Stories: A Film about People Like Us
 Ambiguous but prescient, David Byrne’s film True Stories is a classic piece of postmodern pop anthropology.
Rick Poynor
It’s Smart to Use a Crash Test Dummy
 The image of the crash test dummy has traveled from the subcultural fringes to the pop culture mainstream.
Rick Poynor
Brian Eno’s “Music for Films”
 On Brian Eno and a competition to design an alternative sleeve for Music for Films
Rick Poynor
From the Archive: Graphic Metallica
 Heavy metal’s extremity, as a set of aesthetic choices and as a way of life, exerts an enduring fascination.



Debbie Millman
Roman Mars
 Radio producer Roman Mars discusses the connection between ’zines and radio, why he ditched science and the reason he named his show “99% Invisible”.



Debbie Millman
John Flansburgh
 John Flansburgh on being the son of a modernist architect, designing album covers for They Might Be Giants and of course, making music.
Rick Poynor
On My Shelf: Continuum’s 33 1/3 Series
 The 33 1/3 books about classic albums are a perfect example of how design can help focus an editorial idea.
Michael Bierut
At the Movies with Javier Mariscal
 Chico & Rita is a new animated film by Spanish designer Javier Mariscal and director Fernando Trueba.



Adrian Shaughnessy
Minotaurs in Suburban England
 English designer Vaughan Oliver met Adrian Shaughnessy to show him preliminary work on a deluxe Pixies box set called Minotaur.



Rob Walker
Hearing Things
 I have seen the future of rock and roll, and it’s merch. Of course, band-branded merchandise has been a major part of the music business, big and small, for years.



Rob Walker
The Song Decoders
 Pandora, is convinced it can guide you, to music that you like. The premise is that your favorite songs can be stripped to parts and reverse-engineered.



Alexandra Lange
Icon Review: Attila
 At the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Attila, the applause starts before the curtain rises.



Rob Walker
Hitting Rewind on the Cassette Tape
 The romance associated with vinyl seems to apply to its longtime analog rival, the cassette.



Alexandra Lange
Trip Down Memory Lane
 In my ongoing project to give my son as much of a 1970s childhood as possible, we recently ran across all of the 1968 animated film, Yellow Submarine.



Alexandra Lange
The Tigertones
 I was thrilled by the metion of the Tigertones in this week's episode of Mad Men.



Teddy Blanks
Teddy Blanks on Figurines
 Significant Objects is a much-discussed experiment conducted by Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker. This story by Teddy Blanks is recorded as an MP3...



Teddy Blanks
Significant Objects: Porcelain Scooter
 Significant Objects is a much-discussed experiment conducted by Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker. The fourth of five stories is by Teddy Blanks...



Mark Lamster
Theirs Go to Twaalf
 Meet Lamster (no relation), Belgium's ascendant metal goliath.



Mark Lamster
Michael Jackson, Automotive Designer
 I know, Michael Jackson has done some terrible things. Tax evasion. Absconding with the Beatles catalog. Child molestation. We Are the World. But this — is design even the word for it?



Mark Lamster
A Horrible Machine
 Check out my essay on the classic scout song "Dunderbeck" in the latest issue (no. 6) of the always gnaw-worthy Meatpaper.
Tom Vanderbilt
Fanfare for the Common Commuter
 I’ve become a regular morning commuter on the city’s splendid Metro — the first in the world to employ only rubber tires on its cars. It didn’t take long for me to notice, as the trains departed, a curious trilogy of tones that echoed, along with the hum of the engine, through the concrete-chambered station. The notes, I realized with a start, were the beginning of Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man.



Debbie Millman
Michael Hodgson
 Michael Hodgson is a DJ and a designer and is co-founder of the design firm Ph.D.



Debbie Millman
Gordon Hull
 An all-music show with DJ and designer Gordon Hull, co-founder of the firm Surface to Air.



Dmitri Siegel
Taking Things Seriously II



Adrian Shaughnessy
Tony Wilson: The Postmodern Mythmaker
 Tony Wilson, founder of Factory records, died August 10. Wilson had many claims to fame: he was a successful television presenter; a music industry impresario of flawed and maverick genius; and he was one of the shrewdest patrons of graphic design there has ever been.



Liz Brown
Phil Spector vs. The Wall of Sound
 Until 1966, producer Phil Spector was an unstoppable machine, churning out "symphonies for little kids." Then came "River Deep, Mountain High," where the combination of Tina Turner’s raw, unbridled passion and Spector’s orchestral swoon was a total disaster. Spector’s career was over, but the song goes on and on.



Richard Turley
Off the Grid
 When you abandon most of the rules, how do you define a mistake? How to art direct a newspaper from the middle of the muddy Glastonbury music festival.



John Corbett
Sun Ra, Street Priest and Father of D.I.Y. Jazz
 Before the 1950s, artist-owned record companies were unheard of, but Sun Ra pioneered the idea along with a couple of other musicians and composers. Sun Ra and Alton Abraham helped define the do-it-yourself ethic that came to be a central part of the American independent music industry, designing and in some cases manufacturing the covers themselves. In the process, they maintained a previously unimaginable degree of control over the look and content of their jazz releases.
Adrian Shaughnessy
Are JPEGs the New Album Covers?
 An audio file with a thumbnail JPEG of the album cover will never have the resonance — not to mention the commercial value — of a well-made piece of packaging. But if the corporate providers of downloadable music have their way, this is the future of recorded music. Who ever had a love affair with a JPEG?



Michael Bierut
Cheap Music and Commercial Art
 You wouldn’t know it from Dreamgirls, but Motown staff songwriters Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland were examples of how art is created under pressure.



Jessica Helfand
I'm Not Ready to Make Nice



Alissa Walker
War Is Over! If You Want It
 When the star of the documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon is asked by a reporter what he thinks Nixon should do to end the Vietnam War, Lennon stares incredulously into the camera. "He should declare peace." As if this was the most obvious solution in the world.


Michael Bierut
Vinyl Fetish
 A meditation on the joys of vinyl.



Dmitri Siegel
More Rules
 The artwork for Beck's new album The Information immediately brings to mind the work of Sol LeWitt and the question of where the creative act is situated: in making the work or making the rules.



Dmitri Siegel
Broadcast vs. Broadband
 Viral video is on the rise, spreading from broadband to broadcast and back again. What are the opportunities for designers in this new genre?



Michael Bierut
Wilson Pickett, Design Theorist, 1942 - 2006
 Wilson Pickett's advice on hitmaking, "Harmonize, then customize," would make good advice for any designer.



Michael Bierut
Designing Twyla Tharp's Upper Room
 Jennifer Tipton's lighting design for Twyla Tharp's dance piece, In the Upper Room, creates a magical experience for the audience and brings her often unseen art to the foreground.



Adrian Shaughnessy
Self-Initiated House Music
 It is perhaps stretching definitions to say that Julian House has become a musician, but with the help of sampling technology and an array of digital audio tools, he makes striking and compelling audio assemblages, which have strong stylistic parallels with his collage-based graphic design.



Adrian Shaughnessy
Decoding Coldplay's X&Y
 At a time when invisible data streams of binary information fed straight to our desktops are doing away with the need for album covers, it's odd to find a record sleeve as the subject of media comment and speculation. Odder still that the album cover in question — Coldplay's X&Y — should contain binary data as its central motif. Prophetic or what? The X&Y cover is agreeably eye-catching. You wouldn't call it a classic, but it has an unexpected severity that lifts it above the anodyne and cosmeticised design currently favoured by multi-platinum selling artists. It has dark echoes of Peter Saville's ephocal Factory covers.



Rick Poynor
But Darling of Course it’s Normal: The Post-Punk Record Sleeve
 There have been collections of post-punk music and now, finally, there is British music critic Simon Reynolds' 500-page history of the genre from 1978 to 1984. It's a brilliant book. He argues that post-punk music's explosion of creativity equals the golden age of popular music in the mid-1960s, but that it has never received its full due. I think he's right.



Lawrence Weschler
The Aural As An Architectonic Challenge
 What are the people over at Transom.org up to? As it happens, this month is a very good time to pay them a visit: for the next several weeks, Walter Murch — the phenomenally smart and inspired film and sound editor — will be continuing to hold court there.



Tom Vanderbilt
Rise and Fall of Rock and Roll Graphic Design
 Has heavy metal graphic design run its course? Is the band logo as a species dead? And is there much of a future for the graphic representation of popular music itself?



Rick Poynor
Theory with a Small "t"
 A critical writing determined by the need to shape practice will be limited in the cultural insights it can offer. This is the last thing that design writing needs when ways to engage a wider public could be opening up.



Observed


Quite possibly the most fascinating job opportunity in design right now.

Jessica Helfand on using AI as a tool to reverse-engineer a historical narrative.

Rethinking the city.

Rethinking the planet.

The problems of the user interface, one streaming service at a time. More here.

Urban design, with safety in mind. And that includes parks.

Think design thinking is over? Think again.

A museum renames a vegetable still life by Van Gogh that identified the wrong kind of allium.

Graphic design and typography obsessives—look no further!

“The challenge isn’t just that our systems default to keeping the “unlike” out,” notes Jens Martin Skibsted, “but we are, rather, in need of an interconnected worldview that appreciates the existence of other realities and contexts.”

Neville Brody’s new monograph (his THIRD)—covering his work for Nike, Coca-Cola, Tate Modern and Channel 4, as well as various informational graphics and magazine editorials—will be published next month by Thames&Hudson.

Milan Design Week wants to know your most memorable experience. Ours is easily Shaped by Water, an immersive experience exploring water as a source of inspiration for design. Co-created by Ivy Ross and her design team in collaboration with the water, light, and sound artist, Lachlan Turczan. Vote for your favorite here.

Non-profit design advocacy agency Where are the Black Designers? (WATBD?) has announced a year-long partnership with digital product studio Ustwo.

“He was mulling a career in graphic design when, at 17, he saw a searing image that would change the course of his life.” The American photographer Kwame Brathwaite has died. Considered the catalyst fo the “black is beautiful” movement in the 1960s, Braithwaite’s career spanned art, music, and more. He was 85.

The subtley, simplicity, and curious symbolism of the humble serif.

After a career of looking at pictures, she is now making them. George Gendron talks to Kathy Ryan, longtime director of photography at The New York Times Magazine.

COLLINS co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Brian Collins and co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Leland Maschmeyer will speak on branding and creativity at OFFF Barcelona this weekend.

“I can’t imagine any person with a background in graphic design made that thing without a committee of bland politicians sanding away its edges until they felt safe enough to unveil that to the public.” Behold: Logogate!

Black designers, curators, and more.

How do you stop deep-sea trawlers from harming ecosystems? Commission 10-ton marble sculptures and place them on the ocean floor, of course.

For ten years, Matt Needle has reimagined every best picture award nominee by redesigning their posters.

Coca-Cola...and art?

Don Norman‘s new book—Design for a Better World: Meaningful, Sustainable, Humanity Centered—is out March 21, from MIT Press. (Watch him discussing twenty-first century design on Youtube!)

Can design be a way to say “be careful”?

While Vermeer’s ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ is on loan, the Mauritshuis showcases 170 imaginative renditions in its place.

David Lance Goines, who “adamantly rejected the title of artist” has died. The iconic poster designer was 77.

Now you can get a Masters degree in graphic design—online!

How much do you know about “Swissness” legislation? The case of the Toblerone rebrand!

Oh, Brother (ly love)! Philadelphia needs a new ... flag?

Parisian opera house that inspired ‘Phantom of the Opera’ becomes an airbnb.



Jobs | May 28