09.06.19
Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand | Audio

Episode 110: The Style of Elements


2019 has been named the International Year of the Periodic Table by UNESCO. This week, Jessica and Michael talk through the organization of elements and matter, as well as how the grid’s design has persisted through time and culture.

Jessica says,
I think that the nature of the periodic table as a grid isn’t just a flatland. I think designers and scientists and architects and innovators are finding ways to dimensionalize and really ask penetrating questions that interrogate all of our assumptions about what Mendeleev back in the early 19th century had originally envisioned. It’s really remarkable to me that, as a system, it really stands as something that can be expanded upon but is no less valued for its original form.

Also mentioned this week:

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Posted in: The Observatory




Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand 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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