12.12.19
Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand | Audio

Episode 116: A Decade in Politics, A Year in Culture


This week, Jessica and Michael consider Hunter Schwarz’s list of 101 political images that defined the 2010’s, from his email newsletter, Yello. The list includes everything from Jon McNaughton’s nationalist realist paintings to the July 2015 Caitlyn Jenner cover of Vanity Fair.

“I remember standing on the street and seeing it on a newsstand  and literally it stopped me in my tracks,” Jessica says of the cover. This ability to capture a moment has gotten harder to do, she ads, since reading magazines or watching television has become
a much more private endeavor and also on your own speed and on your own timetable. Before, we had to wait and go watch in public or on the television. When CBS New played the thing, we watch the thing. So I think it's a much harder target to hit if you are running a magazine, if you are a showrunner for a television show…

Also mentioned this week:

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Posted in: Arts + Culture, Photography, 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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