The Design Observer Twenty




Books


Susan Magsamen, Ivy Ross
Your Brain on Art: Creating Community
 An excerpt from the book Your Brain on Art by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross.
Don Norman
Design for a Better World
 An excerpt from Don Norman’s new book, Design for a Better World.
Dana Arnett, Kevin Bethune
S10E12: Decolonizing Design
 Decolonizing Design: A Cultural Justice Guidebook is a guidebook to the institutional transformation of design theory and practice by restoring the long-excluded cultures of Indigenous, Black, and People of Color communities.
Daniella Zalcman
What We See
 The inaugural book from Women Photograph, What We See, is a broad survey that represents the equally broad careers of our members.
Pamela Hovland
Ecological by Design: A History From Scandinavia
 Dr. Kjetil Fallan’s "Ecological by Design: A History From Scandinavia" is a book I will be thinking about for a long time.

A Story Made of Pictures
 An excerpt from A History of the World (in Dingbats) by David Byrne.




Snails & Monkey Tails
 There are countless books that can teach you the alphabet, but almost none that focus on the tiny designs that run interference among the letterforms: those easily overlooked punctuation and typographic symbols.
Sloan Leo
The Infrastructure of Care: Community Design, Healing & Organizational Post-Traumatic Growth
 This essay interrogates the relationship between power, decision-making, and organizational healing. It asserts that community design as a practice offers a theoretical framework for organizational dynamic healing that structurally enables those harmed to set the pace and nature of resolution and repair.
Maurice Cherry
Make the Path by Talking
 The Birth of Revision Path: The year is 2006.
adrienne maree brown + Lesley-Ann Noel
This Is Our Time!
 adrienne maree brown on design, liberation and transformation as told to Lesley-Ann Noel.

Health Design Thinking



Our Will to Live
 An excerpt from Our Will to Live, a new book out from Steidl featuring 250 rarely seen concert posters, programs, portraits and scenes rendered by imprisoned artists of the Terezín prison camp.

Jens Risom: A Seat at the Table
 An excerpt from Vicky Lowry’s new book "Jens Risom: A Seat at the Table", out this week from Phaidon.



Debbie Millman
Ai Weiwei
 Ai Weiwei joins Debbie Millman to discuss his new memoir 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, depicting a century-long epic tale of China told through a story of his family.
The Editors
Woman Made
 A new story of women product designers is told in Woman Made.



Tucker Viemeister
Drama
 A review of Drama, a new opus from David Rockwell, by Tucker Viemeister.

A Photographer at a Wedding
 Midwife. Funeral director. Wedding photographer. You meet them once on a delicate day. They quickly slip into the inner circle of a family to perform their role during this rite of passage, and then they are gone.

Clara Istlerová, Her Work and Life



äntrepō: Volume 1
 äntrepō is a studio project by the DC-based design practice Spaeth Hill.
Robert Finkel + Shea Tillman
The IBM Poster Program
 IBM’s mid-century corporate creative direction usually brings to mind Paul Rand, but it’s staff graphic designers and photographers developed posters as a platform for elevating internal communications and initiatives within the company.
Jessica Helfand + Ellen McGirt
S9E4: Na Kim
 Na Kim is an associate creative director at the book publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Susan Yelavich
Beings: Unruly Things, Golems, Cyborgs
 Stories of the supranatural would seem to be among those childish things it is long time we put away. But somehow we never do.
Kaleena Sales
Teaching Black Designers
 The vibrant complexities of the urban landscape create visual impressions in the mind, eventually serving as a mental library of stored images to use or reference when necessary.
Ellen Lupton
Confidence Equity
 Are we born with confidence, or do we earn it? If we don’t have it, how can we get it?

Origins of Design Patents
 Although the story of design patents is closely intertwined with that of industrial design, in fact design patents predate the emergence of industrial design as an organized professional discipline by nearly a century.

Sign Painting
 In the last ten years or so we have truly witnessed a resurgence of the sign painter’s craft.
The Editors
Self-Reliance
 To think through making, to know yourself better through the process of producing something.

The New Art of Making Books
 Founded in Philadelphia in 2016, Ulises is a collectively run art bookstore and exhibition space, who edited the recently published Publishing As Practice.
Jason Hill
Artist as Reporter
 In the 1940s the New York daily newspaper PM’s experimented with the then already "lost art" of sketch reporting.
Sean Adams
How Design Makes Us Think
 An excerpt from Sean Adams’ new book "How Design Makes Us Think".
Augusta Pownall
Rational Simplicity: Rudolph de Harak, Graphic Designer
 An interview with Richard Poulin, the long-overdue first comprehensive monograph of Rudolph de Harak’s work.
Adrian Shaughnessy
Impact
 Today, we use the internet and social media feeds to stay abreast of developments, but we used to rely on the design press. Already, most of the major players have left the stage. Will the few remaining stalwarts be around in 10 years’ time?

Covering Black America
 Decades ago, the great artist, poet, musician, and author Gil Scott-Heron famously proclaimed, “The revolution will not be televised.” He was right...It was, however, delivered monthly to newsstands and Black homes within the pages of Ebony.
Steven Heller
A Month With President Obama
 I spent last month, approximately three hours-a-night, seven-days-a-week, with President Barack H. Obama.
Steven Heller
Imagine, Observe, Remember
 The poetically enigmatic title says it all: Imagine, Observe, Remember; it is a book about process, memory, remembrance and interpretation.
Jessica Helfand
On Learning
 What resonates most unequivocally here is Emerson ’s plea for individuality—that iron string—the sovereignty of selfhood.



Steven Heller
Milton Glaser’s First Last Hurrah
Sketch & Finish illustrates Glaser’s teaching agenda, which is to say, one makes sketches to explore the unknown.
Patrick Fry
Magic Papers
 Magic is largely a solitary endeavour, but the channels of its tips and tricks had a little-known heyday around a hundred years ago.
Jessica Helfand + Claire Weisz
On Architecture
 Herewith, the first in a series of conversations with artists, architects, photographers, cinematographers, designers and makers of all kinds, from all over the world.

Word Rain
 In fall of 1969, a strange and brilliant book came into the world.



Steven Heller
The Influence of Nightlife on Design
 Cabarets, cafes, and nightclubs are as essential to the development of Modern avant garde art and design movements as are galleries, salons, and museums.
Steven Heller
Let’s Give Thanks for Books About Magazines
 If you love print magazines and bemoan their demise Steven Heller has seasonal gift suggestions for you.
Steven Heller
The Novel That Took Me Down Jojo’s Rabbit Hole
 Steven Heller interviews the author of "Caging Skies", the novel the new film Jojo Rabbit is based on.



Steven Heller
Dave King (RIP)
 Last January I thought I had received an email from a ghost.



Steven Heller
Booklover’s Guide to Le-Tan
 Steven Heller on illustrator Pierre Le-Tan and his daughter Cleo Le-Tan’s A Booklover’s Guide to New York.



Steven Heller
The Motivational Industrial Complex
 This publishing season I’ve found three motivational books, each on the benefits of creative activity that, despite the biases noted above, I would suggest you read, if only to be entertained.
Jonas Banker + Ida Wessel
Process
 The purpose pf this book is to reveal how physical sketching intertwines with critical thinking in the creative process, well beyond theoretical design jargon.
Steven Heller
The Bauhaus is Forever
 You can never have too much Bauhaus.
Debbie Millman
Austin Kleon
 Debbie talks with Austin Kleon, who describes himself as ’a writer who draws’.
Alex Cameron
On The Graphic Design Reader
Teal Triggs’ and Leslie Atzmon’s The Graphic Design Reader is as challenging as it is necessary.
Steven Heller
Don Wall: Brave New Book Design
Steven Heller talks to architect Don Wall about his radical book from 1971: Visionary Cities: the Arcology of Paolo Soleri.
Brian LaRossa
Why it Matters to Me if Designers Read and Write
 Literacy means being an engaged and responsible citizen. It means building sympathy and empathy. It means being radically curious and pursuing meaning with a sense of purpose.
Ken Gordon
Designers Like You Should Read Machines Like Me
 People, you might have noticed, are wracking their brains to understand artificial intelligence.
Debbie Millman
Elizabeth Gilbert
 Debbie talks with Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love about the love of her life and her latest book City of Girls.
The Editors
Whose Book and Cover Designs are the Best of 2018?
 Announcing the 2018 50 Books | 50 Covers selections.
Brian LaRossa
Should Book Publishing Leave New York City?
 America’s publishing trade took root and flourished in New York because the city’s cultural and geographic conditions created an optimal environment for that to happen.
Steven Heller
Seymour Chwast: Few Words, Many Letters
 Seymour Chwast, a man of few words, wishes there were more than 26 letters in the alphabet.
Ken Gordon
In the Future, Life Online Could Be “The Trial”—Unless We Design Something Better
The Trial is seen as prophetic by many.
Steven Heller
Photographing Science
 The role that image makers have in the fields of science and engineering is more vital, especially now.
Steven Heller
Born to be Posthumous
 Your book on Edward Gorey has been a long term journey for you. I know why I want to spend time reading it, but why did you want to invest so much of your life in Gorey’s head?
Jon Contino
Branding Baseball By Hand
 Baseball, survivial, tradition, make-believe: the most exciting way to spend an afternoon.



Observed


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.

A new episode of Print Is Dead. (Long Live Print!) is out for your weekend listening pleasure. On this episode George Gendron visits with the creators of the 1980s-90s interior design juggernaut — Met Home — editor Dorothy Kalins and designer Don Morris. [BV]

Celebrate the launch of Dean of Design at OCAD Dori Tunstall‘s new book, Decolonizing Design, out now from MIT Press with a launch party and conversation between Dori and Holly Harriel, Director of the MIT CoLab. [BV]

On design—and dogma. [JH]

When beauty meets grief. [JH]

Design and disability: the urban way. [JH]

History—and controversy—at Cooper Union. [JH]

Brian Collins on design clichés. [JH]

The Tate Modern’s “public” viewing area allows museum visitors to look straight into the homes of the residents of a nearby building: interested readers can nerd out on the forty-seven page ruling that explains why a design decision can fall prey to the laws of public nuisance. [JH]

Lou Dorfsman and Al D’Amato’s powerful advertisement from 1962: an appraisal. (Via Natalia Pangaro.) [JH]

Remembering Carin Goldberg. [JH]

Coming soon to The Design Museum in London, an exhibition on design and history—organized by the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei. [JH]

Will the future of design be collaborative? Figma’s Yuhki Yamashita thinks so. [JH]

Designers and layoffs. [JH]

Proving that America really is in crisis, the US State Department changes its official font to Calibri. Discuss! [JH]

The artist whose book covers distilled the nineteen-eighties. (via Mike Errico) [JH]

Ruth Adler Schnee, one of the more important textile designers of midcentury modernism, dies at 99. [JH]

In Denmark, thinking—and designing—out of the (grey) box. [JH]

Jerald Cooper’s aim is to make architecture and design more accessible by using layman’s language to break down barriers typically set up by white academics with advanced degrees. [JH]

Corn husks were just the start: a Mexican designer in London writes his own rules. [JH]

Wieden+Kennedy London launches standalone branding and design studio—called—NOT Wieden+Kennedy. (Play their logo generator yourself, here.) [JH]

Inclusive design, at Microsoft. [JH]

Best design stories of 2022, from The Guardian. [JH]



Jobs | April 01