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:

2019 is the International Year of Periodic Table
Bloomberg Businessweek, The Elements, special issue
How Much Of Each Element Is There?
Internet Database of Periodic Tables
New York Times, Is It Time To Upend The Periodic Table?
Rachel Berger, Medium, The Death of Design Portfolios
Tatiana Mac on Systems of Systems
The 1619 Project
CityLab, Maps That Make Us

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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

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Episode 126: Screens and Dreams
Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration; Unorthodox; My Brilliant Friend; The Affair; Anil Dash on the dangers of social media; Anna Wiener on Silicon Valley; quarantine dreams

Episode 125: Zoom Aesthetics
Zoom aesthetics and COVID-19; Kyle Chayka on minimalism; Deborah Berke on shared spaces; Jessica Salfia’s poem “The First Lines of Emails I’ve Received While Quarantining”; Megan O’Grady on artistic recluses

Episode 124: That Thing You Do
Making art and design during the COVID-19 pandemic; Christoph Niemann and Daniella Zalcman; Adam Schlesinger; spec scripts for Larry David

Episode 123: Closing Doors, Opening Doors
Looking at COVID=19: Flattening the curve, Washington Post designers Harry Stevens on visualizing social distancing, Alissa Walker on how dots are people, Stephen Sondheim at 90

Jobs | November 05