Books

Amplifying Accessibility and Abolishing Ableism: Designing to Embolden Black Disability Visual Culture
 An excerpt from from An Anthology of Blackness: The State of Black Design.
Adrian Shaughnessy
What is Post-Branding: The Never Ending Race
 A review of What is Post-Branding: How to Counter Fundamentalist Marketplace Semiotics.
Hannah Carlson
Schiaparelli’s Pockets
 Sensible aspects of clothing are “no sooner put into use than put into play,” dress historian Ann Hollander observed.

On Fighting the Typatriarchy
 "My intent was to make a typeface that stands for the strength of a woman at different times in her life. In Indian culture, a woman is expected to be the powerhouse of responsibilities." An excerpt from Feminist Designer.
Stuart Walker
Design Criticism
 An excerpt from Stuart Walker’s new book Design for Resilience.

William Kentridge: Prints and Posters
 A taste of the first installment in an epic catalogue of William Kentridge’s linocuts, etchings, monotypes, posters, and more.
Adrian Shaughnessy
Hello Human
 A review of Michael Horsham’s Hello Human: A History of Visual Communication, out now from Thames & Hudson.
Jessica Helfand
Henry Leutwyler: International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum
 An interview with photographer Henry Leutwyler that explores his photographic record of some of the nearly 30,000 objects in the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva.
Manuel Lima
The New Designer: Design is Local
 An excerpt from Manuel Lima’s latest book, The New Designer.



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


At The Design Museum in London, a more "rainbow-hued version of the Barbie universe". 

Right-leaning public interest groups have filed a barrage of federal lawsuits intended to dismantle long-standing corporate and government programs that consider race in job placement. With an alleged goal of “complete race neutrality” (a view of radical equality that, for example, lawyers for the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty think is “in line with the Declaration of Independence”) litigants are chippping away at the use of affirmative action across America.  

As we wind down Pride Month 2024, a look at how queer theory apples to urban design: as theory and practice grows more empathetic towards the needs of its diverse stakeholders, queer urban design brings a broad and holistic shift to understanding identity and community in publicly inhabited spaces, challenging traditional (and often rigid) methods of city planning by applying more inclusive criteria to reflect fluidity and interconnectedness. 

Longevity, by Design: Apple has published a 24-page document outlining its key principles for designing hardware that endures.

Manchester City released a brand-new club font to use on the player’s shirts. But instead of tapping the skills of renowned typeface firms who routinely work with sports teams and brands, the Premier League champions asked former Oasis rocker Noel Gallagher to submit a brief. So he did! And the crowd went wild.

Designer Vivienne Westwood’s personal wardrobe goes to auction.

The UK's Design Council has announced a plan to upskill one million designers for the green transition by 2030. Their report, A Blueprint for Renewal: Design and Technology Education, was published with a group of 20 design and education organizations. 

The Peabody-award nominated audio documentarians at Scene on Radio have just dropped CAPITALISM. A full season, a dozen or so episodes, exploring the world's dominant economic system -- how people shaped it over time and what to do about it now that more and more people see capitalism as the problem, not the solution. Produced by host/producer John Biewen with co-host Design Observer’s Ellen McGirt and story editor Loretta Williams, among other amazing collaborators.  The trailer is here; find it wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaking of AI, Kevin Bethune would like a word with Adobe. 

#Config2024: Figma announced a significant redesign, including new features and AI tools designed to help simplify the user experience. And, in case you were wondering, “All of the generative features we’re launching today are powered by third-party, out-of-the-box AI models and were not trained on private Figma files or customer data,” writes Kris Rasmussen, Figma’s CTO. 

Designed by PearsonLloyd for Teknion (a family-owned business with an environmental conscience and an international reach) Aarea is a chair that unites the concept of circularity and the simple reality of human needs: intuitive and ergonomic in use, it is made with a minimum of components and materials.

Old news: Apple rejected — “spurned,” actually —a proposal to integrate Meta’s AI chatbot with iOS “months ago,” says Bloomberg. Get a room already, gah.

It only touches the ground in six places: how to build a house that sits lightly on the land.

Graphic designer and artist Ming Hsun Yu is on a quest. “I explore human experience, metaphors and questions through graphic methods,” they say, “seeking possibilities within structures, fluidity between dualities, and constant joy.”

Forbes has accused Perplexity, an AI-powered search/chatbot startup, of stealing their content. The service describes itself as being able to provide “concise, real-time answers to user queries by pulling information from recent articles and indexing the web daily.” A new Wired investigation shows that it does that, in part, by surreptitiously scraping parts of the web that are deemed off-limits by operators. Wired also observed this: “[While Perplexity] is capable of accurately summarizing journalistic work with appropriate credit, it is also prone to bullshitting, in the technical sense of the word.”

Civil rights attorney and jazz pianist (!!) Bryan Stevenson has teamed up with jazz legend Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to release Freedom, Justice, and Hope, a live performance album of historic jazz records created to protest racial injustice. It’s streaming now.

The Vatican was forced to apologize “to those who were offended” after Pope Francis used a homophobic slur in a closed-door meeting. Then, two weeks later, he allegedly used the term again. While it deeply disappointed LGBTQ Catholics and their supporters who had been encouraged by his inclusive signals, attendees of this year’s Pride parade in Rome pointedly reclaimed the term and made the Pontiff the unexpected star.

Happy Pride: the new Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center is set to open. 

The annual design confab that is Config goes live June 26 and 27! Tune in online as acclaimed filmmaker, actor, and photographer Spike Jonze joins Ellen McGirt, editor-in-chief of Design Observer, as they explore the art of taking creative risks, facilitating unconventional collaboration, and navigating the future with AI. June 27th at 5:10pm Pacific Time; find the full agenda here.

De.fault is a recommendation engine built to reduce bias and broaden horizons. intentionally providing de-personalized information to enlarge our perspectives and counteract filter bubbles, ideological rigidity, social anxiety, and increasingly addictive and toxic content. Designed by Yoonbee Baek, De.fault is also the recipient of the 2024 Core77 Design Award for Best Speculative Design in the student category.

In stripping objects of all but their essential elements, the Shakers not only exposed the elegance inherent in even the most humble of items but also reinvented the concept of beauty itself. With its emphasis on durability, functionality, and timeless minimalism, Shaker design has had a profound effect on generations of artists, architects, and designers. (“Do all your work as though you had a thousand years to live,” urged Shaker leader Ann Lee, “and as you would if you knew you must die tomorrow. ) Now, they have their very own postage stamp.

At MIT on June 27—Designing With, Not For: a conversation between Richard Perez, founding director of the Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking at the University of Cape Town; Amy Smith, founding director of the MIT D-Lab; Surbhi Agrawal, 2022 MAD Design Fellow, urban planner, and data scientist at Sasaki; and Aditya Mehrotra, instructor of Mobiles for Development at MIT. This event is part of this year's Design Research Society (DRS) conference, on the theme of recovery, reflection, and reimagination.

Multi-Species Worlding is an experiment, for no more than twenty people, into the felt perspective of another species, in which participants will practice speaking as that species, and build shared worlds that serve all of life.  This workshop brings together multi-species artists, architects, researchers, storytellers, communicators, educators, entrepreneurs, designers, and anyone curious about co-creating worlds where all species thrive. 

Coming this fall, join a pivotal gathering of minds from Italy, Netherlands, Ireland, UK, China, Kenya, Germany, Denmark, Turkey, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Finland, Hong Kong, and the United States for Designing Nature and Humanity-Centered Future,  at ISMAT Portimão (in Portugal's Algarve) from 8 to 11 of October. Interested? You have until the end of July to submit an abstract.

“Must be buff, charged with the emblem of the State, a pine tree proper, in the center, and the North Star, a mullet of 5 points, in blue in the upper corner; the star to be equidistant from the hoist and the upper border of the flag, the distance from the 2 borders to the center of the star being equal to about 1/4 of the hoist, this distance and the size of the star being proportionate to the size of the flag .”  The State of Maine is seeking design ideas before voters in November determine whether to adopt a new, more distinctive flag.

Picture this: A photographer wins an AI Image competition with a real photo. "I wanted to show that nature can still beat the machine and that there is still merit in real work from real creatives," said Digital Artist Miles Astray before he was disqualified. 

The American artist Kehinde Wiley—whose work he describes as “shedding light on the inequities Black and Brown people face in our society,”—has been accused of sexual misconduct. Wiley has denied the charges, but two museums have canceled upcoming exhibitions of his work.

In tandem with this exhibition (on view through the end of January 2025),  a new, five-episode podcast—hosted by British design critic and author Alice Rawsthorn—traces the evolution of Gae Aulenti through the voices of friends, curators, and a range of international architects.

The Los Angeles Design Festival is looking for new board members.

The Obama Foundation is looking for a new VP of Communications.



Jobs | June 30