Dear Bonnie


Bonnie Siegler
Rapid Fire
Our own Bonnie Siegler takes your questions



Bonnie Siegler
Frightened in Fort Lauderdale
The benefits of being scared



Bonnie Siegler
Unsure in Utica
Measuring up — or not


Bonnie Siegler
Naive in Norwalk
Dear Bonnie doles out some homework


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie
Baffled in Buffalo



Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Fretting in Fredericksburg
This week Dear Bonnie gives an unhappy designer advice on contracts, fees, and client management.


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Lost in London
Are you as good as you think you are? Is your job?


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Lost in Louisville
This week, Dear Bonnie highlights the importance of good communication ... and manners.


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Helpless in Hermosa Beach
This week Dear Bonnie turns the answering over to contest winner Erica Heinz, who encourages readers to “work collaboratively, without the need for recognition.”


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Deals in Dillon + A Giveaway
This week Dear Bonnie reminds us that design should never be sold by the pound.


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Nervous in Nantucket
This week Dear Bonnie encourages a new-ish employee to speak up!


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Dissed in Denver
This week Dear Bonnie reminds a 19 year old intern what it means to be a 19 year old intern.


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Partnering in Peoria
What questions do you ask to start a business partnership off right? Dear Bonnie has a few. 


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Wondering in Westport
This week Dear Bonnie advises a do-everything-wonder-kid about his portfolio.


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Aggrieved in Atlanta + Bumming in Brooklyn
Advice for designers who receive unsolicited opinions from friends and those whose clients have bad taste.


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Lost on Long Island + Stuck in Schenectady
This week Dear Bonnie tackles what to do when your client stops returning your calls, and how to get your brain moving.



Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Cringing in Charleston
This week Dear Bonnie gets to the heart of the conundrum that is graphic design. Designers represent the needs of both art and commerce, which means they serve many masters.


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Reeling in Rotterdam + Apprehensive in Austin
This week Dear Bonnie tackles clients who don't pay and clients who think you've stolen a logo. Excellent advice from Bonnie Siegler.


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Taunted in Tehran
This week Dear Bonnie answer Taunted in Tehran about proper credits when you've collaborated with a group, but one person runs off with the idea.


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Mixed up in Martinsville
This week Dear Bonnie answers Mixed up in Martinsville about how to deal with clients without burning bridges. The key: written agreements.


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Frustrated in Florida
This week's advice from Dear Bonnie focuses on how to handle on those people who think graphic design is as easy as a 1-2-3 click.


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Confused in Connecticut
This week's advice from Dear Bonnie deals with aloof clients: Are they too cool or embarrassedly avoiding your questions because they just don't know the answers?


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Women of Washington + Young in Youngstown
This week's advice from Dear Bonnie focuses on women: are there enough women represented on jury panels, in board rooms, anywhere; and is there any specific advice for young female designers?


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Cheated in Chicago
This week Dear Bonnie — our truth-telling advice column from Bonnie Siegler — advises independent artist "Cheated in Chicago" on the best course of action when her work is being used by a large brand without her permission.


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Trapped In Toledo + Desperately Seeking Designers
This week Dear Bonnie — our truth-telling advice column from Bonnie Siegler — advises Trapped In Toledo on how to win over his client's communications officer and Desperately Seeking Designers on finding talented, deserving young hires.


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Tips for Toyland
This week Dear Bonnie — our truth-telling advice column from Bonnie Siegler — takes a lok at the pitfalls of casual letter writing.


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Bullied in Brighton
This week Dear Bonnie tackles bullying at the office.


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Interested in India + Window Dressing in Wisconsin
This week Dear Bonnie tackles online vs. offline design studios, client retention and the future of retail window dressing.


Bonnie Siegler
Dear Bonnie: Troubled in Techworld + Befuddled in Buffalo
Our first Dear Bonnie — a new truth-telling advice column from Bonnie Siegler.



Observed


Coming soon to the Center for Contemporary Arts In Berlin, an exhibition featuring more than100 original posters by one of Japan’s most influential and internationally renowned graphic designers and poster artists, Shigeo Fukuda

The Design Newsroom is a new digital platform designed to streamline the interaction between award-winning designers, brands, and the global media landscape.

“The idea was to create a sanctuary in the center of the city where anyone is welcomed, no matter their faith, religion, what brings them there, or their backgrounds, “ observes Krista Nightengale, Executive Director of Better Block, a placemaking nonprofit based in Dallas. Read more about their newest initiative: a design competition to combat loneliness. Elswehere in Texas, Icon—an Austin-based startup—launched own competition, inviting professionals to design homes that could be built for $99,000 or less “without sacrificing beauty, dignity, comfort, sustainability, or resiliency”.

Two Australian First Nation artists, Naminapu Maymuru-White and Daniel Boyd, are uniting at Art Basel Hong Kong to present complex and contrasting views of Indigenous identity. 

March 21st was the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. We may need more than one day for this.

Ryan O’Rourke, Alberto Ponte, and Dan Sheniak are responsible for some of the most iconic ad campaigns Nike ever produced. The Wieden+Kennedy veterans are heading out on their own with Someplace, a new LA-based, full-spectrum creative, brand, identity, and design shop. “We wanted to challenge ourselves in a new way,” says Sheniak. “What does our next chapter look like? How do we push ourselves and make ourselves uncomfortable to create something? From there, we just started getting excited about what we could dream up together.”

Along with Ann Demeulemeester, Dirk Van Saene, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dirk Bikkembergs, and Marina Yeeone (originally known as the Antwerp Six), renowned Dutch designer Dries Van Noten—whose clothes are known for their simplicity, elegance, and drape—makes a graceful exit.

Enzo Mari saw design as the production of knowledge (as opposed to consumption). The Italian theorist, ethicist, and spirited provocateur—who died in 2020—is the subject of a new show opening next week at London’s Design Museum, and running through September.

Are you lying awake at night pondering the future of the world—and in particular, of design? “And when it doesn’t seem to matter, suddenly it really does..” The extraordinary Forest Young weighs in.

Prospective students working at the nexus of virtual reality, video games, political campaigns, or even on the next Hollywood blockbuster, look no further. A new one-year Masters program at Sci-Arc in Los Angeles may be just what you're looking for.  

Designing an app for a … (wait for it) … parrot.

Fast Company's Most Innovative Design Companies for 2024 include Adobe—"for embracing generative AI the right way—and a shortlist of tech, product, and branding firms.

While human-centered design was once the pinnacle of progressive ambition, a tricky question now confronts us all: what about the rest of life? Working with John Thackara and Caterina Castiglioni, at the School of Design of the Politecnico di Milano twenty international design students were asked to design an urban ecology tool, place, equipment, or experience, that would enhance the interdependence of all of life in practical ways. Their conclusions are diverse, inspiring, and powerful. (Read the full report here.)

Reports of discrimination (and a lawsuit) at Harvard's Graduate School of Design.

Native American graphic design: a primer.

Cheryl Holmes's next book documents the history of the question she has been asking for decades—where are the Black designers?— along with related questions that are urgent to the design profession: where did they originate, where have they been, and why haven't they been represented in design histories and canons? With a foreword by Crystal Williams, President of Rhode Island School of Design, HERE: Where the Black Designers Are will be published next fall by Princeton Architectural Press.

Can ballot design be deemed unconstitutional? More on the phenomenon known as "Ballot Siberia," where un-bracketed candidates often find themselves disadvantaged by being relegated to the end of the ballot.

Designing the Modern World—Lucy Johnston's new monograph celebrating the extraordinary range of British industrial designer (and Pentagram co-founder) Sir Kenneth Grange—is just out from our friends at Thames&Hudson. More here.

Good news to start your week: design jobs are in demand!

An interview with DB | BD Minisode cohost and The State of Black Design founder Omari Souza about his conference,  and another about his new book. (And a delightful conversation between Souza and Revision Path host Maurice Cherry here.) 

What happens when you let everyone have a hand in the way things should look and feel and perform—including the kids? An inspiring story about one school’s inclusive design efforts

Graphic designer Fred Troller forged a Swiss modernist path through corporate America in a career that spanned five decades. The Dutch-born, Troller—whose clients included, among others, IBM, Faber Castell, Hoffmann LaRoche, Champion International, and the New York Zoological Society—was also an educator, artist, and sculptor. Want more? Help our friends at Volume raise the funds they both need and deserve by supporting the publication of a Troller monograph here.

The Independence Institute is less a think tank than an action tank—and part of that action means rethinking how the framing of the US Constitution might benefit from some closer observation. In order to ensure election integrity for the foreseeable future, they propose a constitutional amendment restoring and reinforcing the Constitution’s original protections.

Design! Fintech! Discuss amongst yourselves!

The art (and design) of “traffic calming” is like language: it’s best when it is extremely clear and concise, eliminating the need for extra thinking on the receiving end. How bollards, arrows, and other design interventions on the street promote public safety for everyone. (If you really want to go down the design-and-traffic rabbit hole with us here, read about how speculative scenario mapping benefits from something called “digital twins”.)

Opening this week and running through next fall at Poster House in New York, a career retrospective for Dawn Baillie, whose posters for Silence of the Lambs, Little Miss Sunshine, and Dirty Dancing, among countless others, have helped shape our experience of cinema. In a field long-dominated by men, Bailie's posters span some thirty-five years, an achievement in itself. (The New York Times reviews it here.)

Can't make it to Austin for SXSW this year? In one discussion, a selection of designers, policymakers, scientists, and engineers sought identify creative solutions to bigger challenges. (The “design track” ends today, but you can catch up with all the highlights here.)

Should there be an Oscar for main title design?

Design contributes hugely to how we spend (okay, waste) time online. But does that mean that screen addiction is a moral imperative for designers? Liz Gorny weighs in, and Brazillian designer Lara Mendonça (who, and we love this, also self-identifies as a philosopher) shares some of her own pithy observations.

Oscar nominees, one poster at a time.



Jobs | March 28