Politics

Ellen McGirt
It’s Time to Find Your People
Announcing Equity Observer, Design Observer’s new editorial vertical and newsletter focused on the people and ideas redesigning the world for good.


The Editors
Politics
Not everything is design, but design is about everything, Michael Bierut once explained. So do yourself a favor: be ready for anything.


Susan Morris
Tribeca 2023: Politics + the Arts
This years Tribeca Festival featured films about politics and the arts.


Class Action Collective
A Judicious Choice
Irony, sarcasm, pranks, hyperbole, and their relatives remain effective disguises to hide moral imperatives.


Lee Moreau + Natasha Jen
The Futures Archive S1E1: The Passport
On this inaugural episode of The Futures Archive podcast Lee Moreau and guest host Natasha Jen discuss passport design, which leads them to ask “who is the human is in human centered design?” With insights from Ellen Lupton, Kipum Lee, + Craig Robertson.


Steven Heller
Creative Director/Strategist Wanted for USofA
The United States of America more than once employed a creative director.


Jessica Helfand + Ellen McGirt
S8E12: Nikil Saval
Nikil Saval is a Pennsylvania state senator and the author of Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace.


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
Graphic Emergency Emerges in Poland
Political struggle has long fueled and catalyzed much of Poland’s historically visual innovations


Steven Heller
Jerseys To Remember
Since 2013, in the wake of the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s killer, the New York based photographer and filmmaker Raafi Rivero  has designed a series of basketball jerseys with the team name “Unarmed.”



Steven Heller
Snatching Satire From The Jaws Of Popular Culture
Caricature is Steve Brodner’s weapon of choice.


Steven Heller
Tolerance: Spreading the Word
THE TOLERANCE PROJECT is a traveling poster collection that celebrates and honors the starting point of all meaningful discourse: tolerance.


Steven Heller
To Free or Not to Free
Are there limits to free speech?


Steven Heller
Ralph Nader: Design Critic
“In today’s print news, legible print is on a collision course with flights of fancy by graphic artists,” Ralph Nadar’s blistering attack begins.


Lilly Smith
Chain Letters: Toni L. Griffin
I strongly believe—and have seen firsthand—how shared ownership in creating a vision plan inspires greater collective action.


Sam Holleran
Designing the “Real Deal”
Is there room for capital-D design in a political landscape that equates its absence with authenticity? We examine the political design landscape two years after the red MAGA cap.


Steven Heller
Closing New York’s Penal Colony
How design is playing an integral role in the campaign to close Rikers Island.


Brian LaRossa
Voting ≠ Hoping
American politics would have us believe that hoping alone is capable of heavy lifting.


Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand
Episode 91: Voter Experience
Voter suppression by Republicans, The McKinsey Design Index, Lovevery, Photogrammar


Pamela Worth
Three Billboards Outside New Haven
Hope for the best. Vote for science.


Steven Heller
Creative Action Network: Profiting From A Nonprofit
CAN’s mission is putting artists to work telling stories that matter.


Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand
Episode 84: The Politician’s Gaze
Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, a White House without culture, John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood, early Ivan Chermayeff book covers


Steven Heller
New Age Propaganda: The Trailer
Rather than psychological warfare, call this ideological “peacefare.”


Andre Barnet
The Age of Wreckers and Exterminators
For many people, the sudden appearance of Carson’s and Jacobs’s brilliant and prescient books was one of those moments that seem, in retrospect, to have changed the very order of things.


James Cartwright + Lilly Smith
Flipping the Script
How two progressive organizations, Tactical 2017 and Flippable, use open-source data and strategic voting, and why that might dictate the future of our elections.


Lilly Smith
Artifact: 2000 Palm Beach County Ballot
This article is the first in a new and ongoing Design Observer series, Artifact, which takes one piece out of AIGA’s Design Archives and asks a design expert in the topic being observed to reflect on its current impact in the present. This week: Marcia Lausen looks at the 2000 Palm Beach County Ballot.


Laetitia Wolff
Design for Democracy: Building Community Power
Design articulates choice at a time when there are seemingly no choices or only binary choices.


James Cartwright
Can Demagogues be Designed out of Democracy?
Dutch transition designer Rudy van Belkom and Irish digital design agency FrontEnd are leading the charge to combat democratic dissatisfaction. Is it a pipe dream, or can we design a different way?



Cheryl Heller
Social Design Helped Women Win Equality in Iceland. And So?
Forty-three years ago, Icelandic women used social design principles to implement "The Long Friday" strike for gender equity. As Cheryl Heller explains, the past has never felt more present.


Bonnie Siegler
Signs of Resistance
This book is a collection of visual expressions of resistance throughout American history. They include broadsides, postcards, posters, greeting cards, sculptures, paintings, ads, book covers, magazine covers, handmade-signs, projections, and the back sides of scrap paper.


Michael Bierut
Speech, Speech
The State of the Union Address is tonight. Messages, big ideas, careful details, second-guessing, refinements and revisions, anonymity: graphic design has a lot in common with political speechwriting. What kind of client do you suppose the President is?


James Cartwright
Architecture for the People: Bryan C. Lee is Taking Trust Back into Public Spaces
“Architecture is the most democratic and the least democratically used tool.”


Lilly Smith
For She Should Run, Politics Today are all About the Brand
Lesley Stordahl, Creative Director at CBX, explains how the design agency worked with non-profit group She Should Run to develop their brand and set strategies to meet lofty goals (like getting 250,000 women to run for elected office by 2030). “For women, we need to continually design knowing that a woman needs to see herself reflected there—see that it’s not just a man’s game.”


Susan Yelavich
A Sign of Resistance; A Symbol of Hope
In Poland, viral posters make “Konstytucja” a universal sign of protest.


James Cartwright, Lilly Smith
When Design Comes Second
Women’s History Month 2017 is coming to a close, and perhaps this year more ever, is ending with an ellipsis rather than a definitive period.


ThoughtMatter
Women’s March Posters
Empowering posters from ThoughtMatter celebrate women.


Michael Bierut
I’m With Her
The logo we designed for Hillary Clinton wasn’t clever or artful. I didn’t care about that. I wanted something that you didn’t need a software tutorial to create, something as simple as a peace sign or a smiley face. I wanted a logo that a five-year-old could make with construction paper and kindergarten scissors.


Steven Heller
The Swastika: Symbol of Enduring Hate
There is no greater visual slur than the swastika.


Cheryl Heller
Conflict as a Tool For Social Change
To be passionate about change requires unconquerable optimism, fed by a vision of the better thing ahead.


Debbie Millman
Seth Godin
Debbie talks to Seth Godin about how to live in our difficult political moment.


Alan Thomas
Signs, Signs
A visual essay of the women’s march in Chicago.


Christopher Simmons
How Shepard Fairey’s HOPE Poster Helped Elect Donald Trump
On the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration, it’s useful to consider how the poster that helped propel Obama to the presidency laid the framework for Trump’s ascendancy as well


Cheryl Heller
The American Dream in Black and White—Designing a Just Economy
Social design is based on finding the right question to ask, rather than looking for the best person to blame.


The Editors
I’ve Been to the Mountaintop
Martin Luther King Jr.’s final speech.


Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand
S1E12: Teddy Goff
Teddy Goff was the digital director for Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection effort and an adviser to Hillary Clinton in 2016.


Ken Gordon
Why the Gettysburg Address Is a Call to Bring Design into Government
How might we improve the level of dialogue between the people and their representatives? With design.


De Andrea Nichols
Creative Will
What it takes to shift creative organizations and industries toward greater racial equity


Steven Heller
America’s Big Design Problem
Donald Trump may not be the ideal design client, but that just means we have to work that much harder.



Debbie Millman
Eileen Myles
Debbie talks to poet Eileen Myles about poetry, fame, and politics.


Michael Bierut, Jessica Helfand
Episode 45: I’m With(out) Her
Election night, Brand Trump and the presidency, Design That Matters, Facebook’s flawed news feed


Michael Bierut, Jessica Helfand
S1E5: Bruce Cohen
Bruce Cohen is an Oscar-winning film producer and president of the board of directors of the American Foundation for Equal Rights


Steven Heller
Ten Design Lessons from the 2016 Presidential Election
Steven Heller reflects on the good and bad.



Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand
Let’s Get to Work
We must bear in mind that democracy is about who we are, not who’s temporarily in office.


Lana Rigsby
Are Taco Trucks Awakening the “Sleeping Giant”?
Since September, Houston taco trucks have been serving up information to help Latinos access the voting process.



Michael Bierut
My Democracy Was Irretrievably Undermined by Reactionary Idiots and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt
Can a designer t-shirt contest have any effect on the US presidential elections?


Rob Walker
A Designer Runs For Office
Matt Tomasulo was a successful tactical urbanist. Then he ran for public office.


Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand
A Seat at the Table
The President needs a Cabinet-level Secretary of Design — or a design consigliere


Steven Heller
The D Word: Psy Ops
Psychographics


Alice Twemlow
Dodging, Dazzling, and Divulging
Design Responses to Mass Surveillance


Rick Poynor
Exposure: The Gamble by Peter Kennard
The clandestine operations of power



Rob Walker
Spawn of Gerrymander: Jennifer Daniel’s Texas 35th
Illustrator Jennifer Daniel reimagines Texas’ 35th congressional district: If you can read this, you’re in range.



Rob Walker
Spawn of Gerrymander: Steve Brodner’s Pennsylvania 7th
Steve Brodner reimagines Pennsyvlania’s Seventh Congressional District three (frightening) ways.



Rob Walker
Spawn of Gerrymander: Oliver Munday’s Florida 5th
Illustrator Oliver Munday revisualizes Florida’s Fifth Congressional District


Rob Walker
Spawn of Gerrymander: Lisa Congdon’s North Carolina 4th
Illustrator Lisa Congdon reveals that North Carolina’s Fourth Congressional District is a leafy sea monster.


Rob Walker
Spawn of Gerrymander: Leif Parsons’ Illinois 4th
Illustrator Leif Parsons reimagines Illinois’ Fourth Congressional District, giving a visual message to voters.


Rob Walker
Spawn of Gerrymander: Joe Alterio’s Maryland 3rd
Illustrator Joe Alterio reimagines Maryland’s Third Congressional District in a monstrous animated GIF.


Rob Walker
Spawn of Gerrymander: A Series
A week-long project in which six top illustrators visualize some of the most contorted congressional districts in the country.


Adrian Shaughnessy
Identity Politics
On the eve of a historic vote for independence DO’s resident Scot explains his position



Rob Walker
Seeing The Problem
How a graphic communication campaign could help us address a real electoral map crisis: Gerrymandering 2.0.


Manisha Sharma
Gendered Arrangements: India
Girls are considered a burden in Indian society, the issue is popularly known as the “missing girls” phenomenon.


Rick Poynor
Inkahoots and Socially Concerned Design: Part 2
In the mid-1990s, Inkahoots became a graphic design studio with its sights set on social causes.


Rick Poynor
Inkahoots and Socially Concerned Design: Part 1
The Australian design team Inkahoots is a model of community-based graphic design practice.



Observed
AIGA (Re)design Awards
The AIGA (Re)design Awards is an international graphic design competition celebrating the most influential designs that advocate for strong communities, sustainable environments and thriving economies.


John Thackara
Big, Hairy, and Agile
The UK government’s digital services platform, gov.uk, has won the Design of the Year award.


Alexandra Lange
What It Costs (to Buy a Bench, to Extend a Curb)
Participatory budgeting lets communities put their own urban priorities in order.



Observed
We The Designers
We the Designers” is a national exhibition of self-authored graphic design on view through April 5 at the AIGA National Design Center in NYC.


Rick Poynor
Utopian Image: Politics and Posters
By celebrating political posters for their design do we collude with the established order they seek to challenge?


John Thackara
Healing The Metabolic Rift
John Thackara on the possibilities and issues global business leaders will face at the 2013 World Economic Forum.


Alexandra Lange
Kicked A Building Lately?
That question, the title of the 1976 collection of Ada Louise Huxtable’s work for the New York Times, embodies her approach to criticism.


Alexandra Lange
Knolling Your Polling Place
Knolling your polling place: for the next election, a little spatial organization would go a long way.



Observed
Climate of Doubt
A documentary on the remarkable — and sometimes bizarre — debate over global warming and climate change that has gone on since 2008.


Rick Poynor
Demonstrations, Democracy and Design
After demonstrations in 2011, Barcelonas Plaça de Catalunya became a carnivalesque village of protest.


Rick Poynor
Why the Activist Poster is Here to Stay
Digital communication has given posters produced to contest an outrage or support a cause a new lease of life.


Rob Walker
Focusing On ‘Optics’
Optics: The indispensible buzzword for those who analyze pseudo-events.


Rick Poynor
Sending Signals about Political Graphics
Issue two of Signal, a journal about the visual languages used around the world to support political protest.


Alexandra Lange
Obama’s New Fonts
Obama bets on American nostalgia, shrinking Gotham and picking a script.



Observed
30 Posters for a Sustainable World
30 Posters for a Sustainable World brings together international designers to visualize the UN RIO+20 summit goals.


Rick Poynor
Jan van Toorn: The World in a Calendar
Jan van Toorn’s provocative 1972/73 calendar for the printer Mart.Spruijt has been reprinted by a Dutch design company.


Julia Novitch
Public Space and Citizenship: An Interview with Elihu Rubin
Public spaces can be charged politically because they enable citizens to gather, to represent themselves and to transmit messages.


Michael Bierut
The Poster that Launched a Movement (Or Not)
In the age of social media, does political graphic design matter?


John Foster
Accidental Mysteries
Welcome to Accidental Mysteries, a weekly cabinet of visual curiosities set aside for your perusal and enlightenment. This week's focus is Politics.


James Biber
Vestige(s) of Empire
Comparing the repurposing of two monuments to lost Empire: London's Commonwealth Institute and Berlin's Palast der Republik.



Owen Edwards
Hair Apparent
Who will be the Republican hair apparent?



Courtney Drake, William Drenttel, and Deirdre Cerminaro
Design and the Social Sector: An Annotated Bibliography
This bibiography surveys the literature of social design — the spectrum from design process and thinking to the zones of social innovation.



An Xiao Mina
90 Years of Chinese Communism: A Multimedia Celebration
How the Chinese Communist Party designed its 90th anniversary commemorations



Jac sm Kee
The Color Yellow
Malaysians supporting election reform attach new meaning to a national color, yellow.



Phil Patton
Boosting the Urban IQ
Summary of National Building Museum's "Intelligent Cities" symposium



Jessica Helfand
The Public Face of Disgrace
The funny thing about lying is that it's about as far as you can go from the expectation of trustworthiness with which we characterize public leadership. 



Alexandra Lange
The Moms Aren’t Wrong
Why planning cities for children would make them better for us all.



Jonathan Schultz
Give a Minute
Report on Local Projects' Give a Minute initiative to improve urban life.



Mark Lamster
Gerd Arntz: Design Icon
Gerd Arntz: A design icon who designed icons.



William Drenttel
A Conversation with Daniel van der Velden of Metahaven
An expansive interview with Daniel van der Velden, co-author of Uncorporate Identity.


Alexandra Lange
New City Reader: Sidewalk Sale
How Atlantic Yards became Barclays Center and disappeared from Brooklyn in the process.



Jonathan Schultz
Solo Kota Kita
Report on a design-oriented sysem for providing information about community resources in Indonesia as an aid for budgeting.


Mark Lamster
Center of Controversy
By now you’ve surely seen the new renderings by SOMA architects for Park51, the Muslim cultural center in Lower Manhattan.



Jade Dressler
Degrees of Temporary
Interview with Claudia Zanfi, co-founder of the cultural organization aMAZElab in Milan.



Mimi Zeiger
Food Not Bombs
Report on Food Not Bombs, an activist network, now about to turn 30, that distributes free vegan meals.



Meena Kadri
India's Epic Head Count
The enormous task of conducting India's 2010 census is aided by a newly designed form.



Alexandra Lange
Girl Power?
I saw this photo in the New York Times this morning and thought that Carly Fiorina’s campaign poster seemed kind of… girly.



Mark Lamster
Terror and Resilience on the Moscow Metro
The last time I was in Moscow, in 2004, there were a number of subway bombings — though outside the stations, not on the trains or platforms — and a couple of airliners were bombed.



Mark Lamster
A Matter of Perspective?
The Vancouver Sun has run a long follow-up story, by Jennifer Moss, to my Los Angeles Times pieceon the plagiarism charges leveled by Sze Tsung Leong against David Burden



Mark Lamster
London Calling
Back in my old life as an editor at Princeton Architectural Press, I had the great pleasure of editing (and designing) the Architecture of Diplomacy, which remains the definitive history of the American embassy building program.



Michael Bierut
Designing the Unthinkable
For more than fifty years, there have been arguments against nuclear proliferation. The Doomsday Clock translates all the arguments to a simple visual analogy.



Karrie Jacobs
A President and His Dog, Part 2
Karrie Jacobs analyzes the Obama administration's website.



Alexandra Lange
Casey Jones
Interview with Casey Jones, director of design excellence and the arts for the U.S. General Services Administration.



Aspen Editors
Aspen Design Summit Report: Sustainable Food and Childhood Obesity
At the Aspen Design Summit November 11–14, 2009, sponsored by AIGA and Winterhouse Institute, the Sustainable Food Project focused on accelerating the shift from a global, abstract food system to a regional, real food system via a robust portfolio of activities — including a grand challenge and a series of youth-engagement programs.



Aspen Editors
Aspen Design Summit Report: CDC and Healthy Aging
At the Aspen Design Summit November 11–14, 2009, sponsored by AIGA and Winterhouse Institute, the CDC Healthy Aging Project began with the initial premise to enhance the ability of public health entities to determine whether adults 50 and over have received recommended preventive health services. The Project developed a “5 over 50” concept and brand name, and a new goal: to double the current number of people who are “up to date” with these preventive measures.



Aspen Editors
Aspen Design Summit: Initial Report
Initial report on the 2009 Aspen Design Summit, sponsored by AIGA and Winterhouse Institute.



Jeff Speck
New Words on the Block
Jeff Speck reviews the Street Design Manual of the New York City Department of Transportation.



John Emerson
Pressed into Service
Interview with Lincoln Cushing, co-author of Agitate! Educate! Organize!: American Labor Posters.



Karrie Jacobs
A Thousand Points on Light: Part II
Continuation of debate between lighting designer Leni Schwendinger and Dark-Sky advocate Susan Harder about proper illumination of urban, suburban and rural environments.



Karrie Jacobs
A Thousand Points on Light: Part I
Debate between lighting designer Leni Schwendinger and Dark-Sky advocate Susan Harder about proper illumination of urban, suburban and rural environments.



Bradford McKee
Once More with Feeling: A National Design Policy
Bradford McKee reviews the history of efforts to create a federal design policy.



Andrew Sloat
Polling Place Photo Project
A retrospective of the Polling Place Photo Project, which asked American citizens to document the act of voting in all its glorious nationwide dissimilarity. Made in partnership with Winterhouse, co-sponsor of the Polling Place Photo Project. 2008



Andrew Sloat
Article 2 (for BHO)
Article 2 (for BHO) is a video short in honor of the historic swearing-in of our forty-fourth President, with the words Justice Roberts got mixed up on the big day. 2009



Andrew Sloat
More Perfect Union
More Perfect Union spells out the preamble to the United States Constitution with forty friends in a high school gym in New York City. 2007.



Andrew Sloat
22nd Amendment
22nd Amendment, was made in the twilight of Bush's second term, a reminder that sometimes the Constitution is our best friend. 2007



Mark Lamster
Nazdorovye!
Barack Obama is in Moscow hitting the reset button on Russian-American relations.



Mark Lamster
No More Neon on the Novy Arbat
In legislation somewhat reminiscent of Mike Bloomberg's restaurant smoking ban, Vladimir Putin isshutting down all casinos in Russia, effective tonight.



Mark Lamster
A Letter to the President
A letter to Barack Obama the day after his inauguration.



William Drenttel
Polling Place Photo Project
To commemorate the inauguration of President Barack Obama, please enjoy this short film by Andrew Sloat inspired by Polling Place Photo Project.



Jonathan Barnbrook
New Year's Greeting
A New Year's greeting from Jonathan Barnbrook, with a quote from George W. Bush.



William Drenttel
A Design-Oriented National Endowment for the Arts
A proposal for a design-oriented National Endowment for the Arts.



William Drenttel
The Obama Victory
The Polling Place Photo Project, staged in partnership with The New York Times and AIGA, seeks to visualize democracy in action with photographs by citizens engaged with voting at the polls. Yesterday was Barrack Obama's day, and these photographs are dedicated to him.



Teddy Blanks
A Year of Political Banner Ads
Perhaps the strangest aspect of this year's political landscape is the degree to which political banner ads have invaded our web space. Whether bearing the graphic identities of the major campaigns, or the crude, cobbled typography of web-marketing firms, they have popped up almost anywhere. And for the past year or so, I've been collecting my favorites.



William Drenttel
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Working with Amnesty International, Woody Pirtle designed a series of posters that spotlights 12 of the individual articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We celebrate these, today, the 60th anniversary of the UDHR.



William Drenttel
Polling Place Photo Project on November 4, 2008
We are pleased to announce that the Polling Place Photo Project is continuing into the 2008 presidential election, supported by a partnership of The New York Times, AIGA and Design Observer.



William Drenttel
Designersforobama.org?




Gong Szeto
Interview with Brian Oakes
It’s not often that graphs and numbers take center stage in a popular film, but in the brilliant hands of graphic designer Brian Oakes, information design is not a backdrop but a main character in the recently released documentary I.O.U.S.A. Interview by Gong Szeto.



William Drenttel
Whose Flag?
Nearly a decade into a new century, I believe it is unacceptable for a design organization, foundation, board of directors, magazine or other enterprise, to mount an initiative with an all male panel of judges. Such behavior is no longer acceptable and should not be tolerated by a community of designers (or any other community).



Alice Twemlow
A Look Back at Aspen, 1970
The 1970 International Design Conference at Aspen provided the setting for a collision between two very different conceptions of design. The IDCA board members who organized the conference and a number of art and environmental action groups, many of which where from Berkeley, California and had made the 1,000-odd mile journey to Colorado in chartered buses.



Paula Scher
It’s How You Said It
Paula Scher: “The problem with the New Yorker’s controversial Obama cover is not that it’s dangerous and tasteless. The problem is that it isn’t dangerous or tasteless enough.”



William Drenttel
Thoughts on Democracy, July 4 2008




Andrew Blauvelt
Over the Rainbow
June marks the start of a month-long series of LGBT Pride celebrations in cities around the United States and the world, as well as the 30th anniversary of the rainbow flag — the de facto symbol of the LGBT community. While the visual and media focus of the celebrations have been the parades, the most enduring element is perhaps the rainbow.



David Stairs
The Little Logo That Could
If it seems too hyperbolic to say that Obama stands as one of the most cleverly branded candidates in our history, look closer. Otheres have attempted to lay claim to the fifteenth letter of the Roman alphabet with mixed success. But to date, no one has been remotely as successful in so short a time as the Obama has with his campaign.



Steven Heller
The Magic of the Peace Symbol
There was probably no more galvanizing nor polarizing emblem during the 1960s than the peace symbol. And perhaps few symbols have had origins surrounded in as much mystery and controversy



The Editors
Marc Rabinowitz: Prostitution Facts
In spite of the tawdry glamour of "high-priced call girls," let's remember that this supposedly victimless crime takes a vast human toll that goes far beyond the embarrassment of powerful men. Marc Rabinowitz’s project invites us to imagine prostitution’s stark statistics...



William Drenttel
Polling Place Photo Project on Super Tuesday
Voting on Tuesday, February 5, in the U.S. presidential primaries? We hope you will contribute a photograph to the Polling Place Photo Project.



William Drenttel
Polling Place Photo Project 2008
We are pleased to announce that the Polling Place Photo Project is continuing into the 2008 presidential primaries and election, supported by a new partnership of The New York Times, AIGA and Design Observer.



Michael Bierut
Will the Real Ernst Bettler Please Stand Up?
In the late 50s, Swiss designer Ernst Bettler created a series of seemingly harmless posters that brought down a drug company with a Nazi past. It's a great story, but it never happened. Why do we need to believe in Ernst Bettler?



Nichelle Narcisi
Except You
Nichelle Narcisi, winner of last month's Command X competition at the AIGA Next Conference in Denver, presents "Except You," her proposed campaign to raise the voter participation rate for 18 to 24 year olds.



Elizabeth Tunstall
What If Uncle Sam Wanted You?
What if I decided to apply design thinking to the U.S. military? What roles could design thinking play in war? A recent The New York Times article, "Army Enlists Anthropologists in War Zone," makes these questions especially relevant today.



Michael Bierut
Déjà Vu All Over Again




William Drenttel
The Presidential Rash
It was reported this week by the Huffington Post that President George W. Bush has had Lyme Disease since last August — when he got the "characteristic bullseye rash" on his left shin. So what does a Presidential rash look like, anyway?



William Drenttel
Al Gore for President
Writing as a designer, as a writer, as a husband and father, but most of all, as a human being — I believe we should draft Al Gore to run for the Presidency of the United States.



David Stairs
That (Other) 1970's: The Last King of Scotland
The Last King of Scotland, Kevin McDonald's film about Idi Amin's notorious presidency, opened in Uganda to great fanfare. The VIP screening took place at Kampala's Cineplex, with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and Forest Whitaker in attendance. The premiere was not targeted to the average Ugandan...



William Drenttel
The Good Citizen's Alphabet
Bertrand Russell had the wisdom to realize that certain words require proper definition to be used correctly in political and social discourse. This alphabet book is offered here as a slide show for our readers.



Lorraine Wild
Sister Corita: The Juiciest Tomato
In Daniel Berrigan’s words, Sister Corita is a "witch of invention." And there is no doubt that at least in those tumultuous years of the 1960s, her powers of invention seemed supernatural, if not divine... Corita’s work stands for its sheer graphic invention, the riot of letterforms and color, and the immediacy of its connection to her time and place.



William Drenttel
Voting & Religion in America: A Slideshow
The reality, contrary to my perception, is that millions vote in religious settings all across the country, casting this important act of citizenry in distinctly non-secular environments.



Jessica Helfand
Into the Pink
Co-opting a color and making it your own.


Jessica Helfand
Death 'N' Stuff
Smoking Kills: The label days it all. Or does it?



DJ Stout
Remembering Ann Richards
To create the famous Texas Monthly cover of Governor Ann Richards astride a Harley, art director DJ Stout used a body double. "For many years, I would run into Ann Richards at my favorite Mexican food lunch spot in downtown Austin and she would always thank me for giving her such a 'sexy body.'"



Rick Perlstein
What is Conservative Culture?
Ask a conservative activist to explain what anchors and unites their fractious movement, and he will point to ideas. They will not mention the extraordinary role the development of a self-contained and self-conscious conservative culture played in transforming the politics of the United States.



Michael Bierut
Regrets Only
Five graphic designers have chosen to boycott a breakfast at the White House for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards. A principled stand or an empty gesture?



William Drenttel
The Red Hand : A Graphic History
I keep thinking about the red hand. Where did this graphic metaphor come from? The many uses of the red-hand — it's metaphorically rich and graphic history — remind me that symbols do have meaning. Whatever I think of Congresswoman Nancy Johnson here in northwestern Connecticut, I don't think she got caught red-handed, whether in a cookie jar or pie or pool of blood. This is a bad use of an historical symbol, and trashy politics as well.


Jessica Helfand
Disaster Relief 101: No Door Hanger Left Behind
Door hangers seem the perfect metaphor for FEMA’s failure: they’re one-dimensional, unnecessarily complicated, and basically useless.



Jessica Helfand
Give Me Privacy or Give Me an ID Card
The proposed National ID Card further blurs the line between the privacy and full disclosure of personal data in the public domain. It's the Card's design that appears the final string that may either secure our rights as individuals or rip them apart.



Jessica Helfand
Freedom of Speech or Filching of Style? The New Law of Eminent Lo-Mein
DIY design invading typography terrain: culture-jamming in the domains of freedom of speech, pharmaceutics, and pop-culture.



William Drenttel
David Hughes: Caricaturist of Our Time
But my favorite, in recent years, is the British illustrator David Hughes. I yearn for his drawings, look for them in my favorite publications, and save them whenever and wherever I find them.



Jessica Helfand
On Citizenship and Humanity: An Appeal for Design Reform
Ruminations on the Citizen Designer: A human first, a designer second, but most importantly, one who responds to collective cultural needs.



William Drenttel
Reading the News & Charting Death
The potential for terrorism is not a chart I can make in my head. The numbers are there, but the design alludes me.



Lorraine Wild
A Design Annual Captures 1968
The title on the cover of the booklet is "Business as Usual" subtitled "Fourteenth Annual Type Directors Show—Typography Wherever It Exists"... On every spread of the book there are lovely pieces of typography, things most any of us would have been proud to have created, and then an image as brutal as a slap on the face. It was 1968.



Rick Poynor
Getting Louder: Chinese Design on the March
The “Get it Lounder” design exhibition in Shenzhen, billed as the first of its kind in China, reflected the lifestyle aspirations of its participants. Will Chinese design be able to confront social reality in more overtly critical ways?



Michael Bierut
No Headline Necessary
A wordless billboard depicting the purple-stained fingers of Iraqi voters makes a potent advertisement for that country's newborn democracy.



William Drenttel
Stop The Plant: The Failure of Rendering
There is no single rendering ominous enough to create public fear; no image so compelling as to create political momentum; and no symbol so memorable as to unite the opposition. Whether through artistic renderings or compelling information design, no one has made a visual case against these plants that is wholly effective. This is, I believe, a fundamental failure of design.



Michael Bierut
Just Say Yes
A seemingly legitimate news release from Dow Chemical on the twentieth anniversary of the Bhopal disaster was actually a hoax perpetrated by The Yes Men, who have created a new kind of civil disobedience uniquely suited to the media age.



Michael Bierut
The Whole Damn Bus is Cheering
The familiar yellow ribbons stuck to cars urging us to "support our troops" have lots of competition and are horribly designed.



William Drenttel
My Country Is Not A Brand
Branding was originally an approach for creating reputations for commercial products.



Jessica Helfand
Am I Blue
Bumper stickers and lawn posters aside, Americans showed their concern on election day 2004 by standing in epic lines at polling centers around the nation, but also in certain subtle, discreetly visual ways. From dressing in all blue (or red) to wearing "I voted today" buttons, there has been a kind of silent visual communication effort steadily in play for the last 36 hours.



Jessica Helfand
The Rodneydangerfieldization of Graphic Design: Part I
We need to listen to people besides designers. We need to get in those boardrooms, those war rooms, those bastions of decision-making where no designer has ever been before. We need new legacies, better policies, richer histories for the next generation of graphic designers.



Michael Bierut
Graphic Designers, Flush Left?
Are graphic designers as a class predisposed to favor left-wing politics?



William Drenttel
Font Forensics, Or Whether George W. Bush Is Hiding Something




Michael Bierut
The Bodoni Conspiracy
Eerie parallels between the cover designs of the reports of the 9/11 Commission and the Monicagate investigator Kenneth Starr suggest a conspiracy that can be traced back to sixteenth-century type designer Giambattista Bodoni.



Michael Bierut
India Switches Brands
The 2004 elections in India were an exercise in branding as well as politics, as a well-funded "India Shining" campaign failed to convince the electorate to retain the ruling Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP).



Michael Bierut
Better Nation Building Through Design
A new flag design for Iraq may inadvertantly symbolize much of what is misguided in the US's occupation of that country.



Michael Bierut
Catharsis, Salesmanship, and the Limits of Empire
Nozone #9: Empire and a new promotional campaign for the radio station Air America demonstrate alternate ways that graphic design can engage political issues and their audiences.



Jessica Helfand
One Person, One Vote, One MRI?




Jessica Helfand
Graphic Flanerie
Graphic Design's real power comes from its ability to reach us through any of a number of means, both real and virtual, now and later. This ability to transcend the everyday and resonate in the heart, the soul, the mind and the memory—this is graphic design's reality, its legacy, and it is, decidedly, a reality that is more than a sum of its parts.



William Drenttel
The Lying Game No. 2 (Or Vietnam Redux)




Jessica Helfand
The Lying Game




Jessica Helfand
Annals of Typographic Oddity No. 2: Spaceship Gothic




Rick Poynor
Jan van Toorn: Arguing with Visual Means
Jan van Toorn’s designs embody an idea about citizenship. They address viewers as critical, thinking individuals who can be expected to take an informed and skeptical interest in the circumstances of their world.



Michael Bierut
George Kennan and the Cold War Between Form and Content
Diplomat George Kennan's "Long Telegram" of 1946 is a memorable synthesis of form and content, and a demonstration of how powerful form can be.



Jessica Helfand
Annals of Typographic Oddity: Mourning Becomes Helvetica




Jessica Helfand
Regarding the Photography of Others




William Drenttel
Typography and Diplomacy




Rick Poynor
Adbusters in Anarchy
Adbusters’ once orderly pages are in a state of heaving agitation. The magazine seems to be seduced by the coolness of design as a gesture, even though this is part of the surface-fixated postmodernism it deplores.



Michael Bierut
Mark Lombardi and the Ecstasy of Conspiracy
Artist Mark Lombardi's intricate handdrawn diagrams describing the relationships behind contemporary political and financial scandals are both beautiful objects and extraordinary feats of information design.



William Drenttel
Information Archaeology
Russ Kick is "a self-described 'information archaeologist...'" The revealing of state secrets through deconstructing a PDF.



Observed


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.

Ellen Mirojnick—the costume designer behind Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, and Oppenheimer, for which she is 2024 Oscar nominee—shares some career highlights from forty years in film. (Bonus content: we kicked off Season Nine of The Design of Business  | The Business of Design with this conversation.)

Erleen Hatfield, of The Hatfield Group, is the engineer behind many innovative buildings, including the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, home to the Atlanta Falcons, whose roof opens like a camera aperture to reveal the sky. Now, she's also one of the newly-minted AIA fellows, an honor awarded to architects—only 3% of their 98,000+ AIA members—who have made significant contributions to the profession.  

Anamorph, a new filmmaking and technology company co-founded by filmmaker Gary Hustwit (of Helvetica fame) and digital artist Brendan Dawes, wants to reshape the cinematic experience with a proprietary generative technology that can create films that are different every time they’re shown.

Viewers seem more concerned with Biden's rounded smartphone than with his policies. (We're not discussing the age of the man, here—just his phone!)

Claiming he is “not very good at design,” Riken Yamamoto, a 78-year old Japanese architect, wins the coveted Pritzger Prize. Notes the jury: "Yamamoto’s architecture serves both as background and foreground to everyday life, blurring boundaries between its public and private dimensions, and multiplying opportunities for people to meet spontaneously”.

Citizen outcry over Southwest's new cabin design—and in particular, it's new-and-improved-seats—may not be likely to  result in changes any time soon, but the comments (Ozempic seats!) are highly entertaining. (“Is there an option to just stand?”)

More than 50 years ago, a small group of design educators tried to decolonize design in Africa, hoping to teach African designers how to use research and design for their people and their nations by leveraging their own indigenous knowledge and local customs. While their pioneering effort was suppressed after a few short years by the colonial authorities, their approach to teaching design still resonates today: consider the story of François-X. N.I. Nsenga, an indigenous African designer who grew up in Belgian Rwanda and studied in British Kenya at Africa's first university-based design program. For more on the cultural history, design philosphy, and the "Europeanisation" of colonial Africa, you'll find a conversation with Nsenga in Gjoko Muratovski's book, Research for Designers: A Guide to Methods and Practice

At turns dystopian and delightful, the future of AI-based digital assistants seem poised to communicate through the “emotion and information display” of new constellations of hardware. (Including … orbs!) Like concept cars, they're not on the market just yet, but developmental efforts at more than a few telecoms suggest they're clearly on the horizon. More here.

Jha D Amazi, a principal and the director of the Public Memory and Memorials Lab for MASS (Model of Architecture Serving Society) Design Group, examines how spatializing memory can spark future collective action and provide a more accurate and diverse portrayal of our nation's complicated past. She gave this year’s annual Richard Saivetz ’69 Memorial Architectural Lecture at Brandeis last month, entitled, “Spatializing Memory”.

Self-proclaimed “geriatric starlet” and style icon Iris Apfel has died. She was 102.

“You know, you’ve got to try to sneak in a little bit of humanity,” observes Steve Matteson, the designer behind Aptos—Microsoft's new “default” font. “I did that by adding a little swing to the R and the double stacked g." Adds Jon Friedman, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for design: “It’s both quirky and creates a more natural feel that brings in some of the serif font ‘je ne sais quoi’ to it”. Resistant to change (or simply longing for Calibri), font geeks are not having it. Fun fact? Aptos was originally called Bierstadt. You may well imagine, as we did, that this was a nod to the 19th century German-American landscape painter, Albert Bierstadt—but the actual translation is “Beer City”. 

In Dallas, the Better Block Foundation is sponsoring a design contest called Creating Connections, aimed at addressing the growing epidemic of loneliness by exploring the impact of design on how people connect with others.

Good design is invisible, but bad design is unignorable. Elliot Vredenburg, Associate Creative Director at Mother Design, bares it all.

Arab design is a story of globalism, evidenced through collaborations with the Arab diaspora living, working, and creating abroad, and with the expatriate community in the Middle East and North Africa. More on the highlights (and insights) from Doha Design 2024 here.

Organizations that embrace diversity tend to foster innovation, challenge ingrained thought patterns, and enhance financial performance. Its true benefits emerge when leaders and employees cultivate a sense of inclusion. How architecture is reckoning with the cultural and economic challenges of—and demands for—a more inclusive workforce.



Jobs | March 19