Seventy Nine Short Essays On Design

Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design brings together the best of designer Michael Bierut's critical writing—serious or humorous, flattering or biting, but always on the mark. Bierut is widely considered the finest observer on design writing today. Covering topics as diverse as Twyla Tharp and ITC Garamond, Bierut's intelligent and accessible texts pull design culture into crisp focus. He touches on classics, like Massimo Vignelli and the cover of The Catcher in the Rye, as well as newcomers, like McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and color-coded terrorism alert levels. Along the way Nabakov's Pale Fire; Eero Saarinen; the paper clip; Celebration, Florida; the planet Saturn; the ClearRx pill bottle; and paper architecture all fall under his pen. His experience as a design practitioner informs his writing and gives it truth. In Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design, designers and nondesigners alike can share and revel in his insights.

Collects some of designer Michael Bierut's best essays on design, covering such topics as color-coded terrorism alerts, the cover of "Catcher in the Rye," the planet Saturn, and the town of Celebration, Florida.

"Design is a way to engage with real content, real experience," writes celebrated essayist Michael Bierut in this follow-up to his best-selling Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design (2007). In more than fifty smart and accessible short pieces from the past decade, Bierut engages with a fascinating and diverse array of subjects. Essays range across design history, practice, and process; urban design and architecture; design hoaxes; pop culture; Hydrox cookies, Peggy Noonan, baseball, The Sopranos; and an inside look at his experience creating the "forward" logo for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. Other writings celebrate such legendary figures as Jerry della Femina, Alan Fletcher, Charley Harper, and his own mentor, Massimo Vignelli. Bierut's longtime work in the trenches of graphic design informs everything he writes, lending depth, insight, and humor to this important and engrossing collection.

The twentieth century was a landmark era in graphic design, the art that combines words with graphic images on posters, book and magazine covers, record jackets, billboards, and other print advertising and publicity media. This visually magnificent and factually informative volume tells the story of graphic design, then gives separate illustrated thumbnail biographies of more than 100 of the most influential and internationally known designers of the past 100 years. From the century's early decades we find artists' profiles and reproductions from the studios of Peter Behrens, Alexander Rodchenko, the Bauhaus, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, a sampling of Art Deco, and much more. Examples of Mid-Century Modern include Lester Beall, Yusaku Kamekura, and jazz record covers from various sources. The Pop and Alternative Art eras gave us psychedelic graphics, militant socialist posters from Cuba, and the dramatic typographic designs of Herb Lubalin. Design in the Digital Era has included work by David Carson, Javier Mariscal, Eiko Ishioka, and many others. All illustrations are perfectly reproduced on high quality paper. The text was written by Jeremy Aynsley, an internationally recognized authority in the art of graphic design. Approximately 450 brilliant full-color photos and illustrations.

"Like the fantasies of Tolkien, Thurber, E. B. White, The Mouse and His Child is filled with symbolism and satire, violence and vengeance, tears and laughter." -- The New York Times The images stay with you long after the book is done: the toy mouse and his father, on a journey together joined hand in hand; Manny Rat, the nefarious lord of the junkyard, stalking the toy mice for their clockwork parts; Uncle Frog, spouting wisdom and nonsense from within a glove; and the Bonzo Dog Food dog, repeating himself endlessly on a label, fading away to the last visible dog...Russell Hoban's novel is many things: a stirring adventure story, a sharp-witted comedy, and the moving tale of a father and son struggling to return to a state of grace.Called one of the great works of children's literature of the twentieth century -- but with an audience that spans ages and times -- The Mouse and His Child has been lovingly re-illustrated by Caldecott Medalist David Small for a new generation and a new millennium.

One of the seminal texts of graphic design, Paul Rand's Thoughts on Design is now available for the first time since the 1970s. Writing at the height of his career, Rand articulated in his slender volume the pioneering vision that all design should seamlessly integrate form and function. This facsimile edition preserves Rand's original 1947 essay with the adjustments he made to its text and imagery for a revised printing in 1970, and adds only an informative and inspiring new foreword by design luminary Michael Bierut. As relevant today as it was when first published, this classic treatise is an indispensable addition to the library of every designer.

The final installment in this acclaimed series offers astute and controversial discussions on contemporary graphic design from 2001 to 2005. This collection of essays takes stock of the quality and profundity of graphic design writing published in professional and general interest design magazines, as well as on blogs and Internet journals. Prominent contributors include Milton Glaser, Maud Lavin, Ellen Lupton, Victor Margolin, Mr. Keedy, David Jury, Alice Twemlow, Steven Heller, Jessica Helfand, William Drenttel, Michael Bierut, Michael Dooley, Nick Curry, Emily King, and more. Among the important themes discussed: design as popular culture, design as art, politics, aesthetics, social responsibility, typography, the future of design, and more. Students, graphic designers beginning their careers, and veterans seeking fresh perspective will savor this anthology gathered from some of today’s top graphic design writers and practitioners, as well as commentators from outside the profession. From the series that helped launch the design criticism movement and was the first to anthologize graphic design criticism from key sources, this volume promises to be the most provocative of all! Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.

Mark Rothko’s classic book on artistic practice, ideals, and philosophy, now with an expanded introduction and an afterword by Makoto Fujimura Stored in a New York City warehouse for many years after the artist’s death, this extraordinary manuscript by Mark Rothko (1903–1970) was published to great acclaim in 2004. Probably written in 1940 or 1941, it contains Rothko’s ideas on the modern art world, art history, myth, beauty, the challenges of being an artist in society, the true nature of “American art,” and much more. In his introduction, illustrated with examples of Rothko’s work and pages from the manuscript, the artist’s son, Christopher Rothko, describes the discovery of the manuscript and the fascinating process of its initial publication. This edition includes discussion of Rothko’s “Scribble Book” (1932), his notes on teaching art to children, which has received renewed scholarly attention in recent years and provides clues to the genesis of Rothko’s thinking on pedagogy. In an afterword written for this edition, artist and author Makoto Fujimura reflects on how Rothko’s writings offer a “lifeboat” for “art world refugees” and a model for upholding artistic ideals. He considers the transcendent capacity of Rothko’s paintings to express pure ideas and the significance of the decade-long gap between The Artist’s Reality and Rothko’s mature paintings, during which the horrors of the Holocaust and the atomic bomb were unleashed upon the world.