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Observatory

Reviews

03.26.12: Michael Erard

The Elements – Molecules, Atoms and Quarks – of Style
The cipher shared by great poets and the best brand namers is essentially that the littlest things mean the most.
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06.23.11: Josh Berta

Cars: Pixar Falls for Intelligent Design
Cars: Pixar's greatest misstep in design, and perhaps film in general.
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06.20.11: Jez Owen

Behind the Zines
A review of the book Behind the Zines: Self-Publishing Culture published by Gestalten.
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04.19.11: Paul Shaw

Standard Deviations: Types and Families in Contemporary Design
When the Museum of Modern Art decided, at the beginning of this year, to expand its purview and include typefaces, it was a moment of celebration. However, the feeling of elation quickly gave way to puzzlement.
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01.25.11: Adrian Shaughnessy

Down in the Trenches with Kenneth FitzGerald
Adrian Shaughnessy reviews of Kenneth FitzGerald’s new book Volume: Writing on Graphic Design, Music, Art and Culture.
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01.17.11: Alexandra Lange

How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Eameses?
Alexandra Lange reviews the book The Story of Eames Furniture, by Marilyn Neuhart with John Neuhart (Gestalten, 2010).
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11.11.10: Mark Lamster

Boom Goes Pop
Mark Lamster reviews Irma Boom's book, Irma Boom — Biography in Books.
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10.04.10: Michael Erard

It's the 16th Ed. of the Chicago Manual of Style and I Feel Fine
Michael Erard reviews the 16th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style.
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07.14.10: Jessica Helfand

Viva The Villain: A Review of Despicable Me
In an age in which last week’s Bernie Madoff is next week’s BP oil spill, villains are no longer the stuff of fiction. So when a really juicy fictional villain comes along — let alone two — it’s time to go to the movies.
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07.01.10: Ernest Beck

Edward Koren in Retrospect
Essay on The New Yorker cartoonist Edward Koren.
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06.01.10: Jessica Helfand

Rome's MAXXI: Force Field as Field Space
The MAXXI center in Rome opens with a glorious, international exhibition and showcases a building that is likely to be as controversial — and as celebrated — as its designer.
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05.27.10: Ernest Beck

New Meaning at ICFF
A review of the 2010 International Contemporary Furniture Fair.
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05.17.10: Alexandra Lange

The Maddening, Rewarding World of Design People
Most design people I know — don’t feel guilt over knowing what is priceless and what is junk. The film Please Give also thinks they know what it is worth.
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04.27.10: Steven Heller

Home Is the Sailor, Home from the Sea
In 1943, Margaret Wise Brown, the children’s book author signed a contract with Harper & Brothers to publish The Fathers Are Coming Home.
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02.19.10: Mark Lamster

What Am I Doing Here? Tall Buildings and High Anxiety in Las Vegas
I spent three days in a new entertainment complex, CityCenter, in Las Vegas. What follows is a diary of my experience in that time.
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01.19.10: Mark Lamster

Big Book, Small Reward
Among the trends I’d like to see disappear in this new decade is the trend of obscenely fat monographs.
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11.15.09: Eric J. Herboth

The Bauhaus at MoMA
The upcoming Museum of Modern Art exhibition “Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity” is the first update since “Bauhaus 1919–1928,” MoMA’s first, last and only comprehensive examination of the school.
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05.20.09: Julie Lasky

This End Up: Renzo Piano's Modern Wing

Julie Lasky reviews the Art Institute of Chicago's Modern Wing.

05.10.09: Ernest Beck

Olive Drab: BKLYN DESIGNS 2009
Ernest Beck reviews Brooklyn Designs 2009.
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04.27.09: Julie Lasky

Back to the Garden
Report by Julie Lasky about the 2009 International Furniture Fair in Milan.
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01.16.09: Kerry Saretsky

Curious Case of the Better Adaptation
Now that I am comfortably “well-read” in my twenties with a Master’s in modern English Literature tucked into my back pocket, I can’t help but notice that every movie I have seen lately — and every movie that I want to see — has independently stood as a work of print before being reincarnated into movie form.
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12.18.08: Rick Poynor

Barney Bubbles: Optics and Semantics
The intricately reflexive nature of his work made Barney Bubbles a true original in his time. No previous British designer had produced graphic communications this playful, personal, dense with allusion, or tricksy. Bubbles was a postmodernist before this new category of graphic design had been identified and defined, and he is as significant an innovator as his American contemporary April Greiman.
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11.19.08: Alexandra Lange

The Brooklyn Children's Museum
The Brooklyn Children's Museum is hardly subtle in its attempt to please the Toys "R" Us crowd.

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09.15.08: Steven Heller

Breakdowns: A Review
Steven Heller reviews Art Spiegelman’s Breakdowns, his first anthology of autobiographical and experimental comics were originally published in 1978. Thirty years later, a new edition, Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist As A Young %@(#!, is finally out.
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04.28.08: David Cabianca

Two Lines Align
After seeing the Fella and McFetridge show, in its context — in California, in LA, in the Frank Gehry-designed Disney Concert Hall — it occurs to me that this was also a show about the trajectories of modernism, specifically, the trajectories of American modernism...
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01.12.06: Tracy Jenkins

D.I.Y.: Design it Yourself

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