The Shock Of The Old: Rethinking Nostalgia

Nostalgia has always been a bad word for designers. Like "retro" and "vintage" it smacks of a sort of been-there-done-that ennui — looking backward instead of forward, nostalgia presents as the very antithesis of the new. Even hard-core historians resist its emotional lure, which can, in an instant, dramatize the truth and distance it from fact. Nostalgia skews by privileging episodic time over chronological time: in this context, "memory" is cast as a curious, dangerous and rather unreliable lens.

Or is it?

In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, nostalgia was seen as a disease, an ailment to be cured...

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On Citizenship and Humanity: An Appeal for Design Reform

It has been a hectic month here in the United States: a month of unspeakable hurricane devastation, two Supreme Court nominations and just this morning, a national address by our President reinforcing the White House's steadfast support of our nation's continuing involvement in Iraq. It is difficult, perhaps even impossible to locate design issues of critical consequence at a time like this. And as someone who spends a considerable amount of time driving and listening to the radio with young children who require further clarification ("Mommy, what's a referendum?") I am hard put to understand where — and if — design plays a role in this larger maelstrom of political, social, judicial and economic activity.

Enter the Citizen Designer — the person who sees design as more than just a problem solving activity, who acknowledges and uses design as a persuasive tool for the public good and who, to quote Milton Glaser in a recent lecture, responds by becoming more active in civic life. Simply put, this means being a human being first, a designer second...

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John Stossel on Graphic Design

This film was made in 2005 for 20/20, a beloved AIGA National Conference segment in which twenty designers are asked to talk about something for one minute each. This particular year, the conference itself had no theme, leaving Jessica Helfand no choice but to write a script for John Stossel, co-host, with Elizabeth Vargas, of the ABC-TV program, 20/20.

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