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Jessica Helfand
Essays | Biography | Articles & Essays | Books | Contact

Archive: July 2011


On the Shoulders of Midgets: A Conversation About Reality TV

They’re about survival, fantasy, self-improvement, humiliation, and, in some cases, creativity. So what's behind the enduring success of reality TV? And why does our obsession with it persist? What do all these shows — stories about hook-ups, competition, tiny people, over-determined cupcakes, raging egos and compulsions and makeovers of things both alive and inanimate — tell us? That we are as complex as we are predictable. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

READ MORE | COMMENTS (4)

For Sale: The Earliest Modern Studio in America

In 1931, a young American artist designed and built himself a modern studio on a mountaintop in the Berkshires in Northwest Connecticut: it would be one of the first modern houses in America, pre-dating Frank Lloyd’s Fallingwater by five years. It has been the home of Winterhouse since 1998, and is now for sale.

READ MORE | COMMENTS

The Look of Freedom

 It was the American novelist William Faulkner who once observed that we must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it. So who am I to take issue with more contemporary interpretations of commemorative form?

A design critic, that's who.

READ MORE | COMMENTS (1)
Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer and a former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Communications Arts and Eye magazines. A member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and a recent laureate of the Art Director's Hall of Fame, Helfand received her B.A. and her M.F.A. from Yale University where she has taught since 1994.


Recent Book



Scrapbooks: An American History
Jessica Helfand
Yale University Press, 2008
More Books >>


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JESSICA HELFAND: RECOMMENDED BOOKS


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Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives
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