What We Talk About When We Talk About Architecture

Class critique, Yale Art and Architecture Building, New Haven, Connecticut, December, 2003. Photo by John Jacobson

The most popular show on American non-commercial radio is "Car Talk." For an hour, two auto mechanic brothers from Boston ostensibly do just that: they talk about cars. People call in and describe automotive problems, and Tom and Ray Magliozzi offer suggestions on how their cars might be fixed. What makes the show so listenable, even to people like me who don't know or care that much about cars, is the fact that the show isn't really about cars, it's about life...

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I Hate ITC Garamond

Poster for ITC Garamond, Jack Summerford, 1979

My daughter Liz called me from college to recommend a book she had been assigned for a political science class: Mr. Truman's War by J. Robert Moskin, a non-fiction account of the end of World War II and the dawn of the Cold War. On Amazon, I learned it was out of print, but she was so enthusiastic about it that I tracked down a used copy...

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Michael Bierut studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati, and has been a partner in the New York office of Pentagram since 1990. Michael is a Senior Critic in Graphic Design at the Yale School of Art.

Recent Video

Designing, Writing, Teaching: Not My Real Job

Michael Bierut gives an outline of his life and work: a video for a D-Crit lecture at SVA in NYC.

Recent Book

Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design
Michael Bierut
Princeton Architectural Press, 2007
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