79 Short Essays on Design – Michael Bierut
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79 Published by Princeton Architectural Press 37 East Seventh Street New York, New York 10003 For a free catalog of books, call 1.800.722.6657. Visit our web site at www.papress.com. © 2007 Princeton Architectural Press All rights reserved Printed and bound in China 10 09 08 07 4 3 2 First edition No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews. Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions. Editor: Lauren Nelson Packard Designer: Abbott Miller, Pentagram Special thanks to: Nettie Aljian, Sara Bader, Dorothy Ball, Nicola Bednarek, Janet Behning, Becca Casbon, Penny (Yuen Pik) Chu, Russell Fernandez, Pete Fitzpatrick, Wendy Fuller, Sara Hart, Jan Haux, Clare Jacobson, John King, Mark Lamster, Nancy Eklund Later, Linda Lee, Katharine Myers, Scott Tennent, Jennifer Thompson, Paul Wagner, Joseph Weston, and Deb Wood of Princeton Architectural Press —Kevin C. Lippert, publisher Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bierut, Michael. Seventy-nine short essays on design / Michael Bierut. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-56898-699-9 (alk. paper) 1. Commercial art—United States—History—20th century. 2. Graphic arts—United States—History— 20th century. I. Title. II. Title: 79 short essays on design. NC998.5.A1B52 2007 741.6—dc22 2006101224 Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design Michael Bierut Princeton Architectural Press New York “Art should be like a good game of baseball—non- monumental, democratic and humble. With no hits, no runs, and no errors at the bottom of the ninth, we know something historical is happening. Good art leaves no residue.” Siah Armajani, 1985 “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.” Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) to Wilmer Cook (Elijah Cook, Jr.) in The Maltese Falcon, screenplay by John Huston from the novel by Dashiell Hammett, 1941 Contents 9 Preface Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design 11 Warning: May Contain Non-Design Content 14 Why Designers Can’t Think 18 Waiting for Permission 23 How to Become Famous 28 In Search of the Perfect Client 32 Histories in the Making 35 Playing by Mr. Rand’s Rules 39 David Carson and the End of Print 42 Rob Roy Kelly’s Old, Weird America 44 My Phone Call to Arnold Newman 46 Howard Roark Lives 49 The Real and the Fake 52 Ten Footnotes to a Manifesto 61 The New York Times: Apocalypse Now, Page A1 63 Graphic Design and the New Certainties 65 Mark Lombardi and the Ecstasy of Conspiracy 67 George Kennan and the Cold War Between Form and Content 70 Errol Morris Blows Up Spreadsheet, Thousands Killed 72 Catharsis, Salesmanship, and the Limits of Empire 75 Better Nation-Building Through Design 77 The T-shirt Competition Republicans Fear Most 79 India Switches Brands 81 Graphic Designers, Flush Left? 84 Just Say Yes 87 Regrets Only 91 The Forgotten Design Legacy of the National Lampoon 93 McSweeney’s No. 13 and the Revenge of the Nerds 96 The Book (Cover) That Changed My Life 98 Vladimir Nabokov: Father of Hypertext 100 The Final Decline and Total Collapse of the American Magazine Cover 102 Information Design and the Placebo Effect 104 Stanley Kubrick and the Future of Graphic Design 106 I Hear You’ve Got Script Trouble: The Designer as Auteur 109 The Idealistic Corporation 112 Barthes on the Ballpoint 114 The Tyranny of the Tagline 116 Ed Ruscha: When Art Rises to the Level of Graphic Design 118 To Hell with the Simple Paper Clip 120 The Man Who Saved Jackson Pollock 123 Homage to the Squares 126 Eero Saarinen’s Forty-Year Layover 128 The Rendering and the Reality 130 What We Talk About When We Talk About Architecture 134 Colorama 136 Mr. Vignelli’s Map 139 I Hate ITC Garamond 142 1989: Roots of Revolution 145 The World in Two Footnotes 148 Logogate in Connecticut 151 The Whole Damn Bus is Cheering 154 The Best Artist in the World 157 The Supersized, Temporarily Impossible World of Bruce McCall 160 The Unbearable Lightness of Fred Marcellino 164 The Comfort of Style 167 Authenticity: A User’s Guide 170 Designing Under the Influence 173 Me and My Pyramid 175 On (Design) Bullshit 178 Call Me Shithead, or, What’s in a Name? 181 Avoiding Poor, Lonely Obvious 184 My Favorite Book is Not About Design (or Is It?) 188 Rick Valicenti: This Time It’s Personal 191 Credit Line Goes Here 194 Every New Yorker is a Target 197 I Am a Plagiarist 200 Looking for Celebration, Florida 204 The Great Non-Amber-Colored Hope 208 The Mysterious Power of Context 211 The Final Days of AT&T 215 Designing Twyla Tharp’s Upper Room 217 Innovation is the New Black 220 Wilson Pickett, Design Theorist, 1942–2006 222 Design by Committee 226 The Persistence of the Exotic Menial 230 The Road to Hell: Now Paved with Innovation! 234 When Design is a Matter of Life or Death 237 In Praise of Slow Design 241 Massimo Vignelli’s Pencil 244 On Falling Off a Treadmill 247 Appendix 262 Index Preface I consider myself a designer, not a writer. Over ten years ago, on the basis of very little evidence, three brilliant editors each began giving me modest writing assignments: Steve Heller, Chee Pearlman, and Rick Poynor. Their encouragement and advice taught me how to begin to think as a writer. About four years ago, Rick, Bill Drenttel, Jessica Helfand, and I decided, without any particular game plan, to create a blog. This book is largely the product of that decision, and of that friend- ship. I go to work every day to be inspired and stimulated by the best designers in the world: Jim Biber, Michael Gericke, Luke Hayman, Abbott Miller, Lisa Strausfeld, and especially Paula Scher, whose own writing was an important model for me. Abbott created the elegant (and funny) design for this book. Sash Fernando heroically saw the design through to completion. I am grateful to all of them. At Princeton Architectural Press, I thank Kevin Lippert, Mark Lamster, Clare Jacobson, and Lauren Nelson Packard; they suggested this book and actually made it happen. Finally, I send my love and thanks to Dorothy, Elizabeth, Drew, and Martha Marie. Writing about design has been a valuable way for me to understand the work I do. I hope that reading about design provides some value to others. Warning: May Contain Non-Design Content I write for a blog called Design Observer. Usually my co-editors and I write about design. Sometimes, we don’t. Sometimes, for instance, we write about politics. Whenever this happens, in come the comments: “What does this have to do with design? If you have a political agenda please keep it to other pages. I am 1not sure of your leaning but I come here for design.” I come here for design. It happens every time the subject strays beyond fonts and layout software. (“Obscure references. trying to impress each other. please, can we start talking some sense?”) In these cases, our visitors react like diners who just got served penne alla vodka in a Mexican restaurant: it’s not the kind of dish they came for, and they doubt the proprietors have the expertise required to serve it up. Guys, I know how you feel. I used to feel the same way. More than twenty years ago, I served on a committee that had been formed to explore the possibilities of setting up a New York chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA ). Almost all of the other committee members were older, well-known—and, in some cases, legendary—designers. I was there to be a worker bee. I had only been in New York for a year or so. Back in design school in 1970s Cincinnati, I had been starved for design. It would be hard for a student today to imagine a world so isolated. No email, no blogs. Only one (fairly inaccessible) design conference that no one I knew had ever attended. Because there were no 11 michael bierut AGIA chapters, there were no AGIA student groups. Few of us could afford subscriptions to the only design magazines I knew about, CA, Print, and Graphis. Those few copies we got our hands on were passed around with the fervor of girlie magazines after lights-out at a Boy Scout jamboree. No How, no Step, and of course no Emigre or dot dot dot. We studied the theory of graphic design day in and day out, but the real practice of graphic design was something mysterious that happened somewhere else. It wasn’t even a subject for the history books: Phil Meggs wouldn’t publish his monumental History of Graphic Design until 1983. In New York, I was suddenly in—what seemed to me then, at least—the center of the design universe. There was already so much to see and do, but I wanted more. I was ravenous. Establishing a New York chapter for the AIGA would mean more lectures, more events, more graphic design. For the committee’s first meeting, I had made a list of all designers I would love to see speak, and I volunteered to share it with the group. A few names in, one of the well-known designers in the group cut me off with a bored wave. “Oh God, not more show-and-tell portfolio crap.” To my surprise, the others began nodding in agreement. “Yeah, instead of wallowing in graphic design stuff, we should have something like...a Betty Boop film fes- tival.” A Betty Boop film festival? I wanted to hear a lecture from Josef Müller- Brockmann, not watch cartoons.