Design Observer

Archive
Books + Store
Job Board
Email Archive
Comments
About
Contact
Log In
Register

Video

National Design Award Trophy

On October 20, 2011, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum unveiled a new trophy for the National Design Awards. Originally designed in silicon carbide by Winterhouse in 2000, the trophy was launched as a part of an "asterisk" design exploratory. In 2011, Corning Museum's GlassLab undertook a new interpretation of the "asterisk" trophy in glass.
WATCH >>

Audio

Celebrations of Curious Characters: Dickens the Magician

Ricky Jay is an actor, a historian, a magician and a collector. Design Observer is pleased to share a selection of recorded broadcasts — all read and authored by Ricky Jay — brought to you along with the visual catalyst that inspired its tale. This is the last of four installments.
LISTEN >>

Audio

Celebrations of Curious Characters: Taking it on the Chin

Ricky Jay is an actor, a historian, a magician and a collector. Design Observer is pleased to share a selection of recorded broadcasts — all read and authored by Ricky Jay — brought to you along with the visual catalyst that inspired its tale. This is the third of four installments.
LISTEN >>

Audio

Celebrations of Curious Characters: Twins

Ricky Jay is an actor, a historian, a magician and a collector. Design Observer is pleased to share a selection of recorded broadcasts — all read and authored by Ricky Jay — brought to you along with the visual catalyst that inspired its tale. This is the second of four installments.
LISTEN >>

Audio

Celebrations of Curious Characters: Calculations

Ricky Jay is an actor, a historian, a magician and a collector. Design Observer is pleased to share a selection of recorded broadcasts — all read and authored by Ricky Jay — brought to you along with the visual catalyst that inspired its tale. This is the first of four installments.
LISTEN >>

Video

Infrastructure

“How should we promote the Green Building Council’s 2011 conference, Greenbuild Next? How about with an abridged history of civilization in a series of 2,933 still photos?” The result? A stop-frame animation film on 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of paper — the history of civilization in 3 minutes and 44 seconds in the form of a concrete poem.
WATCH >>

Video

Winterhouse: A Video

Andrew Sloat wrote and directed this short film about Winterhouse, the studio of William Drenttel and Jessica Helfand. It was made for the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 2010.
WATCH >>

Video

Designing, Writing, Teaching: Not My Real Job

In this funny and entertaining video, Designing, Writing, Teaching: Not My Real Job, Michael Bierut outlines the little decisions that led him to the work that he is doing today.
WATCH >>

Video

892 Unique Ways to Partition A 3x4 Grid

The Dubberly Design Office recently published a poster depicting “the 892 unique ways to partition a 3x4 grid into unit rectangles.” This project was inspired by a patent received in 2006 by William Drenttel and Jessica Helfand of Winterhouse, Patent No. 7124360.
WATCH >>

Video

Erik Spiekermann - Putting Back the Face into Typeface

In this video, Erik Spiekermann discusses his process and methods for designing type, his life's work and how sometimes graphic design can change lives.
WATCH >>

Video

Michael Bierut on Clients

In January 2010, Michael Bierut gave at talk at CreativeMorning on the subject of clients.
WATCH >>

Video

Michael Bierut on Typography

In a video interview with The Atlantic, Michael Bierut talks about typography, covering such topics as Stanley Kubrick’s favorite font, the cover design of The Catcher in the Rye and the link between phototypesetting and Free Love.
WATCH >>

Video

Trailer for Film: Waiting for Superman

The trailer for the new film Waiting for Superman. WATCH >>

Video

Design is One — Lella and Massimo Vignelli

This video is a series of small excerpts from a film in progress: Design is One — The Vignellis, directed and produced by Kathy Brew and Richard Guerra. Here is a glimpse into the work of Lella and Massimo Vignelli — and everyday moments from their world.
WATCH >>

Video

John Madre: Massimo Vignelli

This film was directed and filmed by John Madere and edited by Aaron Wolfe in 2010. It is the first of a series featuring some of the preeminent figures in graphic design today. The films will be an extension of a still-portrait series of designers that Madere has been photographing since 2008.
WATCH >>

Video

William Drenttel on Design and Social Innovation

A video of a talk on design and social innovation at the Feast Conference given by William Drenttel at the Feast Conference 2009.
WATCH >>

Video

Michael Bierut on 86 Notebooks

In this talk by Michael Bierut at the 99 Percent Conference in 2009, he gives tips on design productivity and five separate lessons using drawings and notes from his 86 notebooks.
WATCH >>

Video

Aspen Design Summit: Film

This short film by GoodFocus Films captures participant perspectives at the Aspen Design Summit in November 2009.
WATCH >>

Video

Stone River: The Passion of Jon Piasecki

Landscape architect Jon Piasecki, talks about nature, the woods, and a recent multi-year stone works project in New York State — Stone River.
WATCH >>

Video

Start Asking: a Project by Ryan Fitzgibbon

Start Asking was Ryan Fitzgibbon's solution to the final challenge of Command X: Season 2, the graphic design reality show at the AIGA Make/Think Conference in Memphis.
WATCH >>

Video

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.
WATCH >>

Audio

Teddy Blanks on Figurines

Significant Objects is a much-discussed experiment conducted by Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker. Their hypothesis: if a talented writer invents a story about a thrift-store object, that object will acquire not merely subjective but objective value — on eBay. In this instance, Design Observer contributor Teddy Blanks recorded his story as a song.
LISTEN >>

Video

Once Out of Chaos: Pauline Galiana

Natural sounds and natural lighting inform this elegiac mediation on making — on art formulated and gridded from the detritus of painting. This meticulously-paced video by Richard Devereaux takes the time to capture the beauty of hundreds of individually-sewn stitches, softly wavering in the breezes of a warm afternoon.
WATCH >>