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It's not hard to see why innovation is becoming the design world's favourite euphemism. Design sounds cosmetic and ephemeral; innovation sounds energetic and essential. Design conjures images of androgynous figures in black turtlenecks wielding clove cigarettes; innovators are forthright fellows with their shirtsleeves rolled up, covering whiteboards with vigorous magicmarkered diagrams, arrows pointing to words like 'Results!' But best of all, the cult of innovation neatly sidesteps the problem that has befuddled the business case for design from the beginning. Thomas Watson, Jr.'s famous dictum 'good design is good business' implies that there's good design and there's bad design; what he doesn't reveal is how to reliably tell one from the other. Neither has anyone else. It's taken for granted that innovation, however, is always good." —From Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design

Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design brings together the best of designer Michael Bierut's critical writing—serious or humorous, flattering or biting, but always on the mark. Bierut is widely considered the finest observer on design writing today. Covering topics as diverse as Twyla Tharp and ITC Garamond, Bierut's intelligent and accessible texts pull design culture into crisp focus. He touches on classics, like Massimo Vignelli and the cover of The Catcher in the Rye, as well as newcomers, like McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and color-coded terrorism alert levels. Along the way Nabakov's Pale Fire; Eero Saarinen; the paper clip; Celebration, Florida; the planet Saturn; the ClearRx pill bottle; and paper architecture all fall under his pen. His experience as a design practitioner informs his writing and gives it truth. In Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design, designers and nondesigners alike can share and revel in his insights.

Michael Bierut was born in Cleveland, Ohio and studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning. Prior to joining Pentagram as a partner in 1990, he was vice president of graphic design at Vignelli Associates.

At Pentagram, Bierut is responsible for leading a team of graphic designers who create identity design, environmental graphic design and editorial design solutions. He has won hundreds of design awards and his work is represented in several permanent collections including: the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York; the Library of Congress in Washington, DC; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA); the Denver Art Museum; the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, Germany; and the Museum fur Gestaltung in Zurich, Switzerland.

Bierut has been very active in the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), having served as the president of the New York Chapter from 1988 to 1990 and as the president of AIGA National from 1998 to 2001. He currently serves as a director of the Architectural League of New York and of New Yorkers for Parks. In 1989, Bierut was elected to the Alliance Graphique Internationale, and in 2003 he was named to the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame.

Bierut is a senior critic in graphic designs at the Yale School of Art and is a co-editor of the anthology series Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design and a cofounder of the online journal Design Observer. His commentaries about graphic design in everyday life can be heard nationally on the Public Radio International program "Studio 360."

Hardcover
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press (1 Jul 2007)
Language English
ISBN-10: 1568986998
ISBN-13: 978-1568986999