"No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices." Edward R. Murrow, who died on this day in 1965
Michael Bierut
@michaelbierut.bsky.social
Graphic designer, teacher, writer, since forever
That prosecutor assigned by Jeanine Pirro who failed to get a single grand jury indictment against those six Democratic lawmakers last week has been mocked for having a side gig as a "dance photographer," but actually his pictures are rather nice stevenv873.smugmug.com
People can dismiss stuff like this as nothing more than charming and easy-to-do stunts, but it’s amazing that no one has thought to do them since LaGuardia. Having a mayor who actually seems to love his city counts for a lot
Everyone in the world comes to get married at the NYC Marriage Bureau. Last week, the Mayor stopped by to officiate a few of those ceremonies. Thank you to all the couples who shared their joy with us. Happy Valentine's Day, New York. Watch the full video at Youtube.com/nycmayorsoffice
👀 What if I told you there was a hidden art gallery scattered across the country? What if I told you some of its treasures had vanished? What if I told you that I found them? A project three years in the making (🎁 gift link):
The disappearing art gallery in your post office
The U.S. Postal Service is home to thousands of historic works of art in post offices nationwide. Hundreds have been lost, sold or destroyed.
wapo.st
Massimo Vignelli, The Melting Pot, 1975 (rejected proposal to celebrate the US Bicentennial)
Boston-based art and design collective Silence Dogood takes its name from one of Benjamin Franklin's pseudonyms, and its typographic approach from Franklin's era of printing
The end credits for the season finale of #Severance were turned into a dazzling Saul Bass homage by the show's title typography designer, Teddy Blanks of ChipsNY
When exactly did Tork come out of nowhere and achieve a virtual monopoly in the paper products dispensing space? Just asking questions
When Amber Asay invited me on her podcast Women Designers You Should Know, I had one request: can we please do Jacqueline Casey, the in-house designer at MIT who brought European modernism to the USA one campus event poster at a time? women-designers-you-should-know.simplecast.com/episodes/jac...
TIL that Adrian Brody's mother is the legendary photographer Sylvia Plachy
I just adore an all-type book cover. Here are three favorites from Matt Dorfman's annual Ten Best list in the New York Times Book Review, by Arsh Raziuddin, Chantal Jahchan and Na Kim www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/b...
Lester Beall with Charles Goslin, The Connecticut General Style Book and Some Notes on Typographic Design for the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company, 1958. Images from the amazing thisisdisplay.org
Jane Davis Doggett, a Yale MFA graduate who studied under Albers and Rand, began work in the late 1950s that basically invented the wayfinding language of the modern airport we all know today, from color-coded terminal routes to the standardization of carrier name displays. She died last year at 93.
Jacqueline Casey, poster for Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1979
What a wonderful thing that the new Coldplay video and the eulogy scene from Chuckles Bites the Dust showed up in my feed the very same day
I really enjoyed the latest episode of @agoldman.bsky.social's new podcast, Hyperfixed. But am I crazy or is this show, and maybe half the podcast world, just building on the template (and tone) that @starleekine.bsky.social created 10 years ago with the late, great, 6-eps-and-canceled Mystery Show?
Paul Rand, proposed brand update for Ford Motor Company, 1966
The short-lived TV variety show "Pink Lady & Jeff" is impossible to describe here, so just listen to the amazing podcast produced by @evanchung.bsky.social for Slate's Decoder Ring. I love everything about this: the 80s typeface, the desperate copywriting, the random guest list bit.ly/3OldwwR
Name a show you’re positive no one remembers but you.
I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968. That meant going to a movie theater. Afterward I was obsessed, but no rentals, no streaming. Just feverish memories. Then I found this paperback book, not a quickie exploitation play but a 368-page, dense-packed treasure trove, edited by Jerome Agel. Price: $1.50
This is the rallying call that I've needed to hear since November 6th. From Roxane Gay in today's New York Times www.nytimes.com/2024/11/17/o...
René Magritte, La corde sensible (Heartstring), 1960. "I cannot paint before I have the whole picture in my head. It happens slowly…I want to paint a cloud. So I draw some clouds, maybe a hundred of them. And each time I surround them with shapes whose meaning remains hidden from me." Hello Bluesky!