Seventy-nine short essays on design / Michael Bierut.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preface -- Seventy-Nine Short Essays On Design -- Warning: may contain non-design content -- Why designers can't think -- Waiting for permission -- How to become famous -- In search of the perfect client -- Histories in the making -- Playing by Mr Rand's rules -- David Carson and the end of print -- Rob Roy Kelly's old, weird America -- My phone call to Arnold Newman -- Howard Roark lives -- Real and the fake -- Ten footnotes to a manifesto -- New York Times: Apocalypse now, page A1 -- Graphic design and the new certainties -- Mark Lombardi and the ecstasy of conspiracy -- George Kennan and the Cold War between form and content -- Errol Morris blows up spreadsheet, thousands killed -- Catharsis, salesmanship, and the limits of empire -- Better nation-building through design -- T-shirt competition Republicans fear most -- India switches brands -- Graphic designers, flush left? -- Just say yes -- Regrets only -- Forgotten design legacy of the National lampoon -- McSweeney's number 13 and the revenge of the nerds -- Book (cover) that changed my life -- Vladimir Nabokov: father of hypertext -- Final decline and total collapse of the American magazine cover -- Information design and the placebo effect -- Stanley Kubrick and the future of graphic design -- I hear you've got script trouble: the designer as auteur -- Idealistic corporation -- Barthes on the ballpoint -- Tyranny of the tagline -- Ed Ruscha: When art rises to the level of graphic design -- To hell with the simple paper clip -- Man who saved Jackson Pollock -- Homage to the squares -- Eero Saarinen's forty-year layover.

Rendering and the reality -- What we talk about when we talk about architecture -- Colorama -- Mr Vignelli's map -- I hate ITC Garamond -- 1989: roots of revolution -- World in two footnotes -- Logogate in Connecticut -- Whole damn bus is cheering -- Best artist in the world -- Supersized, temporarily impossible world of Bruce McCall -- Unbearable lightness of Fred Marcellino -- Comfort of style -- Authenticity: a user's guide -- Designing under the influence -- Me and my pyramid -- On (design) bullshit -- Call me shithead, or, what's in a name? -- Avoiding poor, lonely obvious -- My favorite book is not about design (or is it?) -- Rick Valicenti: This time it's personal -- Credit line goes here -- Every New Yorker is a target -- I am a plagiarist -- Looking for Celebration, Florida -- Great non-amber-colored hope -- Mysterious power of context -- Final days of AT & T -- Designing Twyla Tharp's upper room -- Innovation is the new black -- Wilson Pickett, design theorist, 1942-2006 -- Design by committee -- Persistence of the exotic menial -- Road to hell : now paved with innovation! -- When design is a matter of life or death -- In praise of slow design -- Massimo Vignelli's pencil -- On falling off a treadmill -- Appendix -- Index.

From the Publisher: 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.