Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture (Paperback)

by Jessica Helfland (Author), John Maeda (Introduction) "Lewis Mumford once wrote that he believed the industrial age was merely a passing phase in which the quality of human life would be sacrificed..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, Paul Rand, Big Reveal (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Designer and critic Jessica Helfand has emerged as a leading voice of a new generation of designers. Her essays--at once pithy, polemical, and precise--appear in places as diverse as Eye, Print, ID, The New Republic, and the LA Times.

The essays collected here decode the technologies, trends, themes, and personalities that define design today, especially "the new media," and provide a road map of things to come. Her first two chapbooks--Paul Rand: American Modernist and Six (+2) Essays on Design and New Media--became instant classics. This new compilation brings together essays from the earlier publications along with more than twenty others on a variety of topics including avatars, "the cult of the scratchy," television, sex on the screen, and more.

Designers, students, educators, visual literati, and everyone looking for an entertaining and insightful guide to the world of design today will not find a better or more approachable book on the subject.

About the Author
Jessica Helfand is partner with William Drenttel in Jessica Helfand | William Drenttel, a design consultancy.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press; 1 edition (September 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568983107
• ISBN-13: 978-1568983103
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #721,845 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Digital Critic with Challenges and No Solutions, June 2, 2003

By	Jason A. Tselentis (Charlotte, North Carolina U.S.A.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Design on the screen takes the shape of websites, animation, motion graphics, and oh yeah... television. Long before the Mac and Windows boxes on your desk moved points of light, the television was doing it. In Screen, Helfand continues her critical review of all that is visually projected at us through flat screen monitors and television sets. In this collection of essays and critiques, the overall feeling is cynical and embittered. Helfand directly challenges the designers of screen spaces and interfaces to take a stand and make decisions using technology as a secondary objective. Use the pixels, don't let them use you. It's a boastful book, one that'll make you wonder what more can be done.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Big thoughts come in small packages, November 3, 2001

By A Customer

Although the amount of writing about design has grown remarkably over the last several years, only a small bit of it is actually any good. And while I think an increased amount of discourse is generally a positive thing, I think in design's case we've come to the proverbial fork in the road. On one side, there's the swaggering, portfolio-bloated, semi-literate design monographs of the last several years. On the other side, there's truly critical, topical, didactic design writing whose words aren't just there as dummy text. If this latter direction is the one in which our discourse wishes to travel, then we should all take a page out of Jessica Helfand's glorious new book, Screen. For literate designers who've come down with cabin fever over the last few years, Ms. Helfand's book is like taking a spin around the neighborhood, touching on topics from Victorian cultural history to Media Studies and everything in between. Meticulously considered and reconsidered - many of these essays were first published elsewhere - Screen reminds us that writing about a field as simultaneously aesthetic and analytic as design takes time and effort. In turn, our time and effort should be spent on these thoughtful essays, for they are a both a gift and a direction from one of the very best we have.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Things we all were thinking.. only worded much better., June 6, 2003

By	M. McDonald (New York, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Chances are you will find yourself saying (or just thinking) "Exactly! I've been saying that for years!" fairly often. Helfand expresses views on the design world that many designers have felt for some time, particularly in regards to new media and digital culture. These essays cover everything from the overflow of badly designed websites to eloquently phrased explanation of why designers are not information architects (unlike architecture, design won't kill you if it falls on your head). This is a must-read for designers of any medium, especially those in the video, web, and new media fields.