Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design brings together the best of designer Michael Bierut's critical writingserious 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.
79 Short Essays on Design
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Bierut is a writer who balances equal dose of optimism and skepticism to draw readers in and let them find their own way out. Each of the 79 essays is printed in a different typeface, and though a reader could probably do without Bulmer and Danubia, reading the changing text is part of the enjoyable adventure as Bierut looks at ordinary circumstances of design that have the ability to create extraordinary consequences in life. -- Communication Arts, August 2007
Highbrow and brilliant. -- New York Magazine, The Approval Matrix, August 2007
I was rewarded every time I dipped into this elegant, thoughtful compilation of stand-alone essays. -- Adage, November 2007
In this lively collection of previously published essays, Michael Bierut provides a compulsively readable guide to all things design. While fonts and logos receive their expected due, so too do Eero Saarinen's TWA terminal, treadmill tripping, and enormous wild geese. -- Dwell, January 2008
Topics range from design-related discourses on how to become famous or deal with a client to art, economics, history, war, politics and books. Even the redesigned Food Pyramid gets a section. Regardless of the topic, Bierut's sometimes-bemused voice and peircing intelligence illuminate the central role of design in our lives. -- STEP Inside Design, August 2007
"A very well written, witty book that should find its way into any truly nerdy Dwell reader's bathroom." --Dwell Magazine
Highbrow and brilliant. -- New York Magazine, The Approval Matrix, August 2007
I was rewarded every time I dipped into this elegant, thoughtful compilation of stand-alone essays. -- Adage, November 2007
In this lively collection of previously published essays, Michael Bierut provides a compulsively readable guide to all things design. While fonts and logos receive their expected due, so too do Eero Saarinen's TWA terminal, treadmill tripping, and enormous wild geese. -- Dwell, January 2008
Topics range from design-related discourses on how to become famous or deal with a client to art, economics, history, war, politics and books. Even the redesigned Food Pyramid gets a section. Regardless of the topic, Bierut's sometimes-bemused voice and peircing intelligence illuminate the central role of design in our lives. -- STEP Inside Design, August 2007
"A very well written, witty book that should find its way into any truly nerdy Dwell reader's bathroom." --Dwell Magazine
About the Author
Michael Bierut is a partner at Pentagram and a 2006 AIGA medalist. He is a design critic for the online journal Design Observer, the Public Radio International program Studio 360, and the Yale School of Art.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Michael Beirut has collected many of the essays he has written for the Design Observer, a blog he founded with other designers with a focus on graphic design practice and process.
Michael's seasoned perspective on the education of young designers, the events and experiences he turned to his advantage as a young person are enlightening and entertaining. He all but pleads to get young designers to recognize that design revolves around life, rather than the other way around. This book may present a challenge for someone not familiar with the personalities, and particularities of graphic design's inner workings. It is a fascinating and well written perspective on the professional's life, which is notable in that Michael is highly successful designer and a partner in the estimable multinatiional design firm, Pentagram.
Michael's seasoned perspective on the education of young designers, the events and experiences he turned to his advantage as a young person are enlightening and entertaining. He all but pleads to get young designers to recognize that design revolves around life, rather than the other way around. This book may present a challenge for someone not familiar with the personalities, and particularities of graphic design's inner workings. It is a fascinating and well written perspective on the professional's life, which is notable in that Michael is highly successful designer and a partner in the estimable multinatiional design firm, Pentagram.
17 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
What an annoying, disappointing waste of money "Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design" by Michael Bierut turned out to be! Nearly all of the 79 essays are smug, self-congratulatory pap dressed up as profound insight.
In their original context the essays would have been targeted at a specific readership and perhaps those readers liked this stuff and were used to it. But when published as a collection, specialist "occupational" essays like these reach far broader audiences who may find the material and style not to their taste - if not downright silly.
Individually, the essays might be worth casually browsing if you have run out of soup can labels; but as a collection read through as a normal book they reveal their shallow superficiality only too graphically. Frankly, after reading the first five essays I already felt cheated.
Take the essay "How to Become Famous", for example. It is basically semi-humorous, insider nonsense that includes exhortations like "when in doubt, make it big. If still in doubt, make it red." OK, that's worth a knowing chuckle the first time you read it, but the humour palls after reading endless injunctions in the same vein.
Here's another example of the pretentious claptrap sprinkled throughout the book: "our traditional conception of graphic design history reduces what is actually a complex and ever-shifting melange of incident and influence to a falsely organised canon of images."
Some of the essays (eg essays 6, 7 and 11) are abbreviated book reviews; but book reviews used as a platform for the essayist to expound his own ideas. In fact, many of the essays seem to be more about their author, the pronoun "I" appears early and frequently, rather than about the subjects themselves. Personally, I find that sort of egotism distasteful, not to mention disrespectful to the putative subject of an essay.
Essays 9 and 10 are obituaries - of a sort. Essay 10 is particularly crass in that the author uses the occasion of another man's death to talk about himself - yet again.
Most of the essays are mercifully short, often only a page or two, so I was able to heave a sigh of relief after reaching the end of one of these forgettable pot-boilers, hoping that the next essay might be better. Such hopes were invariably dashed, and my heart sank ever lower as the interminable pages of the book ground on to the end. Eventually I was able to read one of these essays in about 45 seconds with no loss of comprehension.
Each of the essays is set in a different font, which is not obvious at all if you just flick through all the pages. That's rather novel and I suppose it has some mild curiosity value for the reader.
The design of the book itself is sparsely minimalist. I rather liked that - it's in keeping with the content of the essays.
General readers might glean a few interesting insights into the self-absorption of the author, but I doubt if professional designers would get anything insightful (or even useful) from the book at all. It goes without saying that design students should give this light-weight pot-boiler a miss and spend their time and money on more worthwhile publications.
I suppose I should try to end on a positive note. The Appendix lists all the essays, the fonts used and the original sources. That's helpful in case the reader wants to check out the references, and to note authors and publications to be avoided in future. Oh, and the paper has a nice, heavy feel.
In their original context the essays would have been targeted at a specific readership and perhaps those readers liked this stuff and were used to it. But when published as a collection, specialist "occupational" essays like these reach far broader audiences who may find the material and style not to their taste - if not downright silly.
Individually, the essays might be worth casually browsing if you have run out of soup can labels; but as a collection read through as a normal book they reveal their shallow superficiality only too graphically. Frankly, after reading the first five essays I already felt cheated.
Take the essay "How to Become Famous", for example. It is basically semi-humorous, insider nonsense that includes exhortations like "when in doubt, make it big. If still in doubt, make it red." OK, that's worth a knowing chuckle the first time you read it, but the humour palls after reading endless injunctions in the same vein.
Here's another example of the pretentious claptrap sprinkled throughout the book: "our traditional conception of graphic design history reduces what is actually a complex and ever-shifting melange of incident and influence to a falsely organised canon of images."
Some of the essays (eg essays 6, 7 and 11) are abbreviated book reviews; but book reviews used as a platform for the essayist to expound his own ideas. In fact, many of the essays seem to be more about their author, the pronoun "I" appears early and frequently, rather than about the subjects themselves. Personally, I find that sort of egotism distasteful, not to mention disrespectful to the putative subject of an essay.
Essays 9 and 10 are obituaries - of a sort. Essay 10 is particularly crass in that the author uses the occasion of another man's death to talk about himself - yet again.
Most of the essays are mercifully short, often only a page or two, so I was able to heave a sigh of relief after reaching the end of one of these forgettable pot-boilers, hoping that the next essay might be better. Such hopes were invariably dashed, and my heart sank ever lower as the interminable pages of the book ground on to the end. Eventually I was able to read one of these essays in about 45 seconds with no loss of comprehension.
Each of the essays is set in a different font, which is not obvious at all if you just flick through all the pages. That's rather novel and I suppose it has some mild curiosity value for the reader.
The design of the book itself is sparsely minimalist. I rather liked that - it's in keeping with the content of the essays.
General readers might glean a few interesting insights into the self-absorption of the author, but I doubt if professional designers would get anything insightful (or even useful) from the book at all. It goes without saying that design students should give this light-weight pot-boiler a miss and spend their time and money on more worthwhile publications.
I suppose I should try to end on a positive note. The Appendix lists all the essays, the fonts used and the original sources. That's helpful in case the reader wants to check out the references, and to note authors and publications to be avoided in future. Oh, and the paper has a nice, heavy feel.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By A. Giani
Format:Hardcover
Hello Amazon,
the content of this book is basically very similar to what you'll read in the blog, funny, intelligent and informative BUT this book is AMAZINGLY built, designed and crafted. I took my internship in a bookbindery and I'd rate the craftsmanship behind this book as A+, EXCELLENT JOB and a pleasure to read, if you don't own it, YOU TOTALLY SHOULD!
the content of this book is basically very similar to what you'll read in the blog, funny, intelligent and informative BUT this book is AMAZINGLY built, designed and crafted. I took my internship in a bookbindery and I'd rate the craftsmanship behind this book as A+, EXCELLENT JOB and a pleasure to read, if you don't own it, YOU TOTALLY SHOULD!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting
I bought this on a whim as a Kindle bargain. It turned out to be an interesting book. It was worth the purchase for his Arnold Newman story alone.
Published 1 month ago by Walter B Turner
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful, entertaining, easy-to-read
Great book for designers with short attention span. Besides from being a great designer, Bierut is a great column writer.
Published 3 months ago by Pablo Gonzalez Nicolini
4.0 out of 5 stars
Michael Bierut--The Reason I'll Continue to Look At Design In a...
The first time I saw Michael Bierut was two years ago at Moore College of Art and Design as part of a lecture series hosted by AIGA. Read more
Published on April 19, 2011 by Michee K.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great book
As an avid reader of Design Observer, I rushed out to buy a copy of Michael Beirut's essay collection "79 Short Essays on Design. Read more
Published on May 9, 2010 by A. Fuhrman
5.0 out of 5 stars
Michael Bierut, what more could you ask for??
This is one of my absolute favorite design books. The essays are fantastic - informative, fun, relatable! It really is a great collection of the best designers out there. Read more
Published on May 6, 2010 by Reviewer
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great, essential read for the modern graphic designer.
This book provides great insight into design thinking. The hopping movement between stories creates a great motion in learning about typical situations in design. Read more
Published on February 2, 2010 by YnairB
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great
Love the humor. Theres a lot of content, I love how the subjects of essays vary. I must say that when I bought this book a year ago (senior year in high school) I will say I have... Read more
Published on January 17, 2010 by Fabricio Farias
3.0 out of 5 stars
Hit and miss
I love a lot of the essays in here, but I don't think I would buy this again. It was good to read in short bursts, and I think some of the individual articles were amazing. Read more
Published on April 23, 2009 by R. Roche
4.0 out of 5 stars
Blips of inspiration.
Definitely not a book to be read straight through.
However, reading one essay at a time, it's full of anecdotes and facts about the design industry - as well as general... Read more
However, reading one essay at a time, it's full of anecdotes and facts about the design industry - as well as general... Read more
Published on August 11, 2008 by Justin
3.0 out of 5 stars
this is some guy's blog
These are basically posts from this guy's blog. It's fairly interesting, but I had a hard time reading it straight through.
Published on December 11, 2007 by D. Goins
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