A Few Very Old Essays and Where to find Current books

 
Historians generally don’t count anything that’s happened in the last twenty years as historical. I didn’t understand that when earlier in my career. But now I do. The fog of war lifts a bit, and we see what’s actually happened on the field. We see contexts and systems at work that were lost in the smoke and shouting when they were actually happening.

People ask me where they can find things I’ve written. So I’ve tracked down a few. Some of these are extremely old. Rereading some of them, I find them to be from a different reality. Not an easier reality, not a good-old-days reality. Just one that’s a story now, not something that’s unfolding.

Many issues I once felt were going unexamined in the design world— there once was a discrete “design” world— are now standard undergrad curriculum, and many issues we once had to convince people about—completely reimagining design history, for instance— are currently being explored.

That said, we’ve only scratched the surface. So much more storytelling work ahead. Many projects on the stove, many things to write.

The below is an archive of my planting various flags in the sand over a period of about thirty years. I include “The G-Rated Russian Revolution,” which I wrote it in 1997, a time before the internet and iPhones and way before the birth of most of my students. I remember faxing it to an unknown editor late at night, just because I wanted someone to read it. It came out in the New York Times the next morning, and started my writing life.

Also, here’s where to find current books and a current anthology in which I have an essay. I include how to find Chasing the Perfect, the most frequently asked question I receive, and one I can never answer with assurance. It was remaindered a long time ago, but can often be found on used-book sites.

Writing for the Design Mind will teach you to write if you have a designer brain. It’s available here.

Parallel Narratives: Annotated student Bibliographies Toward a Broader History of Design is available here. 

On Shooting Butterflies, in Total Armageddon: A slanted reader on design, Ian Lynam, editor, is available here. 

Chasing the Perfect, Designed by Matthew Monk, is available here. 

Ok. Now here are some essays:

Gentrification, Alienation, and Homelessness: What Really Happens When Amazon Comes to Town (in ArchDaily)

Where’s Home? (Metropolis Magazine)

DESIGN FOR LIFE (In CityArts)

Rorschach Type (In Communication Arts)

The Man in the Irony Mask (In STEP Magazine)

Enough with the passion (in Metropolis Magazine)

Why I like the seattle library (metropolis)

The G-rated Russian Revolution (NYTImes)

Note: I can’t immediately unearth an online version of the 1997 article, “Fabulous Us: Speaking the Language of Exclusion.” If you’d like to read it, it’s in Looking Closer 2, Michael Bierut, William Drenttel, Steven Heller, ed.s.