A CLutch of old Essays and Where to find books

 
What a few years we’ve had. A pandemic, Black Lives Matter, Me Too, massive political challenges. Rereading some of these old essays, I find them to be from a different reality. Not a more equitable reality, but not one in which I found myself stocking up on dried legumes, either.

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, people mention particular old essays to me, so I thought I’d put them here to make your life easier. Some are ancient. I include “The G-Rated Russian Revolution,” which I wrote it in 1997, a time before the internet and iPhones and everything. I remember faxing it to the editor from my dining room late at night on a whim. It came out in the New York Times the next morning, and started my writing life.

Here’s where to find current books and a current anthology in which I have a piece. I include how to find Chasing the Perfect, which is a question I can never answer with assurance: It’s available on used-book sites.

Writing for the Design Mind can be used to teach yourself to write or as a textbook for your students—or both! It’s available here.

Parallel Narratives: Annotated student Bibliographies Toward a Broader History of Design, Natalia Ilyin and Elisabeth Patterson, editors—Designed by Robert Baxter, is available here. 

On Shooting Butterflies, in Total Armageddon: A slanted reader on design, Ian Lynam, editor—Designed by Ian Lynam, 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.