Ebook: 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 -- The real and the fake -- Ten footnotes to a manifesto -- The 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 -- The T-shirt competition republicans fear most -- India switches brands -- Graphic designers, flush left? -- Just say yes -- Regrets only -- The forgotten design legacy of the National Lampoon -- McSweeney's No. 13 and the revenge of the nerds -- The book (cover) that changed my life -- Vladimir Nabokov: father of hypertext -- The 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 -- The idealistic corporation -- Barthes on the ballpoint -- The tyranny of the tagline -- Ed Ruscha: when art rises to the level of graphic design -- To hell with the simple paper clip -- The man who saved Jackson Pollock -- Homage to the squares -- Eero Saarinen's forty-year layover -- The 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 -- The world in two footnotes -- Logogate in Connecticut -- The whole damn bus is cheering -- The best artist in the world -- The supersized, temporarily impossible world of Bruce McCall -- The unbearable lightness of fred Marcellino -- The 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 traget -- I am a plagiarist -- Looking for celebration, Florida -- The great non-amber-colored hope -- The mysterious power of context -- The final days of AT & T -- Designing Twyla Tharp's upper room -- Innovation is the new black -- Wilson Pickett, desig597271n theorist, 1942-2006 -- Design by committee -- The persistence of the exotic menial -- The 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.