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11.04.15

Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand | Audio

Magnitude

On this episode, Jessica and Michael talk about how designers represent an enormous problem like climate change. Sometimes, Jessica says, the most successful approach is “to show a story in the most graphically circumspect way possible.”

Yet even those who accept the science often cling to a kind of denial:

I think there are lots of people who you could send that drone video to, and they’d say, “Well, that's Greenland. I live in Akron.” And as long as they don’t look outside and see something bad happening that’s going to happen to them by tomorrow morning, the whole things seems abstract compared with the other pressures that everyone has on their lives from day to day.

Also mentioned:

Greenland Is Melting Away

Powers of Ten, by Charles and Ray Eames

The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention at the Library of Congress

Center for Advanced Information Technology, World Resources Institute

Diagram of the Brookes

Drake, Hotline Bling

James Turrell on Drake

Kanye West discusses his Le Corbusier lamp

Grady Hendrix, Horrorstör

Thanks to Sappi for sponsoring this episode.

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More from Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand

Episode 127: Fear and Longing
Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters; Hrishi Hirway and Mike Errico; The Quiz Broadcast; Shakespeare and Co. Project

Episode 126: Screens and Dreams
Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration; Unorthodox; My Brilliant Friend; The Affair; Anil Dash on the dangers of social media; Anna Wiener on Silicon Valley; quarantine dreams

Episode 125: Zoom Aesthetics
Zoom aesthetics and COVID-19; Kyle Chayka on minimalism; Deborah Berke on shared spaces; Jessica Salfia’s poem “The First Lines of Emails I’ve Received While Quarantining”; Megan O’Grady on artistic recluses

Episode 124: That Thing You Do
Making art and design during the COVID-19 pandemic; Christoph Niemann and Daniella Zalcman; Adam Schlesinger; spec scripts for Larry David

Episode 123: Closing Doors, Opening Doors
Looking at COVID=19: Flattening the curve, Washington Post designers Harry Stevens on visualizing social distancing, Alissa Walker on how dots are people, Stephen Sondheim at 90

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