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12.28.18

Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand | Audio

Episode 95: Back to Basics

This week, Jessica and Michael continue the stormy discussion that designer Mirko Ilic started on Linkedin when he declared, “Interesting logos are being replaced by boring ones.”

Michael says this trend

is actually something that almost seems not just understandable but to a certain degree frighteningly inevitable…Designers and people building brands are well aware of the fact that there is still the requirement to have some indestructible kernel of identity that can travel across any platform or any channel.

Also mentioned this week:

Brand New on Burberry, Balmain, Berluti, Balenciaga (2017)
Gary Hustwit, Helvetica
excerpts from Wim Crouwel + Jan van Toorn, The Debate (2015)
Dezeen, Peter Saville to “do a YSL” for Kanye West
Episode 43: The End Is Near
Jessica’s catalog essay from David Pease: Notes from the Road
Nicholas Rougeux, Byrne’s Euclid
Yorgos Lanthimos, The Favourite

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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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