Core77

I've always felt that name recognition must be far preferable to the sort of fame found in Us Magazine. Somehow the hordes of paparazzi chasing Paris Hilton in the hope of catching her at her worst moments never seemed to have an appeal for me, but I've still always assumed that Bill Gates or Salman Rushdie could probably reap some modest benefit from fame and grab a previously unavailable table at Masa or Jean Georges by the virtue of their names alone. In his piece "How to Become Famous" in the collection Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design, Michael Bierut, among the most famous living graphic designers on the planet, humorously recounts the sorts of benefits those of us in the design community can expect to reach at the pinnacle of our success: His sister-in-law, who's a dental hygienist in Ohio, once had a client who recognized her last name as that of a "famous" graphic designer.

Seventy-nine Short Essays collects an assortment of rants, morality tales, observations and thoughts on the culture of graphic design that, while rarely epoch shaking, candidly explores the benefits and pitfalls of running a successful design practice (and, more importantly, getting there). Bierut founded and writes for the respected design blog Design Observer and serves as a partner in the esteemed offices of Pentagram. Seventy-nine Short Essays collects his writings from Design Observer as well as pieces from a scattering of other industry periodicals.

Consequently, the collection gives the reader indirect insight into Michael Bierut's mind and daily thoughts without directly presenting the reader with a central thesis or takeaway, but its subtext makes his philosophical bent rather clear. As a human (artistic?) endeavor, design itself is a comment on the human condition, and any design aficionado will still find a lot to learn from the pages within. As he notes in the first chapter of the book, "Warning: May Contain Non-Design Content," Bierut's essays are not simply explorations of grids, fonts and serifs. Instead, he tends to concentrate on the moral or political implications of being involved in a discipline that has blossomed from the pages of rare illuminated manuscripts to the visual clutter of what's euphemistically referred to as "urban sprawl".

Not surprisingly, however, Seventy-nine Short Essays bucks the trend with it's elegant and artful design. Each chapter is set in a different typeface. Indeed, the Appendix, which includes notes on the type, the designer and the date of inception for the font used in each chapter, may just be the most interesting part of the book. I found myself wondering about font choices throughout my reading and was pleasantly surprised by the fifteen pages at the end thoughtfully included for those of us actually curious about that sort of thing.

As someone in the early phase of my design career I found a valuable lesson in virtually every chapter, and I suspect that Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design will become even more resonant later in my career when I'm given the opportunity to reflect back on the impact of my decisions and the philosophical implications of designing the surfaces of our modern world.

The colorful animals drawn on the walls of the Lascaux caves in southwestern France are among the oldest remnants of human existence, and the compulsion to create compelling images and visuals is clearly somehow primal to human nature. While comparing the design of our post-industrial world to the wonders of antiquity may seem absurd without the weight of history, we decorate and write to give our world meaning, and it would all be for naught without a few souls to offer careful observation. The coming digital world will likely leave fewer marks, so we should treasure them while they last.