Dan Friedman: A Personal Appraisal

For 25 years, first as a colleague at Yale, then as a friend, I observed the fascinating evolution of this influential, but less well-known designer/philosopher. I have helped stage multiple exhibitions of his work and spoken about his multi-faceted career and influential ideas at many schools and organizations around the country. You can see a recent lecture on Dan here.

Running an In-house Design Group

In 2009, I was asked to address the annual How [Design] Conference, which that year focused on the particular management issues of in-house design groups. This gave the the chance to think back on my experience at WGBH and try

Flatland

Compared with other design disciplines, graphic design is essentially non-spatial. Architecture, exhibit design, landscape design, product design, even fashion design are all more about space than graphic design is. In fact, “graphic” implies something to do with “written or pictorial

10 things I learned (or at least had confirmed) at WGBH

Farewell party, WGBH, 10.28.08 The chance invitation to work here at WGBH placed me in an environment that was a perfect fit for my temperament and aspirations as a professional and just a plain person. Once here I recognized, gradually,

Some things change, some things stay the same

  Some things change…. In the past several decades we have witnessed a series of amazing changes in the way we think about the profession of graphic design. Here is my short list:   2D / 4D  Once graphic design

Joseph Muller-Brockmann’s Typographic Re-boot

In the mid 60’s, when I was just learning about design and typography at Yale, Modernism was the style du jour. I was intellectually turned on by the minimalism (one font, usually Akzidenz in just a few sizes), the rules