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11.16.17

Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand | Audio

Episode 69: Fixes and Facelifts

For the first anniversary of the 2016 election, the Washington Post collected 38 ideas for repairing our badly broken civic life. Designers from Milton Glaser to Gail Anderson contributed illustrations. What caught Jessica’s eye, however, was an story from NIH director Francis Collins, who remembers a science teacher who gave each student a black box with something in it.

He was asked then to think about what that meant. And it made him the scientist that he is today and he talks about the spark of curiosity that needs to be restored.

And Michael talks about his cover for the Washington Post Magazine issue and coincidence, influence, and plagiarism.

Also mentioned this week:

Paul Sahre, Two-Dimensional Man
Ryan Habbyshaw on Instagram
The Partners, January 2016
Carl Petrosyan book cover, 2006
Steve Hartman on his 2004 poster
Jarrett Fuller tweet
A. Zee, On Gravity
Michael Bierut, I Am a Plagiarist (2006)
Dezeen, Snøhetta reimagines Philip Johnson’s postmodern New York skyscraper
Michael Kimmelman shares Hands Off My Johnson sign
Internetting With Amanda Hess, The Ugly Business of Beauty Apps
History of the Civil War in the United States, 1860-1865 (1897)

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Photo from dropdeaded209 on Instagram.

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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