Because “not everything is design. But design is about everything. So do yourself a favour: be ready for anything.”
How to use graphic design to sell things, explain things, make things look better, make people laugh, make people cry, and (every once in a while) change the world.
That’s not a wish list for designers. It’s the title of Michael Bierut’s new book. Put it on your wish list though. It’s being released in Australia in October by Thames & Hudson.
Bierut landed his first job at Massimo and Lella Vignelli in 1980, so his career began in the fast lane. He spent ten years at the rather renowned Vignelli Associates where his title, vice president of design, cloaked him in all the right trappings to become a very tall poppy.
Which his work achieved…His identity for the Museum of Art & Design. His posters for Parallax Theater. His wayfinding signage for the Alliance for Downtown New York. His projects at Pentagram – where he works now – for Walt Disney, United Airlines, Motorola, the New York Jets, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Yale and Princeton Universities, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York magazine…
…and the Design Observer. He is one of its founders.
Bierut is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He is a senior critic at Yale’s School of Art and a fellow of its School of Management. He was president of AIGA’s AIGA’s New York chapter from 1988 to 1990 and president of AIGA from 1998 to 2001. He has been inducted into the Art Directors Hall of Fame and the Alliance Graphique Internationale.
Yet he opens his new book humbly, “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.”
The thing is, this book is for design professionals. It’s a book of the stories of 35 Bierut projects, that does what its title promises – tells how to use graphic design to sell things, explain things, make things look better, make people laugh, make people cry, and (every once in a while) change the world.
