Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design
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As an avid reader of Design Observer, I rushed out to buy a copy of Michael Beirut’s essay collection “79 Short Essays on Design.” Almost four years later, I think I have finally finished reading this collection. Beirut’s collection, though not the most conducive to reading all in one sitting, is continually surprising, and entertaining.
What surprises me most is the depth to which the book reaches on a wide variety of topics on design–from a discussion of t-shirt designs, to falling off a treadmill, it seems that Beirut can find the design in almost anything. That quality in his essays challenges the reader to do the same. Each time I re-read the essays in the book, I come out with a different thing to mull over, a new idea to try in a design solution, or just a funny line to make me smile for a day or two. Few other books I have read rival the long-term rewards of this book.
Perhaps the most fitting way to describe Beirut’s mastery of finding the design in the everyday is that same quality he discusses in the essay “What we talk about when we talk about architecture.” He begins describing the radio program “Car Talk” where conversations about car troubles can range from philosophy to relationship advice–almost anything, excluding, of course, car trouble. Beirut challenges that design lacks that same kind of community where talking about design can lead to, and connect with, other things.
In this collection of essays, I think he may have found an answer to that.
Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design Overview
Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design brings together the best of designer Michael Bierut’s critical writing serious or humorous, flattering or biting, but always on the mark. Bierut is widely considered the finest observer on design writing today. Covering topics as diverse as Twyla Tharp and ITC Garamond, Bierut’s intelligent and accessible texts pull design culture into crisp focus. He touches on classics, like Massimo Vignelli and the cover of The Catcher in the Rye, as well as newcomers, like McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and color-coded terrorism alert levels. Along the way Nabakov’s Pale Fire; Eero Saarinen; the paper clip; Celebration, Florida; the planet Saturn; the ClearRx pill bottle; and paper architecture all fall under his pen. His experience as a design practitioner informs his writing and gives it truth. In Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design, designers and nondesigners alike can share and revel in his insights.
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