Alexandra Cardia studied art history and English at Oberlin College. She is currently a graduate student at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, and has previously worked as an editorial assistant at Cabinet Magazine.
From Cabinet: Jacket Required
In April 2009, one of the earliest known dust jackets was found at Oxford University's Bodleian Library.
Observed | July 12
Ikea claims to have created the World's Comfiest Font, Soffa Sans, where each letter is formed by pieces from a sofa! Free download here. [LY]
Can you imagine the cereal isle? Kellogg's has temporarily made the packaging for its most popular cereal varieties black and white in a new partnership with Crayola. [BV]
Not over the hill: Design With Nature, Ian McHarg's landmark book of ecological design turns 50. [LY]
Congratulations to Collins, Ad Age's first design agency of the year! [BV]
Our privacy crisis is a crisis of design. [JH]
A wonderful deep dive online Bauhaus exhibition from Getty Research Institute. [BV]
Featuring upside-down pages, illegible interviews, and appearances from Sonic Youth, Björk, and David Bowie, Ray Gun, 90s America's bible of music and style, shook up US publishing in the '90s. [BV]
Pioneering video artist Gretchen Bender predicted our obsession with screens. [BV]
"Not having anything to do sounds terrible. I fear that more than anything else. It's greater than the fear of death." Anne Quito interviews Milton Glaser on his 90th birthday. [MB]
70% of graphic design students are women, yet only 11% are Creative Directors. Discuss. [JH]
What a better way to kick off July than with some new art? And what better place to get it than the 20x200 weeklong sitewide semi-annual sale? Starting tomorrow their vintage & space editions are on sale. [BV]
Congratulations to our co-founder, Jessica Helfand, and all the Fall 2019 Bogliasco Fellowship recipients! [BV]
What's as satisfying as a good book? Seeing one made the old-fashioned way, by hand. [BV]
Observed | June 28
Matthew Carter will discuss his ambitious new Latin superfamily of serif, sans, slab, and rounded typefaces at the Katherine Small Gallery. [BV]
The enduring appeal of mustard yellow. (via James I. Bowie) [BV]
Color theory explored by Peter Kraus in three jewels of book-making. [BV]
Jessica Helfand gave a poster design workshop to scientists at Yale a few years ago and was told by one that if he followed her advice, nobody would take him seriously as a scientist. Behold: the future! A graphic design revolution for scientific conference posters. [BV]
The new ghost museums of China. (via James I. Bowie) [BV]
Poster House, the first museum in the US dedicated exclusively to posters, opens today! Listen here to their first audio newsletter and guide narrated by Steven Heller. [BV]
Remembering the Bantam paperback of The Greening of America with its truly relentless deployment of Bookman Swash Italic. Quintessential 70s. RIP Charles Reich, 1928-2019. [MB]
Here's your chance to hear Debbie Millman on the other side of the mike. Recorded live on stage at the famous Design and Advertising festival in London in May, Debbie is interviewed on episode 14 of This Way Up. [BV]
The School of Visual Arts has donated nearly 100 of its beloved Subway Series posters from the past three decades to the brand new Poster Museum, opening Thursday, June 20. These, as well as all new posters created in the future, will live in the Museum's permanent archival collection. [BV]
Can a small Italian village point the way to more livable modern cities? A conference of urbanists aims to find out. [BV]
The late William Helfand had an incredible collection of medical prints, posters, and advertising emphasized "quack" pills, potions, and snake oil cure-alls. Hear his daughter, and our co-founder Jessica Helfand pay tribute to his "quackery" obsession. [BV]
"Beer cans are officially the new record sleeve." The rise in craft brewing has spurred a beer aisle design renaissance. [BV]
Seeking 1000 people who eat. ZOE's experts are marrying nutritional science with machine learning to perform the world's largest study of individuals' unique nutritional responses. Visit joinzoe.com to sign up. Read this NYTimes article to see why. [BV]
A new exhibit at the Saint Louis Art Museum celebrates amateur photography from 1890–1970 through the recent gift of 150 amateur photographs from St. Louis collectors John and Teenuh Foster. John Foster assembled this collection of anonymous found images over the past 20 years, some of which can be seen in his Design Observer column. [BV]
An in-depth look at an urban mall designed to revive downtown San Diego that is set to be destroyed, from Alissa Walker. [BV]
Congratulations to Susan Kare, Patricia Moore, MIT D-Lab, Tom Phifer, Tobias Frere-Jones, Tobias Frere-Jones, Derek Lam, Ivan Poupyrev, Open Style Lab and all the winners of the 2019 Cooper Hewitt National Design Awards! [BV]
The first in a series of articles about the early days of the space age, in celebration of this summer's 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing: How NASA selected the first astronauts (and why no convicts have walked on the Moon). [BV]