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kottke.org posts about Steven Heller

The Graphic Edition of “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century”

book cover for the graphic edition of On Tyranny

sample page spread for the graphic edition of On Tyranny

sample page spread for the graphic edition of On Tyranny

Originally written as a Facebook post in the wake of the 2016 election, Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century went on to become a bestseller and a prescient warning on what was to come for America. Now, a graphic edition of On Tyranny has been released, designed and illustrated by Nora Krug. From Steven Heller’s piece on the book in Print:

Krug’s goal for this project was to use her medium to echo Snyder’s call for action. “While it was important to me to create images that would highlight the contemporary relevance of Snyder’s message,” she writes, “the use of historic images was clearly essential. At moments in the book that refer to a particular event in time — such as this one about Hitler’s annexation of Austria, when Austrian Nazis captured Jews and forced them to scrub the streets clean — I felt that rather than showing my own visual representation of that event, it was more powerful to feature a historic photograph because of the immediacy of the medium that would make that moment in history come to life.”

Combining Krug’s drawings with historic materials gave her the license to contrast the documentary with the imagined, the factual with the poetic, and to create a narrative tension that emphasizes historical relationships. “More importantly,” she explains, “this combination of mediums allows me to admit to the fact that we don’t exist in a vacuum, that we can only exist in relationship to the past, that everything we think and feel is thought and felt in reference to it, that our future is deeply rooted in our history, and that we will always be active contributors to shaping how the past is viewed and what our future will look like.”

You can order the graphic version of On Tyranny here but it seems to be backordered in most places.


The USPS Introduces New Hip Hop Stamps

USPS Hip Hop Stamps

On July 1, the USPS is introducing a set of four stamps celebrating hip hop. The stamps were designed by Antonio Alcalá based on photographs by Cade Martin. In an interview with Steven Heller, Alcalá explained how he thought about the design process:

Hip Hop has a long and rich history, and from the start, I knew I wouldn’t be able to represent its totality in one set of stamps. But because it is such an important part of our nation’s art, and one of our most significant cultural contributions to the world, I knew we needed to at least begin representing it somehow. Hip Hop has four widely recognized key elements, or “pillars”: Rap, DJs, Graffiti, and B-boying (known more broadly as break-dancing). Using contemporary images that quickly and accurately depict the genres eased the burden of having to represent the many histories within the subject.

You can preorder the hip hop stamps on the USPS website.


A Short History of the Cooper Black Typeface

In this video from Vox, Estelle Caswell talks to Bethany Heck and Steven Heller about the seemingly ubiquitous typeface Cooper Black.

There’s a typeface that has made a resurgence in the last couple of years. It’s appeared on hip hop album covers, food packaging, and advertising. Perhaps you know it from the Garfield comics, Tootsie Roll logo, or the Pet Sounds album cover by the Beach Boys. It’s called Cooper Black, and its popularity and ubiquity has never waned in the hundred years since it was first designed.

Cooper Black tends to get a bad rap from type aficionados (too popular, too cartoony) but this video — and Heck’s comments in particular — have given me a new appreciation for it.


Confessions of a Letterhead Collector

Design historian Steven Heller collects vintage letterheads and shares some examples at Design Observer.

Letterhead Heller

Letterhead Heller

The design of blogs owes much to the letterhead (and, perhaps more obviously, to the newspaper masthead). Blog posts are, after all, public letters “to whom it may concern”. The first design I did for Gawker was quite letterheady and I loved & envied my pal Dean Allen’s letterhead-inspired design for Cardigan Industries.

Update: Loooots more great letterhead examples at Letterheady. (thx, jenni)


100 ideas that changed graphic design

From Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne, a book about 100 Ideas that Changed Graphic Design. Maria Popova has a preview at The Atlantic.

From how rub-on lettering democratized design by fueling the DIY movement and engaging people who knew nothing about typography to how the concept of the “teenager” was invented after World War II as a new market for advertisers, many of the ideas are mother-of-invention parables. Together, they converge into a cohesive meditation on the fundamental mechanism of graphic design — to draw a narrative with a point of view, and then construct that narrative through the design process and experience.


40th anniversary of Nike’s swoosh

Steven Heller writes about the 40th anniversary of Nike’s iconic swoosh, one of the best logos ever designed.

swoosh trademark

The origin of the mark goes like this: Knight wanted to differentiate BRS’s custom product from the ones they were importing from Onituska in Japan: “…so Knight turned to a graphic design student he met at Portland State University two years earlier.” One day in 1969, the student, Carolyn Davidson, was approached by Knight and offered $2 per hour “to make charts and graphics” for his business. For the next two years Davidson managed the design work on BRS. “Then one day Phil asked me if I wanted to work on a shoe stripe,” Davidson recalled. The only advice she received was to “Make the stripe supportive of the shoe.” Davidson came up with half a dozen options. None of the options “captivated anyone” so it came down to “which was the least awful.”

(via megadeluxe)


Nazi graphics standards manual

Steven Heller had heard rumors of a Nazi graphics standards manual for years and finally tracked one down.

Nazi Graphics Standards

Published in 1936, The Organizationsbuch der NSDAP (with subsequent annual editions), detailed all aspects of party bureaucracy, typeset tightly in German Blackletter. What interested me, however, were the over 70 full-page, full-color plates (on heavy paper) that provide examples of virtually every Nazi flag, insignia, patterns for official Nazi Party office signs, special armbands for the Reichsparteitag (Reichs Party Day), and Honor Badges. The book “over-explains the obvious” and leaves no Nazi Party organization question, regardless of how minute, unanswered.

More photos and a copy for sale here.


The sucky new Tropicana orange juice cartons

Steven Heller asks why Tropicana redesigned the packaging for their orange juice.

What could Arnell, the agency that did the deed, have been thinking? It’s one thing to change the logo; it’s another to abandon the mnemonic orange with the straw in it. As package imagery goes, it was pretty smart, and decidedly memorable.

He goes on to call the redesign “a big tactical mistake”. I’m a Tropicana drinker and I think the new packaging sucks. It’s impossible to figure out at a glance which juice is which because all the packages look the same, aside from some thin lines at the very top. Horrible.


Obama lapel pins

Steven Heller asked a bunch of designers and illustrators to re-imagine the lapel pin for Barack Obama.

Since Mr. Obama promotes himself as the candidate of change, maybe he should start wearing a different kind of lapel pin that signals his patriotism as well as other values he wants to communicate.

One fellow suggests ripping his lapels off and thereby skirting the whole pin issue. (via design observer)


Through the legs

Print Magazine has an awesome roundup of book covers, advertisements, movies posters, etc. using the “cutoff-torso-spread-leg framing device”, what Steven Heller calls “the most frequently copied trope ever used”.


Short video piece about fonts and typography,

Short video piece about fonts and typography, featuring Steven Heller, Jonathan Hoefler, Tobias Frere-Jones. (via quipsologies)


Design, Wit, and the Creative Act, a

Design, Wit, and the Creative Act, a half-day event put on by Core77.

How do designers employ wit, irony — even subversion — in the service of making a connection with their audience, and how can they replicate these connections across a body of work? Are there limits to commercializing this kind of design, or are we seeing new opportunities for the provocateur in an ever-commoditized world? What is the role of the brand in this context, and to what degree does a sly exchange between designer and user create a new kind of brand experience?

Featuring Ze Frank, Steven Heller, and others…Nov 9 in NYC.


Everyone’s a Critic panel

If you happen to be in NYC on November 3rd, stop by Eyebeam in the evening and check out a panel that I’m on about criticism called “Everybody’s A Critic, Or Are They?” Here’s a description:

With 9 million blogs, umpteen online message boards, thousands of shows on hundreds of cable channels, and an increased number of magazines on the newsstand, the number of outlets for expressing criticism has never been higher and the barriers to would-be critics have never been lower. Is this devaluing evaluation or does the shotgun approach result in better criticism? YOU be the Judge!

Joining me on the panel are Emily Gordon, Village Voice film critic Michael Atkinson, and Columbia professor & author Duncan Watts. The wonderful Steven Heller will moderate and no doubt bring the conversation to a higher level. Details:

November 3, 2005
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Eyebeam (map)
540 W. 21st St.
New York, NY 10011


UnBeige blogged the blog panel that I

UnBeige blogged the blog panel that I participated on with Michael Bierut, Jen Bekman, Armin Vit, and Steven Heller. More here and here.


Interview with Steven Heller, art director of

Interview with Steven Heller, art director of the NY Times Book Review, among many other things. On the question of how he decides that design is good, he says, “if I like it, it’s good.”