Jessica Helfand has emerged as a leading voice of a new generation of designers. Her essays—at once pithy, polemical, and precise—appear in places as diverse as Eye, Print, ID, The New Republic, and the Los Angeles Times. The essays collected here decode the technologies, trends, themes, personalities, and visual phenomena that frame contemporary design theory and practice, addressing topics as far-ranging as talking Barbies, mindless manifestoes, scratchy typography, reality television, de Stijl geometry, chicken nuggets, and sex on the screen. Her first two books, Paul Rand: American Modernist and Six (+2) Essays on Design and New Media, became instant classics in the field. This new compilation looks critically at "the new media" and provides a road map of things to come. Designers, students, educators, visual literati, and anyone else looking for an entertaining and insightful guide to the world of design today will not find a better or a more approachable book.

This book was designed at the Winterhouse Studio, Falls Village, Connecticut, by William Drenttel and Kevin Smith. The typeface used is Thesis, designed by Luc(as) de Groot in 1994. 8 x 5.25 inches. 2001. Published by Princeton Architectural Press.