An elaborately illustrated A to Z of the face, from historical mugshots to Instagram posts.
By turns alarming and awe-inspiring, Face offers up an elaborately illustrated A to Z―from the didactic anthropometry of the late-nineteenth century to the selfie-obsessed zeitgeist of the twenty-first.
Jessica Helfand looks at the cultural significance of the face through a critical lens, both as social currency and as palimpsest of history. Investigating everything from historical mugshots to Instagram posts, she examines how the face has been perceived and represented over time; how it has been instrumentalized by others; and how we have reclaimed it for our own purposes. From vintage advertisements for a “nose adjuster” to contemporary artists who reconsider the visual construction of race, Face delivers an intimate yet kaleidoscopic adventure while posing universal questions about identity.

Face: A Visual Odyssey (Mit Press)

Arts & Photography

Helfand, Jessica

Graphic Design

The MIT Press

Combining pictures, words, and a wealth of personal ephemera, scrapbook makers preserve on the pages of their books a moment, a day, or a lifetime. Highly subjective and rich in emotional content, the scrapbook is a unique and often quirky form of expression in which a person gathers and arranges meaningful materials to create a personal narrative. This lavishly illustrated book is the first to focus attention on the history of American scrapbooks—their origins, their makers, their diverse forms, the reasons for their popularity, and their place in American culture.
Jessica Helfand, a graphic designer and scrapbook collector, examines the evolution of scrapbooks from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present, concentrating on the first half of the twentieth century. She includes color photographs from more than two hundred scrapbooks, some made by private individuals and others by the famous, including Zelda Fitzgerald, Lillian Hellman, Anne Sexton, Hilda Doolittle, and Carl Van Vechten. Scrapbooks, while generally made by amateurs, represent a striking and authoritative form of visual autobiography, Helfand finds, and when viewed collectively they offer a unique perspective on the changing pulses of American cultural life.
Published with assistance from Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund

Scrapbooks: An American History

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

A compelling defense for the importance of design and how it shapes our behavior, our emotions, and our lives Design has always prided itself on being relevant to the world it serves, but interest in design was once limited to a small community of design professionals. Today, books on “design thinking” are best sellers, and computer and Web-based tools have expanded the definition of who practices design. Looking at objects, letterforms, experiences, and even theatrical performances, award-winning author Jessica Helfand asserts that understanding design's purpose is more crucial than ever. Design is meaningful not because it is pretty but because it is an intrinsically humanist discipline, tethered to the very core of why we exist. For example, as designers collaborate with developing nations on everything from more affordable lawn mowers to cleaner drinking water, they must take into consideration the full range of a given community’s complex social needs. Advancing a conversation that is unfolding around the globe, Helfand offers an eye-opening look at how designed things make us feel as well as how—and why—they motivate our behavior.

Design: The Invention of Desire

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Paul Rand

Paul Rand (1914-1996) was a pioneering figure in American graphic design whose career spanned almost seven decades. Always enquiring and investigating, he explored the formal vocabulary of European avant-garde art movements and synthesised them to produce a distinctive graphic language. Rand was a major force in editorial design, advertising and corporate identity. He was art director at "Esquire" and "Apparel Arts" magazines, and he designed the ground-breaking covers for the cultural journal "Direction". He worked at the Weintraub Advertising Agency from 1941-1954 and, in 1955, established his own design studio, acting as consultant to companies such as IBM, Westinghouse and UPS. His logos for these companies are world-renowned design classics. This book comprises a definitive collection of Rand's works, through an exploration of his advertising, publishing and corporate identity work. Steven Heller's text, with a foreword by designer Armin Hofmann, introduction by advertising guru George Lois, and a concluding essay by designer and writer Jessica Helfand, offer an insight into Paul Rand's work.

HELLER, Steven

Lois, George

Rand, Paul

Phaidon Inc Ltd

This second volume displays the work of 37 of the best designers and design firms from across the United States. Organized by DK Holland of the Pushpin with Chip Kidd and Jessica Helfand, the selection presents such firms as Looking, Los Angeles; Post Tool, San Francisco, Modern Dog, Seattle; Carlos Segura, Chicago; Go Media, Austin Texas; Greteman Design, Wichita, Kansas; P. Scott Makela, Minneapolis; Werner Design Works, Minneapolis; and Design!, Atlanta.

Graphic Design: America Two

KIDD, CHIP

Holland, D.K.

Rockport Pub

Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture

Designer and critic 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 LA Times. The essays collected here decode the technologies, trends, themes, and personalities that define design today, especially "the new media," and provide a road map of things to come. Her first two chapbooks--Paul Rand: American Modernist and Six (+2) Essays on Design and New Media--became instant classics. This new compilation brings together essays from the earlier publications along with more than twenty others on a variety of topics including avatars, "the cult of the scratchy," television, sex on the screen, and more. Designers, students, educators, visual literati, and everyone looking for an entertaining and insightful guide to the world of design today will not find a better or more approachable book on the subject.

Princeton Architectural Press

Reinventing the Wheel

As inventive as instructive, information wheels-or volvelles-have been used since the fourteenth century to measure, record, predict, and calculate everything form time and space to military history and recipes. In this fascinating book, designer and critic Jessica Helfand offers and in-depth look at these unique artifacts, which are not only clever and amusing-where else could you dial-in ingredients to concoct "Creamed Oysters and Celery"?-but, Helfand argues, relevant as a model for modern interactive design. From circular mathematical slide rules to Captain Marvel phonetic decoders; from nuclear bomb blast calculators to gestational breeding planners; and from astronomical planispheres to presidential trivia plotters, Reinventing the Wheel demonstrates the astonishing range and remarkable utility of these ingenious "interactive" tools.

Comics & Graphic Novels

How To Create Comics & Manga

Now available in paperback, this delightful book spins the history of the information wheel, as inventive and instructive as intriguing, that has been used since the fourteenth century to measure, record, predict, and calculate everything from time and space to military history to recipes. In this fascinating book, designer and critic Jessica Helfand offers and in-depth look at these unique artifacts, which are not only clever and amusing but, Helfand argues, relevant as a model for modern interactive design. From circular mathematical slide rules to Captain Marvel phonetic decoders, Reinventing the Wheel demonstrates the astonishing range and remarkable utility of these ingenious "interactive" tools.

Six Essays on Design and New Media

Small Pr Distribution

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Helfand, Jessica. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Helfand, Jessica

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Helfand, Jessica. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Face: A Visual Odyssey (Mit Press)

Scrapbooks: An American History

Design: The Invention of Desire

Paul Rand

Graphic Design: America Two

Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture

Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture

Reinventing the Wheel

Reinventing the Wheel

Six Essays on Design and New Media