Jessica Helfand and Michael Bierut, writers, graphic designers, and co-founders of Design Observer, will join the Yale School of Management as faculty in design this summer.
In 2003, Helfand and Bierut worked with writer Rick Poynor and author and designer William Drenttel to establish Design Observer, a website with news, features, and essays on design, urbanism, innovation and pop culture.
Helfand and Bierut believe that a quality faculty, solid curriculum, and involvement in the 28-school Global Network for Advanced Management will allow the Yale School of Management to introduce and integrate design across its programs.
“At SOM, we will approach it as one might a second language, introducing theory and practice, defining visual grammar, reframing expression, construction, and craft,” Helfand and Bierut wrote on Design Observer. “Can we move beyond the clichés of whiteboards and Magic Markers, away from Post-It notes and buzzwords, and past the overused promises of ‘design thinking’ to define new ways of exploring the value that design can bring to business—and to a larger world? We think so—and SOM does, too.”
Helfand graduated from Yale with Master of Fine Arts and has taught at the university since 1994. She has written books on subjects like graphic designer Paul Rand and the information wheel. Her book on scrapbooks, titled Scrapbooks: An American History, was named the best visual book of 2008 by The New York Times.
Bierut, a partner with Pentagram, the world’s largest independent design consultancy, is a Senior Critic in Graphic Design at the Yale School of Art. With Pentagram, he has led identity and branding strategies for companies like Benetton, Verizon, and the New York Jets, and his work has been added to permanent collections at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
Great Solutions: Collaboration
9. HOK Takes Videoconferencing to A New Level with its Advanced Collaboration Rooms To help foster collaboration among its 2,212 employees while cutting travel time, expenses, and carbon emissions traveling between its 24 office locations, HOK is fitting out its major offices with prototype videoconferencing rooms that are like no other in the U.
| Aug 11, 2010
2009 Judging Panel
A Matthew H. Johnson, PE Associate Principal Simpson Gumpertz & HegerWaltham, Mass. B K. Nam Shiu, SE, PEVP Walker Restoration Consultants Elgin, Ill. C David P. Callan, PE, CEM, LEED APSVPEnvironmental Systems DesignChicago D Ken Osmun, PA, DBIA, LEED AP Group President, ConstructionWight & Company Darien, Ill.
| Aug 11, 2010
Inspiring Offices: Office Design That Drives Creativity
Office design has always been linked to productivity—how many workers can be reasonably squeezed into a given space—but why isn’t it more frequently linked to creativity? “In general, I don’t think enough people link the design of space to business outcome,” says Janice Linster, partner with the Minneapolis design firm Studio Hive.
| Aug 11, 2010
BIM school, green school: California's newest high-performance school
Nestled deep in the Napa Valley, the city of American Canyon is one of a number of new communities in Northern California that have experienced tremendous growth in the last five years. Located 42 miles northeast of San Francisco, American Canyon had a population of just over 9,000 in 2000; by 2008, that figure stood at 15,276, with 28% of the population under age 18.