A speculative roadmap on what was then termed “new” media, this 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.

As inventive as instructive, information wheels—also known as volvelles—have been used since the fourteenth century to measure, record, predict, and calculate everything form time and space to military history and recipes. From circular mathematical slide rules to nuclear bomb blast calculators to breeding planners, celestial planispheres and Captain Marvel phonetic decoders, Reinventing the Wheel demonstrates the astonishing range and remarkable utility of these ingenious "interactive" tools.

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.

An elaborately illustrated study of the cultural significance of the face through a critical lens—investigating everything from historical mugshots to Instagram posts—these essays show 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. Jessica Helfand's new book delivers an intimate yet kaleidoscopic adventure while posing universal questions about identity.

Dedicated to the pursuit of originality, imagination, and close cultural analysis, Design Observer has, since 2003, remained a lively forum for readers in the international design community. Fifteen years, 6,700 articles, 900 authors, and nearly 30,000 comments later, this book is a combination primer, celebration, survey, and salute to a certain moment in online culture.

Advancing a conversation that is unfolding around the globe, and illustrated with her own paintings based on histological tissue specimens— Helfand offers an eye-opening look at how designed things make us feel as well as how—and why—they motivate our behavior

When Emerson published his most famous essay in 1841, it was in the aftermath of the calamitous financial collapse of 1837. His positive vision for the power of individualism and personal responsibility was issued in a climate filled with panic and uncertainty. Emerson’s text is widely available to read online, but this new, graphically reimagined edition, produced with Design Observer, elevates his wisdom through the printed word and includes twelve contemporary essays by Jessica Helfand.

This slim volume combines an essay published in The New Republic (“begin at the beginning,” advised the editor, “and tell Americans what graphic design actually is”) with an essay for the Phaidon monograph on Rand, specifically focused on the evolution and enduring impact of Rand's pedagogy at Yale.