Selected Writing
What Milton Glaser reveals about the limits of rational design
Fast Company, March 2021
Designers have become too reliant on focus groups and previous successes, rather than drawing inspiration from the world around them.
Lessons from the Iowa Caucuses
The Start Up, February 2020
Good design can produce trust, assuaging doubt and suspicion. Inadequate design can foster a colossal failure, resulting in the catastrophe we all experienced the week of February 3.
The Power of Design to Shape Understanding and Belief
Modus, 2020
The truth about design is it shapes our understanding of the world and our experience within it. What defines us as humans is our ability to design our world.
What Nick Cave Taught Me About Design
Modus, 2019
Some steps in our paths are obvious, in terms of cause and effect. But what is more interesting, in terms of how we get to be who we are, are those moments that are not so obvious, the fragments of inspiration and ephemeral moments that somehow made you the way you are, or the fixtures in your life that stick around decade after decade. We look to these pieces to make sense of the geometry of our lives.
Trump weaponized the American flag. Will it ever be a unifying symbol again?
Fast Company, July 2021
The American flag has always meant different things to different people, but in our increasingly polarized era, it’s become a symbol of division.
The Opacity of Scale: How Numbers Blind us to Meaning
Observer, April 2017
To “scale” is to produce a caricature: elevating similar characteristics found among many, while reducing the distinctions of personality that make us who we are. It removes the variation, pluralism, contradiction, inevitable nuance, the elements that create an individual identity.
Between Image and Reality
Observer, 2016
Our imaginations are born from our pasts, our presents, our hopes, our desires, our heartbreaks — creating a unique vantage point. Each of us brings this landscape of our lives to how we see and perceive the world. We each see through the lens of the most significant frame: our own identity. To ignore this is to ignore the reality of being human.
Digitization and the Loss of Iconography
Observer, 2016
Imagine if the words sunglasses, thunder, continent, and sorrow were suddenly replaced with a single, brand-new word that meant each of those things, depending on their context. How would writers respond? How would readers know which meaning you were seeking when the new word was used? This is what is happening to designers.