White and emptiness
Kenya Hara’s little book White is a meditation on the colour’s qualities as a field of imminent possibility.
Philosophy
The discipline of design: Massimo Vignelli’s monastic modernism
Massimo Vignelli (1931-2014), who died last week, was one of the great designers of the 20th century. The principles he applied to his work tell us a lot about what design is and isn’t.
Brutalism, the sublime and everyday digital design
The avant-garde and everyday design: notes on the BBC documentary Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloodymindedness by Jonathan Meades.
Re-engineering politics: the promise and limits of digital solutionism
Moral and political issues are not engineering problems to be fixed, but expressions of differing, irreconcilable visions of the good that must be negotiated. Some notes on digital ‘solutionism’.