Jessica Helfand

"To be human is to struggle with the unknowable. To design is to make things knowable." Jessica Helfand explains that design is intrinsically connected to what it means to be human.

Designer and art critic Jessica Helfand writes: “To read another person's scrapbook is to acquire a body of knowledge about an entirely different time and place." We look into the history of scrapbooking, and what it reveals about changes in American cultural life. Ms. Helfand’s recent book is Scrapbooks: ...

When designer Jessica Helfand watched the new Pixar superhero epic, The Incredibles, it wasn’t the action or the animation that wowed her. It was the Oscar-nominated film’s art direction, architecture and furniture design. Since iconic designers like Mies van der Rohe and Charles and Ray Eames aren’t around to ...