Helvetica/Objectified/Urbanized: The Complete Interviews: The Design Trilogy Interviews

by Gary Hustwit (editor)

If you enjoyed the films, now you can get the full stories and the full context. Even if you haven't seen the films, you'll be inspired by some of the most innovative minds on the planet, and you'll get a better understanding of how design affects our lives. Creativity, graphic design, typography, architecture, cities, technology, visual communication, product design, consumerism, transportation, street art, modernism, post-modernism, sustainability... they're all part of these conversations.

Genres: Design

1260 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Gary Hustwit is an independent filmmaker based in New York and London. He worked with punk label SST Records in the late 1980s, and was subsequently involved in a wide range of projects in music and book publishing before he began producing documentaries in 2001. His films include the design documentaries Helvetica, Objectified and Urbanized.

Reviews

[Ninakix · Rating 5 out of 5]

FIRST!
A great interviewer finds a way to get to the unique and interesting things someone has to say. Hustwit is good at that, and I also think he's helped by the fact that his interviews are meant to be presented as a set during the movie, so there's a continuity of thought, a kind of comparison of opinions and ideas. And for that, it's even more interesting. Helvetica is maybe the strongest of the series, with Urbanized being the weakest, but perhaps that has more to do with subjects that have and have not been treaded. The typographers in particular were refreshing to hear from, and I also found myself snapping lots of photos from the industrial designers as reference for later. Highly recommended for any fan of design in its varied forms.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highlights + Notes:

Rem Koolhaas - Thoughts on the commercialization of architecture, recent Chinese architecture, how architecture competitions result in lots of wasted work, and how preservation varies across continents. I really like Rem Koolhaas' CCTV Building in China and he's pretty articulate about his theories.

Dieter Rams - The best part of this interview is about making products that are so simple and well designed that they can be enduring in their design. It doesn't break and it doesn't feel old and passé. Strangely enough, he also says if he were starting over he wouldn't be a designer because the world already has too man things.