The Education of a Design Writer

From prolific design writers and educators at the SVA/NYC, Steven Heller and Molly Heintz, a compelling collection of essays and interviews for anyone interested in critiquing, explaining, or interpreting design

Writing is designing, and writers are designers. Mastering the elements of different writing styles is as important in describing a designed work as an understanding of color, texture, and material form. The design writer must make the prose as necessary and exciting to read as a designed objectfrom the simplest business card or product packaging to the grandest monumentmust be to see and to use.

This book is for the student or the expert, the novice or the professional, who seeks to communicate. With real-world examples of how and what to write when critiquing, explaining, discovering, introducing, and interpreting a piece of design, it presents a tantalizing world of possibilities for any design writer. The collected essays include a range of styles and disciplines, from journalism, scholarship, criticism, and business. Contributors include:

• Sarah Boxer
• Akiko Busch
• Liz Danzico
• Jarrett Fuller
• Colette Gaiter
• Karrie Jacobs
• Mark Kingsley
• Julie Lasky
• Warren Lehrer
• Rob Walker
• Michele Y. Washington
• and many more!

Explaining design means writing intelligibly and creatively. This book covers it all, for and through those who practice, chronicle, critique, and observe graphic, product, industrial, and architectural design.

Steven Heller is co-founder and co-chair emeritus of the MFA Design program at New York's School of Visual Arts and writes a daily column for He is the author, editor, and co-editor of more than 170 books on design and popular culture and in 2011 received a Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum National Design Award. He lives in New York City.

Molly Heintz is a writer and editor specializing in architecture and design. Since 2015, she has served as the chair of the MA Design Research, Writing & Criticism program at the School of Visual Arts. She is a co-founder of the editorial consultancy Superscript, which has developed programming, exhibitions, and editorial content for a variety of institutions, including the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Museum of Arts and Design, and MoMA.

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