Look Both Ways

Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design

Debbie Millman

• Publisher: HOW Books
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781600613210
• eBook ISBN: 9781440319433
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Design General

In Look Both Ways, respected branding consultant and design community leader Debbie Millman has constructed a series of essays that examine the close relationship between design and everyday life. You'll find inspiration on every page as you meander through illuminating observations that are both personal and universal. Each beautifully illustrated essay reveals the magic - and wonder - of the often unseen world around us.
Excerpt from "Look Both Ways"
It occurred to me, as I stood there, that I could simultaneously, vividly look both ways - backward and forward, in time - at once. I remembered longing to know what was coming, who I would become and how. And I suddenly saw it all over again in front of me. The light was exactly the same, and as the sun fell and the summer shadows slivered against the elegant, lean, concrete towers in the distance, I recognized the smell of the warm air, the precise pink and grey of the coming dusk and the mysterious melancholy and joy of both knowing and not-knowing, and the continuity that occurs when both collide.—Debbie Millman

MY FIRST LOVE

I am and will always be deeply sentimental. I still own many of the books from my childhood, the first sports medal I won in fourth grade (for a three-legged race), an old B and-A id tin, and the business card on which an old boyfriend scribbled his phone number when we first met. | That same man often accused me of an excessive degree of hero worship. I attributed this trait to my sentimentality, which gives me an irrepressible desire to collect and admire images, artifacts and memorabilia from the defining moments in my life; to gather mementos of ideas and experiences that provoke and move me; and to assemble around me things I want close by as amulets of inspiration. My paramour was at first perplexed but then put off by my curious fascination with popular culture and its hierarchies of fame and power. | I have been analyzing this oft-criticized, seamy worship of mine though the years, seeking to under–stand its origin in my psyche. I remember anxiously awaiting my favorite Friday night television shows as my infatuations flitted from David Cassidy in The Partridge Family to Lee Majors in The Six Million Dollar Man. Digging deeper into my emotional history, I remember kissing the television when Mr. Rogers came on. I remember being obsessed with Marcia Brady, Olivia Newton-John, New York Rangers Hall of Famer Eddie Giacomin, and the NHL mascot Peter Puck. | But I didn’t know and couldn’t seem to discover why I needed and constructed this worship. What did I admire most? What was I trying to gain? While I recognized what these performers, artists and entertainers might stand for—or might bring to me through my experience of them—I realized that it was what I was bringing to the idea of them that was important to comprehend. I realized that I was bestowing all sorts of magical and unreal–istic fantasies and expectations on these figures. I am still not sure why—it seems that as a culture we are held captive by the comparisons we make between ourselves and others; many of the people we admire or despise, similar to the brands we collect or cringe at, not only signify our beliefs but have come to define them. | Still not satisfied with the results of my internal investigation, I...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Her Story is Strange
• Yellow
• My First Love
• The Letter H
• Fudgetown
• Dot for Short
• Debutante
• Hello, Dolly!
• Levi’s and Lacoste
• Cheese
• Let It Be
• If That Hadn’t Happened
• Pick One
• Economy Foam
• Necessary Objects
• Peonies
• Lost in Translations
• Final Frontier
• Fail Safe
• Look Both Ways
• Acknowledgments
• Copyright