The Seafoam Palace, Museum of Curiosity

Restoring a historical building into a public space for intrigue and inspiration

The Seafoam Palace is part restoration project and part creative endeavor. The interdisciplinary project is currently spearheaded by a group of artists, writers, filmmakers, sociologists, engineers, historians and more (including Burning Man co-founder John Law) in Detroit. The historic building (a two-story structure that’s on the National Register of Historic Places) has already been purchased and now the team behind Seafoam Palace is hoping to …

North Korea: Anonymous Country

Disguised as a tourist, photojournalist Julia Leeb offers a glimpse of the isolated society in a new hardcover book

North Korea may be a familiar figure in international news headlines, but even in the age of the internet, the little we know stems mostly from rumors, accounts from defectors who risked their lives to escape and bizarre YouTube videos. Though Korea was a whole body with a shared history for more than a thousand years, since dividing in 1945, North Korea has greatly diverged …

New Edition of Paul Rand’s Thoughts on Design

The seminal text on graphic design reappears after over 40 years out of print

In 1947, art director and graphic designer Paul Rand published a striking manifesto on the nature of design itself. This essay would directly impact the world of graphic design for ages. In fact, its applications (in addition to Rand’s graphic design work) remain powerfully resonant today. While Rand would go on to revise the book’s art in the ’70s, his update never saw the presses, …