How to use Graphic Design to Sell Things, Explain Things, Make Things Look Better, Make People Laugh, Make People Cry, and (Every Once in a While) Change the World - Michael Bierut

Reasoning

Having read his essay 10 Footnotes to a Manifesto, that was critical of the 2000 First Things First Manifesto, I thought reading this book would be useful, as it's only recently been published and so would contain very up-to-date information. The title of the book suggested it would be quite open in what it's themes were.

What I Gained

This book wasn't as useful as I'd hoped, it's more of a personal collection of Bierut's work than anything theoretical, and subsequently it didn't take me long to read. However, I found a couple of things that can be used as examples such as: 

1. An example of modernist design being easily replicable.
2. An example of someone who generally follows modernist principles despite being critical of First Things First.
3. A graphic designer advocating capitalism and consumerism.

Potentially useful quotes:

Next Steps

This book, despite it not really adding any new thoughts, has reminded me that I'm going to need to look for practical examples of graphic design to back up the points my essay will be making, so my next steps will involve trawling through It's Nice That and Creative Review to find such examples from a contemporary source. 

The particular page in the book that made me think this was page 41, which showed an invitation Bierut designed (below) for two different events after having the budget cut. It illustrated the point he made about content being more important than form.

BIERUT, M. International Design Center Invitation. (1984) [Invitations] Available from: http://www.aiga.org/medalist-michaelbierut/. [Accessed: 6th October 2015]