11.15.19
Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand | Audio

Episode 114: Kids Today


This week, Jessica and Michael discuss the return of the generational divide, as heard in the phrase “OK Boomer.” which the New York Times’ Taylor Lorenz describes as “Generation Z’s endlessly repeated retort to the problem of older people who just don’t get it.”

Michael says,
When I hear ‘OK boomer’ what I hear is this blanket dismissal of the kind of carefully wrought structures that our generation both accepted and burnished and now maintain because it is from those structures that we retain our power and authority. And the younger generations, quite appropriately, are questioning that… and it also is just something that I don’t think is necessarily relevant to the systems we work with today.

Also mentioned this week:

And here are some pictures Jessica took in the Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno:








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Posted in: Arts + Culture, The Observatory




Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer. A former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Eye and Communications Arts magazine, she is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale and a recent laureate of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame. Jessica received both her BA and MFA from Yale University where she has taught since 1994. In 2013, she won the AIGA medal.

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