“Nate, thanks for this page and for both links. There's so much talent and quality work around, the wonder is that there are still so many dumb-looking books being published. Furthermore, design is (and has been for at least a generation) far ahead of fine art, across all the criteria for arresting our gaze and earning our praise.

For beauty and craftsmanship, conceptual rigor and invention; for creativity, influence upon the culture, and engagement with an active audience, it's not hard, nor entirely academic, to make the case that design, by its many disciplines and iterations, long ago surpassed contemporary art as the defining aesthetic of our time. And since art has so lustily embraced commerce — not even in the dark alleys of desire, but in the calculated glare of the public square — former claims of superior virtue ring hollow. As Orson Welles observed in one of his more philosophical films, "It's a bright, guilty world."

Not so for design, which shines forth without ethical confusions and both illuminates the present and enlightens the future.”