Elements of Design: Spotlight on Color

Color, like line, shape, texture, and the other elements of art and design, communicates meaning and creates visually compelling experiences. Here's how.
Illustration of two people trying to communicate through tin-can phones with a disconnected string

How Media Stifles Deliberative Democracy

As outlets that welcome rational exchanges of ideas dwindle those that serve as echo chambers are exploding. What does that mean for free speech and the health of the US?
Photograph of Chinatown YWCA in San Francisco (now used by the Chinese Historical Society). Julia Morgan architect. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chinatown_San_Francisco_%2826720090647%29.jpg

Julia Morgan, American Architect

Morgan, the first licensed woman architect in California, helped bring parity to the built environment, the community, and the profession.
Nakagin Capsule Tower in 2021

Tearing Down Nakagin Capsule Tower

Japanese Metabolists argued that architecture should be adaptable, changing as a city changed. Why, then, is this icon of Metabolism being dismantled?
A voter checks in at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3103 polling location on November 8, 2022 in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

What Makes Us Vote the Way We Do?

According to some political scientists, it's more about group identity than personal interests.

Exploring Images In (and Out of) Context

When you think you understand an image, ask yourself what contextual information might be missing.
An illustration of a man holding his face in his hands

Is There a Cure for Information Disorder?

Researchers are concerned not only with our exposure to mis- and disinformation but with the depth of confidence people have in their inaccurate beliefs.
Source: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/40690/40690-h/40690-h.htm

Walking Streetlamps for Hire in Seventeenth-Century London

Much in the same way we hail cabs in cities today, a medieval Londoner could hail a torch-bearer (a link-boy) to light their way home from a night on the town.
Three costumed girls, Pauline, Barbara and Dorothy Luck surrounding Halloween pumpkin, 1940

Halloween: A Mystic and Eerie Significance

Despite the prevalence of tricks and spooky spirits in earlier years, the American commercial holiday didn’t develop until the middle of the twentieth century.
Construction of the Pedregulho Residential Complex

Latin America Revisits Its Modern Architecture

As preservationists grapple with crumbling monuments in Brazil and Peru, they’re also confronting the progressive agendas that originally shaped the buildings.