Jessica Helfand is a designer, educator, and writer. A founding editor of Design Observer, she is the author of numerous books on design and cultural criticism, including Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media and Visual Culture (2001), Scrapbooks: An American History (2009), and Design: The Invention of Desire (2016).
Helfand has been a visiting critic at numerous programs in design and architecture throughout the United States and Europe and has taught since 1996 in the graduate program in Graphic Design at Yale University, where she is currently Senior Critic and a Lecturer in Yale College. She joined the faculty at the Yale School of Management in 2016.
Helfand grew up in Paris and New York City and received both her BA and MFA from Yale University. A member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and the Art Director’s Hall of Fame, she was the first-ever recipient, in 2010, of the Henry Wolf Residency at the American Academy in Rome. She won the American Institute of Graphic Arts Medal in 2013.
