04.27.17
Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand | Audio

Episode 55: Sea and Sky


HBO’s Big Little Lies is based upon Liane Moriarty’s novel, set in Australia, but the adaptation is filmed in Monterrey, California. Jessica says:
The choice to position it on a coast struck me as a really beautiful creative decision, because It’s set against the openness of sea and sky and it’s about the closedness of a community.
Also mentioned:
  • NPR, Julian Koenig, Well-Known Adman, Named Earth Day
  • Diana Budds, Nixon, NASA, and How the Federal Government Got Design
  • The Atlantic, Why Nixon Created the EPA
  • William Ruckelshaus, A Lesson Trump and the E.P.A. Should Heed
  • Kickstarter for 1977 EPA Graphic Standards System reissue
  • Design and Exclusion conference: audio and transcripts
  • This American Life, Lindy West confronts her troll
  • Big Little Lies on HBO
  • Big Little Lies author Liane Moriarty interviewed in the Guardian
  • Five Came Back: book by Mark Harris, series on Netflix


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    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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