How Things Don’t Work by Victor Papanek & James Hennessey
Cover design by Kenneth Miyamoto / Gears construction by Chris Bobin / Photographed by Neal Slavin
Published in 1977, How Things Don’t Work “was an early and powerful plea for more socially and ecologically responsible design.” [Icon]. It follows up on Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek (1971) and Nomadic Furniture (1973/1974). The paperback edition shown here combines ITC Ronda Bold and Permanent Semibold. The back cover is set in Antique Olive.
Poking fun at the nonsense and near-nonsense products that engulf us, Victor Papanek and James Hennessey pose the fundamental question whether some products are needed at all and suggest alternative ways of making and owning things.
In 2014, Parsons The New School for Design and the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, co-organized an exhibition titled How Things Don’t Work: The Dreamscape of Victor Papanek.
Images and font IDs via Mark Simonson.
4 Comments on “How Things Don’t Work by Victor Papanek & James Hennessey”
I’m pretty sure that Permanent got digitized by Fabian Harb of Dinamo (2014).
That’s correct, Jay. Dinamo’s digitization cover only two weights, though. It’s not officially released, but available on request.
Finally… after two years of this notation, I think there was a phototype version of Permanent carried by VGC. Shown below are one-line specimen samples from the Arno Press book Graphic Arts Manual from 1980:
Confirmed. VGC adopted the series sometime before 1972. It’s very likely their version that was used here. They also carried the single-style Permanent Massiv.