This issue’s found object is a box of Depression-era rejection letters addressed to a young woman looking for work in the food service industry. The box was picked up 10 years ago at a Great Barrington, MA, flea market by designer and author Steven Heller.
Steven Heller was the art director of The New York Times Book Review for 30 years and continues to write the “Visuals” column. He is the founder and co-chair of the MFA/Design Program at New York’s School of Visual Arts. Heller is also the author and/or editor of over 80 books on popular culture, graphic design, and politics in art. His recent publications include The Design of Dissent, Expanded Edition: Greed, Nationalism, Alternative Facts, and the Resistance (2017), The Moderns: Midcentury American Graphic Design (2017), 100 Ideas that Changed Graphic Design (2019), Teaching Graphic Design History (2019), and Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York (2022).