Hardcover
Illustrated boards. No dust jacket.
ISBN: 1568983387
List Price: $24.95
Winterhouse Price: $17.50 (30% off)
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Paperback
Illustrated boards. No dust jacket.
ISBN: 1568985967
List Price: $18.95
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As inventive as instructive, information wheels — or volvelles — have been used since the fourteenth century to measure, record, predict, and calculate everything form time and space to military history and recipes. In this fascinating book, designer and critic Jessica Helfand offers an in-depth look at these unique artifacts, which are not only clever and amusing-where else could you dial-in ingredients to concoct "Creamed Oysters and Celery"? — but, Helfand argues, relevant as a model for modern interactive design.

From circular mathematical slide rules to Captain Marvel phonetic decoders; from nuclear bomb blast calculators to gestational breeding planners; and from astronomical planispheres to presidential trivia plotters, Reinventing the Wheel demonstrates the astonishing range and remarkable utility of these ingenious "interactive" tools.

This book was designed at the Winterhouse Studio, Falls Village, Connecticut, by William Drenttel, Jessica Helfand, Rob Giampietro and Kevin Smith. The typeface used is Hightower, designed by Tobias Frere-Jones.

Published by Princeton Architectural Press & Winterhouse Editions. 9.5 x 7.5 inches — 160 pages— 180 illustrations

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If talking about volvelles, planispheres and astrolabes makes your heart go pitter-patter, then Jessica Helfand's book, Reinventing the Wheel, is for you. It provides a tightly woven account of the wheel's importance and development as a scientific tool — and on to what I found the most interesting — illustrations of paper wheels used to measure or demonstrate practically everything from George Washington's biography to animal breeding seasons to semaphore signals.
epinions.com, May 2004

...graphic designers, information architects, and kitsch aficionados, take note: "Volvelles: The Magnificent Art of Circular Charting," an exhibit curated by Helfand and William Drenttel, features more than 120 paper wheel charts, including a 16th-century calendar of planetary hours, a 17th-century topographical guide to the moon, and a "perpetual" poem created in 1958 by Pablo Picasso and the dadaist Tristan Tzara.
Boston Globe, February 29, 2004

Her engaging prose and fresh insights aside, Helfand, while she's an accomplished writer, is above all a designer. And it's as a designer that she frames her analysis, arguing that these quaintly outdated curiosities in fact hold intriguing lessons for today's information managers. . . .
We're venturing into Edward Tufte territory here. The author of Envisioning Information hovers in the background while Helfand, with her jaunty prose and knowing winks at the patent absurdities of these little discs, proves a considerably more entertaining commentator than the hallowed guru of information design.
Graphis, May/June 2003

Volvelles are the shape of the cosmos viewed through a telescope, of fortune's wheel, and of the life cycle. They frame information with a specificity and directness lacking in other analog media.
Architecture, November 2002

This beautifully designed book showcases these unique spheres capable of conjugating verbs, identifying animals to hunt, and telling you how to administer first aid. A joyous and unabashed celebration...
Dwell, December 2002

Helfand's book is visually intriguing. But it also ventures deep into the philosophy of wheel devices.
Scientific American, December 2002

From calculators to games, chart wheels turned data into iconic info, as design critic Jessica Helfand beautifully demonstrates in Reinventing the Wheel. Not only is the chart wheel an elegant way to display complex information, Helfand proves it was a prescient precursor to the point-and-click, windowed world of the Web.
Wired, July 2002

Helfand isn't just in it for the information — the volvelles are strikingly attractive, made all the more intriguing by their obsolescence.
Wallpaper, September 2002

Jessica Helfand is Reinventing the Wheel, the slidable information wheels devoted to such sciences as calculating cocktails and charting nuclear-bomb blasts.
Vanity Fair, June 2002

Graphic designer and volvelle collector Helfand offers a beautiful look at these often remarkable devices.
Yale Alumni Magazine, Summer 2003

As much as the phrase "Reinventing the Wheel" conjures useless effort and wasted time, there is none of that in Jessica Helfand's homage to circles and the ways we have used them for centuries to organize and present information on everything from anthrax to zeppelins.
Ephemera News, Summer 2003

Jessica Helfand delves into the nature of the wheel in modern art, music, philosophy and design, and comes up with an extraordinary book that has been delighting designers and collectors. In this unusual and gorgeously designed book, she discovers how these "these paper artefacts are somehow philosophically united in their unique approach to information design."
Business World India, July 2003

The author accompanies this richly illustrated collection with text marking the progression of this unique circular format, including recent artistic explorations.. . Wheel charts are an endangered concept, and worth exploring in this intriguing title.
The Bloomsbury Review, June 2003

This is a fascinator of a book. Look at the magnificent pictures that make up most of Jessica Helfand's Reinventing the Wheel. You'll be hooked. Here are circular slide rules, horoscopes, breeders' guides, aircraft recognition and semaphore signalling discs; astronomy wheels, bird recognition wheels, spelling wheels and weather wheels.This marvellous display in full colour is the result of the author's indefatigable collecting. She supports the show with thoughts on the symbolism of the circle and on the development of the volvelle over centuries. It is well worth reading.
New Scientist, September 2002

This thoroughly unusual book by designer and critic Helfand will delight graphic, information, and book designers. It will equally fascinate those interested in intellectual history, history of technology, and popular culture. . . . Readers interested in information design will seek this out, while those interested in book and graphic design will be thrilled by the surprise. . . .
Library Journal, October 2002

Helfand takes the reader on a fact-filled tour of a curious cul-de-sac of technological history. Reinventing the Wheel is an informative, fun and, at times, funny book that will be welcomed by history and technology buffs alike.
Popular Mechanics, August 2002

Jessica Helfand has collected and studied and published a surprisingly and graphically satisfying number of paper wheel ephemera in this strikingly original, informative and cheering book. The mythology of our age is revealed in popular culture, and Reinventing the Wheel is an unexpected and welcome amplification of cultural history.
Griffith Observer, March 2003

...the remarkable display of twentieth-century wheel charts provides a rich and fascinating tour of an underappreciated genre of printed matter.
College and Research Libraries, January 2003

This is the thinking-outside-the-box sort of book: a fun and provocative book that should spur an interest in collecting not just wheels but other once-common items that can be categorized in new and interesting ways.
Maine Antique Digest, December 2002

Jessica Helfand's new book is the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel.
Chip Kidd

Lately I've been indulging in books of unusual visual richness, and for me the most exhilarating illustrated book of the season is Jessica Helfand's Reinventing the Wheel. Helfand is a designer, a scholar, and as the book shows in spades a passionate collector of ephemera. The ephemera in question here are those odd wheel charts widely used from the 1920s to 1960s for purposes as diverse as telling fortunes, managing diets, identifying birds, spotting aircraft, charting the stars, and learning French grammar (remember the Cuthbertson Verb Wheel?). Helfand's gorgeously designed book reproduces more than a hundred of these volvelles, as they're technically known, traces their history back to early astronomy indeed to the properties of the circle itself as a "geometric vessel" and illuminates the formal complexity of these humble cardboard devices, which in surprising ways anticipate the functionality of the desktop computer.
Alan G. Thomas, Editorial Director, University of Chicago Press, January 2003

But rather than just being another book about an interesting collection, this book espouses to a higher calling. First, it is a history book. Second, it discusses how these imaginative and often complex constructions are a part of design today. And, finally, it addressees how spinning things are part of the larger language of artistic expression ... It is a book that can be appreciated by experts or dilettantes, pinheads or Elvis freaks, packrats or minimalists. What Drenttel and Helfand have done is reinvented the collectible book. Take this one for a spin.
STEP inside design, March/April 2003

The book is a visual delight ... This is a fascinating study and an invaluable reference book on the subject. It covers many dimensions of the paper wheel as an artefact and also the diversity of the subjects covered by the wheels themselves.
The Ephemerist, Winter 2003

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