Book List of the Week

Book List of the Week: Emanuela Frattini Magnusson

Masterful writing as visual experience

By Steve Kroeter January 27, 2014

Global Head of Design: Bloomberg LP (New York); Founder, EFM Design (New York)

View Emanuela Frattini Magnusson’s Book List

Recently named Global Head of Design for Bloomberg LP, the Milan-born architect and industrial designer Emanuela Frattini Magnusson has been creating award-winning products for over 25 years: as founder of her own firm, EFM Design; for Tibor Kalman; and for many leading international manufacturers. Her Propeller Table System for Knoll has been a best seller since its introduction in 1994.

Her book list, Frattini Magnusson says, “is extremely eclectic, but also very ‘loyal.’ Favorites have remained as such throughout the years, and have never been replaced—they just have become part of an ever-growing list.” Among the selections on design (“A few titles relate to my profession, but most of them don’t,” she notes) is last year’s Hidden in Plain Sight: How to Create Extraordinary Products for Tomorrow’s Customers, by Jan Chipchase with Simon Steinhardt. Frattini Magnusson calls the book the “ultimate guide to observing human behavior with an open mind. It sets the foundation through which to identify emerging issues and to build upon in order to problem-solve. An enlightened approach to understanding real human needs, and being better equipped to respond as a designer.”

Another book chosen is Le Corbusier’s Towards a New Architecture (on the book lists of 10 other Designers & Books contributors) which, at almost 100 years old, “retains the power of its clarity of vision and purity of ideals and intent,” according to Frattini Magnusson. She quotes Le Corbusier on beauty as “the overplus necessary to the human spirit,” and on poetry—which “not only lies in the written word. Objects which signify something and which are arranged with talent and with tact create a poetic fact.”

Propeller desks, part of the Propeller Table System designed by Emanuela Frattini Magnusson for Knoll, introduced in 1994. Photo: Courtesy of EFM Design

Commenting on her fiction choices, Frattini Magnusson highlights the connection between the poetic and the visual. About Thomas Mann’s Tonio Kröger, the story of “the struggle of the artist trying to be an accepted member of society,” she comments that Mann, referring to the book, said that poetry is “evoking emotion by talking about everyday things”—which, Frattini Magnusson notes, “applies equally to architecture.” Reading Giorgio Bassani’s 1962 novel The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, which follows an aristocratic Jewish family living in Ferrara during the time of Fascism, says Frattini Magnusson, “is full-immersion—masterful writing becomes a visual experience.”

Selecting books “both for content and for the love of paper and typography,” she also includes two titles from her childhood by Italian graphic designer Bruno Munari that are “a sampling of my cultural roots.” Munari’s Nella Nebbia di Milano (In the Fog of Milan) and Nella Notta Buia (In the Darkness of the Night) “sparked my love of paper with their printed vellum pages and perforated and cut-out cardboard inserts that progressively revealed the next layer of the story,” she says. “I still own them.”

View Emanuela Frattini Magnusson’s Book List

Experiencing Design: Carl Magnusson’s Book List

Amazing Ideas into the Future: Winka Dubbeldam’s Book List

5 Books Featuring Bruno Munari

Donald Norman’s Book List: The Design of More Everyday Things

comments powered by Disqus

Announcements

Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister

Now is Better

By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023

Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.

Order the book.

Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli

Design Emergency: Building a Better Future

By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022

Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.

Order the book.

Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman

Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People

By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022

Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.

Order the book.

Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber

Milton Glaser: POP

By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023

This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.

Order the book.

Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange

Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall

By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022

Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”

Order the book.

Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller

Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)

By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023

This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.

Order the book.