Designers & Books Blog

 

856 blog entries
Interviews
By Steve Kroeter July 16, 2014

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute’s Curator in Charge, Harold Koda, talks about the Met’s current exhibition Charles James: Beyond Fashion (on view through August 10) and the accompanying catalogue. Fashion designer Charles James (1906–1978) is often considered to be America’s first couturier—a sculptor of fabric who defined 1940s and 1950s glamour. Enter our drawing to win a copy of the catalogue, through August 4. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter September 30, 2013

“Today a lot of information can be found on the Internet, but for me books have more authority,” says architect Christian Wassmann. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter November 18, 2013

“Encountering knowledge is like encountering love,” writes Milan-based architect Cino Zucchi in the introduction to his book list. “The books that have been meaningful to us are more often ‘found’ than searched for.” More...

Daily Features
By Stela Razzaque, Superscript November 13, 2013

Ikon.5 Architects has delivered a library and civic space in Delaware inspired by a pile of books. More...

Architecture
By Steve Kroeter May 15, 2012

Architects Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano: LOT-EK (New York and Naples)
Profile    Book List
Profile    Book List

LOT-EK (read “low-tech”) founding partners Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano have gained high visibility for their groundbreaking approach to construction, materials, and space and through the adaptive reuse (“upcycling”) of existing industrial objects and systems not originally intended for architecture. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter December 13, 2012

Product/industrial designer Stefano Giovanni: Giovannoni Design (Milan)
Profile     Book List
On industrial designer Stefano Giovannoni’s book list for Designers & Books are five titles by the French philosopher and sociologist Jean Baudrillard. Why? Giovannoni thinks it’s very important for a designer “to open one’s vision to the philosophical and sociological aspects related to the evolution of our society.” “I’ve never found a design book deep enough for a broad vision of our profession,” he says in the introduction to his book list. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter November 8, 2011

Interior designer David Easton (New York)
Book list
David Easton comes to books the same way he does to interior design—from a richly textured background threaded through with his own inimitable instincts. After earning a degree in architecture from Pratt Institute and then making full-scale furniture drawings for modernist Edward Wormley, Easton worked for the firm of Parish-Hadley (where he was “seduced by decoration”) before establishing his own practice in 1972. As one of the most in-demand interior designers, he became noted for his neoclassical approach to architecture, interior decorating, and furnishings. More...

The Proust Questionnaire — Book Edition
By Coralie Bickford-Smith November 8, 2013

If Penguin book cover designer Coralie-Bickford Smith could be any author, who would she be? Her answer to this and 15 more responses to The Proust Questionnaire—Book Edition. More...

Designers & Books Milestone Lists
By Steve Kroeter November 14, 2012

Designers & Books has partnered with AIGA and Design Observer to continue the “50 Books/50 Covers” competition honoring excellence in book design. More...

Cover Stories
By Stephanie Murg September 4, 2013

Our new column on book cover design starts off with an inventively designed new book on the human body. David High’s jacket design for Hugh Aldersey-Williams’s Anatomies merges style and content, epidermis and viscera. More...