Designers & Books Blog

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856 blog entries

Quote of the Day: Ed Ng & The Shining

By Ed Ng August 19, 2013

The writer creates a curiosity in the reader, and describes how we can plan and create a spatial experience in design.

Quote of the Day: Ellen Lupton & Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago

By Ellen Lupton November 7, 2013

This oversized compendium of Bauhaus source material was designed with ruthless rationality for MIT Press by the great Muriel Cooper. It is the Old Testament of design theory.

Quote of the Day: Ellen Lupton & Graphic Design: A Concise History

By Ellen Lupton June 23, 2014

In his crisp, smart narrative, Hollis follows the profession from the late 19th century to the close of the 20th. His book is small enough to fit in your purse and rich enough to account for the basic history of our profession.

Quote of the Day: Ellen Lupton & The Elements of Style (Illustrated)

By Ellen Lupton August 21, 2013

No writer or designer should be deprived of Kalman’s ingenious reissue of this useful book.

Quote of the Day: Ellen Lupton and The Elements of Typographic Style

By Ellen Lupton October 27, 2014

Typography manuals abound, but few are a pleasure to read, handle, and behold. Bringhurst’s book is one of the best guides ever devised on the principles and practices of typography.

Quote of the Day: Emanuela Frattini Magnusson & Towards a New Architecture

October 6, 2022

In spite of being almost 100 years old, this book retains the power of its clarity of vision and purity of ideals and intent. How can you disagree with: “beauty being the overplus necessary to the human spirit.” Or with a reference to 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.”

Quote of the Day: Emanuela Frattini Magnusson & Who Owns the Future?

By Emanuela Frattini Magnusson January 27, 2014

A seductive and plausible picture of a future digital economy where the power and return generated by owning big data are distributed equally to all of its suppliers: us.

Quote of the Day: Erik Spiekermann & Shapes for Sounds

By Erik Spiekermann October 8, 2013

Whenever students of visual communication ask for my recommendation, I mention this book as the first thing they should read.

Quote of the Day: Eva Zeisel & Line and Form

By Eva Zeisel October 16, 2013

This 1900 work was an important book for me. Crane talks about expressive and communicative line. I often referred to it in my lectures.

Quote of the Day: Farshid Moussavi & S,M,L,XL

By Farshid Moussavi September 6, 2013

Arranges texts, projects, and images about the contemporary city according to scale, rather than time or subject. In doing so, rather than simply representing them as they happened, it opens each to overlaps, new connections, and new readings.

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.

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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.”

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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.

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