Designers & Books Blog

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857 blog entries

Architecture

The Tip of an Iceberg: Stanley Tigerman’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter January 10, 2012

Architect Stanley Tigerman: Tigerman McCurry Architects (Chicago)
Profile Book List
Stanley Tigerman—recently the subject of a retrospective at the Yale School of Architecture Gallery honoring his long and varied career as architect, iconoclastic theorist, and educator—freely admits that he became an architect because of a book. It’s a book whose individualistic main character has elicited a wide range of reactions since its first publication in 1943 (and in the past year was included on four other Designers & Books lists): Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead. More...

Daily Features

The Unbearable Beingness of Light

By Kimberlie Birks, Superscript August 13, 2013

While the experience of viewing the artist's work may be ethereal, the process of creating such ephemerality is monumental. More...

Rare & Beautiful

The Way It Happened: Modern Art Exhibition Catalogues

By Peter Kraus February 4, 2020

From German Expressionism to Pop Art, catalogues preserve exciting moments in 20th-century art. More...

Book List of the Week

The Well-Written Sentence as an Act of Design: David Weeks’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter March 5, 2013

Product/Industrial designer David Weeks: David Weeks Studio (New York)
Profile Book List
Why do fiction and narrative hold such a great appeal for designers? One well-put answer comes from product designer David Weeks. “Whether it's a minor character in The World According to Garp who has halitosis and is described as ‘dying from the inside out‘ or Sartre’s description of finding his hand on a doorknob in Nausea, the fleeting imagery created from reading a well-written sentence is an act of design in itself.” More...

Daily Features

The World of Wes: Designing The Wes Anderson Collection

By Stela Razzaque, Superscript November 6, 2013

A new book, The Wes Anderson Collection, pays tribute to the evolution of the filmmaker who has delighted audiences for decades with his unique artistry and idiosyncratic characters. More...

You Are What You Read

These Bookstores Are Participating in the Designers & Books “You Are What You Read” Series

By Steve Kroeter November 16, 2016

Daily Features

This Book Is . . . Dangerous

February 19, 2019

. . . so we created a unique display stand, specially engineered to show off the Bolted Book while accommodating the bolts.

The display stand is available on our Kickstarter for the 2nd printing of the Bolted Book, The stand is also part of the “Complete 3-Piece Set,” which includes the facsimile, the accompanying Reader’s Guide, and the display stand. More...

The Proust Questionnaire — Book Edition

Thomas Girst Answers The Proust Questionnaire—Book Edition

By Thomas Girst December 4, 2013

BMW’s Thomas Girst read Stephen King as a child. Today he’s in the middle of rereading all the volumes of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. “While reading Proust, you live with him,” Girst says, among many more answers to The Proust Questionnaire—Book Edition. More...

Book List of the Week

Thomas Girst’s Book List: Art and Cars

By Steve Kroeter October 7, 2013

“Your library reveals more about you than your public persona,” says BMW’s Head of Cultural Engagement, Thomas Girst. More...

Architecture

Three Architects, Three Countries, Six Languages: The Book Lists of Mikko Heikkinen, Maya Lin, and Enrique Norten

By Steve Kroeter June 21, 2011

Architect Mikko Heikkinen: Heikkinen + Komonen (Helsinki) book list

Architect Maya Lin: May Lin Studio (New York) book list

Architect Enrique Norten: TEN Arquitectos (Mexico City and New York) book list

The work of architects Mikko Heikkinen, Maya Lin, and Enrique Norten is acclaimed not only in their home countries—Finland for Heikkinen, the U.S. for Lin, Mexico for Norten—but also far beyond the cities and nations where their practices originated. And it is in this wider arena that, despite their different cultural backgrounds, some connections among the three emerge. More...

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.

Order the book.