Book List of the Week

The Book List of the Week highlights the list of books provided by invited designers (including architects, fashion designers, graphic designers, interior designers, landscape architects, product designers, urban designers, and other design professionals) who have chosen books that inspire them and that have shaped their worldview or their ideas about design.

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189 blog entries

Book List of the Week

Fashioning Art: Reed Krakoff’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter July 23, 2013

Fashion designer Reed Krakoff: Reed Krakoff Collection (New York)
Profile Book List
Fashion designer Reed Krakoff—creative director of the Reed Krakoff Collection—is also a dedicated collector and patron of the arts and a noted photographer. He recently published his second book of photographs, Women in Art: Figures of Influence (Assouline), featuring the images and words of an international array of high-style gallerists and curators. Designers & Books asked him to talk about the book and posed a few questions about his reading habits. More...

Architecture

Exploring, Through Design, the Big Ideas and Issues of Our Time: Susan S. Szenasy

By Steve Kroeter December 13, 2011

Editor Susan S. Szenasy: Metropolis (New York)
Book List Essay

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the launch of the magazine Metropolis, whose mission is to “examine contemporary life through design.” At the helm for the past 25 years has been editor in chief Susan S. Szenasy. Her role in the design world as it has evolved since 1981 prompted Designers & Books to ask Susan for her thoughts on the most notable design books published during the magazine’s three decades—as a sort of capsule summary of the important ideas dominating design from the late 20th century into the early 21st. Susan came back to us with a slightly different idea. More...

Book List of the Week

Experiencing Design: Carl Magnusson’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter March 25, 2013

Product/industrial designer Carl Magnusson: CGM Design LLC (New York)
Profile Book List
Design, believes Carl Magnusson, “must evoke an experience physically and culturally beyond its core function.” The eminent industrial designer—the winner of Contract magazine’s 2012 Legend Award for lifetime achievement—was talking about the “central message that stuck” from Steen Eiler Rasmussen’s Experiencing Architecture, on his book list for Designers and Books, but he was really talking about all of design. More...

Book List of the Week

Everything You Can Imagine: Karim Rashid’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter November 15, 2011

Product and interior designer Karim Rashid: KARIM Rashid Inc. (New York)
Book list

Prolific is a word that is frequently used to describe the designer Karim Rashid, and it’s easy to see why. His practice areas include home and office furnishings, personal accessories, furniture, lighting, interior design, packaging, fashion, graphics, exhibition design, identity programs, and various art media. Over 3,000 of his designs have been put into production for those on his client roster—a list that numbers more than 200, operating in over 35 countries on five continents. His Garbo waste can for the home accessories company Umbra has sold more than 7 million units. He has won more than 300 awards. Fourteen museums have his work in their permanent collections. More...

Architecture

Every Carefully Selected Word and Each Elegantly Constructed Sentence: Deborah Berke’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter September 13, 2011

Architect Deborah Berke: Deborah Berke & Partners Architects (New York)
book list
In an essay called “Here and Now,” written for a monograph on her work published by Yale University Press, Deborah Berke discusses the evolution in her thinking about architects and architecture over the course of her more than 25-year career. Focused in the late 1990s on what she at the time called “the everyday in architecture”—for which she earned renown—her approach to building was about “embracing and learning from that which is not expressly constructed through high culture or self-conscious design.” Looking back on that time, she feels that “what I was trying to do through my buildings was see if it were possible to make an architecture of exceptional everydayness.” More...

Book List of the Week

Embracing Opposites: Jeffrey Bilhuber’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter February 21, 2012

Interior designer Jeffrey Bilhuber: Bilhuber & Associates (New York)
Profile Book List
In addition to being an acclaimed interior designer, Jeffrey Bilhuber is an engaging and entertaining storyteller. Designers & Books had the chance to find out firsthand just how engaging and entertaining a storyteller at a recent face-to-face with him in his office on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The conversation ranged from an unusual fiction choice on the book list he sent us to why he is getting his preschool son a subscription to National Geographic magazine to what his own library looks like and the thinking behind his latest book. More...

Book List of the Week

Editor’s Choice: Amanda Dameron’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter February 19, 2013

Design magazine editor Amanda Dameron: Dwell (New York)
Profile Book List
What books does the editor of a high-profile modern home design magazine read? Designers & Books went to Amanda Dameron, editor in chief of Dwell, to find out. “Last year I moved from the West Coast to New York, and I barely brought any furniture or clothes with me. What I did bring was 50 boxes of books and vintage magazines,” says Dameron. More...

Book List of the Week

Ed Ng’s Book List: A Platform for Beautiful Pieces

By Steve Kroeter August 19, 2013

Designers & Books talked with interior designer Ed Ng, co-founder of AB Concept, about his thinking, his book choices, and the new monograph featuring the firm’s work, The Language of Luxe, released this spring by ORO Editions. More...

Book List of the Week

East Meets West: Books Every Fashion Designer Should Read—Akiko Fukai and Claire Wilcox

By Steve Kroeter March 15, 2011

Among the books chosen by Akiko Fukai, Director and Chief Curator of the Kyoto Costume Institute (KCI) in Kyoto, is Issey Miyake: East Meets West. The title provides a symbolic link to the books selected by Claire Wilcox, Senior Curator of Fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. More...

Book List of the Week

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

By Steve Kroeter October 15, 2013

Design thinker and writer Donald Norman—known for his work that attempts to bridge the gap between the products users want and the products designers create—talks to Designers & Books on the occasion of the newly revised and expanded edition of his book The Design of Everyday Things. 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.

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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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