Book List of the Week

The Needs of Work and Pleasure—Angus Hyland’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter May 10, 2011

Angus Hyland

Graphic designer Angus Hyland: Pentagram (London)

Angus Hyland is a partner in Pentagram’s London office and also consultant creative director to Laurence King Publishing. He agreed to answer some questions from us about books—those on his list (which he describes as “divided in half by the needs of work and pleasure”), those he’s written, and those he’s about to read.

Designers & Books: You describe yourself “spending your life in books,” so we are guessing you have a lot of them. How many books are in your personal library, and how do you have them arranged?

Angus Hyland: I should probably have said that I spend my life “around” books rather than “in” them. Currently a great many of them are arranged in piles in the corners of my small house. I’m a slow reader and many of them are file copies for my archive rather than having been acquired to satisfy a voracious reading habit.

D&B: It has been said that one’s book list can be seen as a sort of revealing self-portrait. What are the two or three most important things that your book list says about you?

AH: I am not sure I entirely agree with the first part of your question since any list is by necessity a construct. So whilst a book list might be seen as a self-portrait, it is debatable how revealing it truly is. It may well be more revealing to open my fridge rather than to rely on any conscious list making.

D&B: You noted that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was the first book you owned. Do you still have that copy? Do you have any other books from your childhood that you’ve kept and that occupy a special place in your library?

AH: Sadly, I don’t still have my original copy of Alice, but I recently bought one to read to the kids. As a child I hadn’t appreciated quite how surreal or “trippy” it is. The only books kept from my childhood are my collections of Asterix and Tintin.

D&B: We have to ask: what was it about Tintin in Tibet that changed your life?

AH: Well, I won it as second prize at the school fancy dress competition. I was a pirate and had even blacked in my own teeth. First prize went to a candy bar (Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut). Thank God, since the candy bar didn’t win a book. I didn’t come from a reading family. Aside from the aforementioned Alice and an old copy of The Wind in the Willows there wasn’t anything to capture my imagination amongst the volumes on horticulture and animal husbandry on the shelves. Tintin seemed miles more sophisticated than the comics I bought every week and along with Letraset catalogues they opened a whole new world to me.

D&B: What’s the next book on your “to read” list?

AH: The Book of Lies by Mary Horlock—she is a friend, and the publisher, Jamie Byng, is both a friend and a client. I have promised them both that I will read it the next time I get on a long-haul flight.

Note: Angus Hyland will be speaking and signing copies of his new book, Symbol, co-authored with Steven Bateman, at The Design Museum in London on Wednesday, May 18.

Of Covers and Bindings, Pictures and Texts: Books Every Graphic Designer Should Read—Rick Poynor’s Book List

Michael Bierut's Book List

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.