Product/industrial design

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26 blog entries

Book List of the Week

One Complete Story: Gijs Bakker’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter August 16, 2012

Product and jewelry designer Gijs Bakker: Gijs Bakker Design (Amsterdam)
Profile Book List
When in the early 1990s, Gijs Bakker co-founded (with Renny Ramakers) Droog Design—perhaps the most well-known contemporary design group to come out of The Netherlands—it was with the idea of challenging the design establishment to think about product and industrial design in new ways. More...

Book List of the Week

Intertwined Entities: Freeman Lau’s Book List—A Conversation with Zara Arshad

By Steve Kroeter March 12, 2013

Product and graphic designer Freeman Lau: Kan & Lau Design Consultants (Hong Kong)
Profile Book List
Design writer Zara Arshad: Design China (Beijing)
Profile
Internationally renowned product and graphic designer Freeman Lau (Lau Siu-Hong), with more than 300 awards to his name, has designed everything from posters and books to prize-winning water bottle packaging and a series of intertwining chairs and stools. He is also recognized for his work as an educator and curator, and in 2011 was a curator of the Beijing International Design Triennial. Lau’s book CMYK (2012) was just released in Hong Kong and Beijing this past December. Design China’s Zara Arshad, in an interview for Designers & Books, sat down with Freeman Lau recently to talk about reading, writing, designing, and publishing books in Hong Kong and mainland China. More...

Book List of the Week

Interaction and Information: Carola Zwick’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter January 22, 2013

Product/Industrial and Interaction Designer Carola Zwick: Studio 7.5 (Berlin)
Profile Book List
“As a designer you are concerned with observing and understanding change and solving emerging needs and problems. In addition, your concepts and ideas as well as the change you hope to trigger with your design intervention need to be communicated clearly,” says Carola Zwick, who along with Burkhard Schmitz and Claudia Plikat co-founded the Berlin-based industrial design firm Studio 7.5. More...

Book List of the Week

Friendships with Designers and Writers and Artists: Cleto Munari’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter March 20, 2012

Product designer Cleto Munari: Cleto Munari Design Associati (Vicenza, Italy)
Profile Book List
Cleto Munari is a designer and design impresario whose work has an especially close connection with the words of writers. In a recent series of limited-edition tables he produced for his first furnishings collection, he incorporated the language of poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Mark Strand—lines of their poetry as well as their drawings are etched into glass tabletops. 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...

Guest posts

Eva Zeisel: A Master of Survival

By Katarina V. Posch November 20, 2012

Design scholar Katarina V. Posch (New York)
Profile
Product/industrial designer Eva Zeisel (New York)
Profile Book List
For this guest post, the daughter of the late Eva Zeisel, Jean Richards, asked design scholar and family friend Katarina V. Posch to write an appreciation of Zeisel, on the occasion of the release of the e-book Eva Zeisel: A Soviet Prison Memoir (2012). Compiled by Richards and Brent C. Brolin, the book presents details of the life of the remarkable designer, from whom Designers & Books had the pleasure of receiving a book list (a single book) in 2011. — SK More...

Book List of the Week

Designers as Poets First: Books Every Product Designer Should Read—Alberto Alessi

By Steve Kroeter July 12, 2011

Product design executive Alberto Alessi: Alessi S.p.A. (Crusinallo, Italy)
book list
Alberto Alessi belongs to the third generation of one of the world’s great family dynasties in design. For over 40 years he has been at the center of managing the business and strategic affairs of Alessi S.p.A.—known for bringing innovative design to housewares—as well as coordinating the company’s product development relationships with notable architects and designers from around the world. He answered some questions from Designers & Books about his book list and about his life, which has had design at its center. More...

Book List of the Week

Design, Marketing, Business, Life: Jeffrey Bernett’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter January 8, 2013

Product/industrial designer Jeffrey Bernett: CDS/Consultants for Design Strategy (New York)
Profile Book List
“School only teaches you so much,” says Jeffrey Bernett in his book list introduction for Designers & Books. The designer of acclaimed residential and office furniture, household products, lighting, packaging, and interior architecture for companies such as B&B Italia, Design Within Reach, and Herman Miller recommends reading broadly as not only “a quest to gain knowledge” but also “a thought-provoking journey in its own right.” More...

Book List of the Week

Consuming Design: Stefano Giovannoni’s Book List

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...

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.

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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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