Daily Features

The Book We Need Now: New from Stefan Sagmeister

October 24, 2023

Renowned graphic designer and Designers & Books contributor Stefan Sagmeister brings us exactly the book we need now.

Titled Now is Better, this visual exploration of human progress over time takes a long view that gives us cause for hope in the face of much of the current news.

Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister, soft-cover book and slipcase (Phaidon Press, 2023).

The book continues Sagmeister’s life-long interest how design can best speak to people and improve their lives. Initially conceived in 2020 as the world entered a global pandemic, Now is Better looks at quality of life issues through collected statistics and information.

WOMAN I, from Now is Better. Percentage of countries in which women have the right to vote, 1900–2000. Image credit: Phillip Reed and Andreas Vesterlund.

Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, Sagmeister transmutes data sets into arresting visualizations that are part artwork, part infographic, bringing to life encouraging statistics that show how for a large part of the world’s people, life has gotten better over the past 200 years—with positive lessons for further human betterment in the future.

The visualized data is shown inlaid into nineteenth-century oil paintings, embroidered onto canvases, or transformed into dynamic lenticular prints and hand-painted tableware, many of which have been exhibited in galleries around the world. A foreword by psychologist and leading authority on language and the mind Steven Pinker; an essay by design historian (and Designers & Books contributor) Steven Heller; and a conversation between Sagmeister and Hans Ulrich Obrist, curator and artistic director of Serpentine Galleries in London, underline Sagmeister’s radically positive outlook.

Now is Better, issued in softcover with silver foil edges, comes in a die-cut slipcase with custom typography that interacts with the cover artwork beneath. Each book includes a lenticular print designed by Sagmeister, that expresses the increasing percentage of the global population living in democracies between 1915 and 2015.

LIFE, from Now is Better. Average global life expectancy, 1800 vs. 2020, visualized on a dress shirt and a historical canvas.

ILLITERACY (detail), from Now is Better. Percentage of the world’s population that is illiterate, 1820–2020. Created in collaboration with Yau Jiang Ping, Su Embroidery, China.

Now is Better
By Stefan Sagmeister
2023, softcover, with flaps (slipcased), 264 pages, 300 color illustrations
Available from Phaidon Press

For further reading:

Books that Inspire Stefan Sagmeister

Books by Stefan Sagmeister

Missed the PRINT Book Club discussion of the book on October 25, 2023, with Stefan, Debbie Millman, and Steven Heller? It’s now available for on-demand viewing. Register here to watch it.

One Book and Why: Graphic Design Writer Steven Heller Recommends . . .

One Book and Why: Graphic Designer Stefan Sagmeister Recommends . . .

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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.