Weekly Wrap-Up & Preview: August 29
August 29, 2014
Summer may be winding down but Designers and Books has been ramping up. Through September 2, you can enter our current “Design Books to Win” drawing to win one of five copies of Dezeen Book of Interviews. We post new giveaways of recently published design books each week.
This past month we also posted an interview with Head of Cultural Engagement at BMW, Thomas Girst, about his recent book on BMW’s artist-painted racecars, as well as an interview with Dezeen magazine founder Marcus Fairs.
We profiled the book list of the wonderful and colorful Deborah Sussman, designer of environmental graphics and one of our early contributors, who passed away last week. We also brought you a new list of books on the subject of health and design.
In August our Online Book Fair welcomed The Wolfsonian-FIU, which among its offerings features a book perfect for Labor Day, September 1: Describing Labor, on images of work and working figures.
Coming events to note:
September 11: Graphic designer Peter Mendelsund speaks at The Type Directors Club in NYC. Details.
September 16: Book launch for The Typographic Universe by graphic designers Steven Heller and Gail Anderson at powerHouse Arena, Brooklyn, NY. Details.
Weekly Wrap-Up
We salute graphic designer Deborah Sussman (1931–2014), who passed away last week, with a look at the books that inspired the colorful designer of the colorful and distinctive environmental graphics that became synonymous with Los Angeles and the California New Wave movement.
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Marcus Fairs, founder of the international award-winning design magazine Dezeen, talks to Designers & Books about his latest foray into book publishing: Dezeen Book of Interviews, which features 45 of the magazine’s conversations with architects and graphic, interior, and product designers.
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We’re giving away five copies of Dezeen Book of Interviews. The book features 45 conversations with some of the most talented and inspiring people from the global design scene who have been interviewed for the award-winning international online architecture and design magazine Dezeen over the years, plus new, previously unpublished material.
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Good design can make you healthier. From titles focusing on the design of health-care facilities, gyms, playgrounds, and spas to products for increased well-being, to classics on creating walkable. livable communities, to visions for our future as human beings, here are 15 books on health and design.
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To mark the publication of two new books about books and their covers, written by Knopf art director Peter Mendelsund, we’re featuring the book lists of five graphic designers admired for their book cover work. The designers, along with Peter Mendelsund, associate art director at Alfred A. Knopf and the author of What We See When We Read and Cover, both debuting this week, are Seymour Chwast (Push Pin Studios), Coralie Bickford-Smith (Penguin Classics), Chip Kidd (Alfred A. Knopf and author of Go!), and Carin Goldberg.
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BMW’s Head of Cultural Engagement, Thomas Girst, talks about the company’s almost 40-year tradition of producing unique cars designed by artists—now collected into a book. BMW Art Cars, edited by Girst and published by Hatje Cantz, showcases the 17 artists invited to re-envision the look of some of the world’s most famous racecars.
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Fifteen-plus books that look at the book as designed object as well as valuable reading—from our contributors Irma Boom, John Hill, Warren Lehrer, Peter Mendelsund, Ed Ruscha, and more.—Updated July 26, 2022
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This week we celebrate the books that inspire seven American interior designers: Ernest de La Torre, Alexa Hampton, David Easton, Jeffrey Bilhuber, Sheila Bridges, Penny Drue Baird, and William Georgis.
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Here are 30 (updated August 19, 2014) books on the design of cars and car culture (its past and its future)—including two novels—from our contributors.
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From sculptor and designer Wendell Castle’s stack-laminated wood tables to the ceramics that are household names created by the late Eva Zeisel, the evidence of the designer’s signature style in creating is showcased in the work of five product/industrial designers and builders. Along with Wendell Castle and Eva Zeisel, here are British product designer Jasper Morrison (Basel chair, Glo-ball lamp), custom bicycle builder Richard Sachs, and Jeffrey Bernett (Flight Recliner, Tulip armchair) and the books that inspire them.
More...Next Week's Preview
Award-winning book cover designer and Alfred A. Knopf associate art director Peter Mendelsund talks with Designers & Books about not one but two books he’s written recently, both published this August: Cover (powerHouse Books), featuring a decade of his book cover designs, and What We See When We Read (Vintage Books), a meditation on how we visualize the words of writers.
British architect Ian Ritchie lists 35 books that have inspired him in the course of a career that extends over 40 years. His celebrated work includes sharing the creation of the Louvre Pyramid and Sculpture Courts with I. M. Pei in Paris, the Leipzig International Exhibition Center Glass Hall in Germany, and The Spire in Dublin.
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