Weekly Wrap-Up & Preview

Weekly Wrap-Up & Preview: September 26

September 26, 2014

The Fall season is underway at Designers & Books. Through September 30, you can enter our latest “Design Books to Win” drawing for copies of two books from Lars Müller Publishers: industrial designer Jasper Morrison’s new book, The Good Life: Perceptions of the Ordinary, and 100 Years of Swiss Graphic Design.

Our Online Book Fair now features circa 700 titles in architecture, design, art, and photography, from publishers and rare and out-of-print book dealers. And, if you in New York October 11, you can also browse and buy some of these books in person at the pop-up design book fair organized by Designers & Books at Dwell magazine’s first Dwell on Design NY.

In September we posted interviews with award-winning book cover designer and author Peter Mendelsund, with the revamped Harvard Design Magazine’s new editor in chief, Jennifer Sigler, and with Joe Whitlock Blundell, design director of the London-based Folio Society, which publishes beautifully crafted editions of classic books.

Coming in October: eminent British architect Ian Ritchie shares his thoughts on buildings and books in a wide-ranging conversation with Witold Rybczynski, and MIT’s Senseable City Lab director, Carlo Ratti, sends us the books that inspire him.

Weekly Wrap-Up

Interviews Covering Reading: A Conversation with Book Cover Designer Peter Mendelsund

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.

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Book List of the Week Three Architecture School Deans and the Books That Inspire Them

Back to school this week? Here are three “dean’s lists” of books selected by Mohsen Mostafavi, who heads Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design; Kent Kleinman, dean of Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning; and Alan Balfour, former dean of the College of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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Themed Book Lists 12 Books on Shoe Design

For Fashion Week, here are 12 books on shoes—fashion’s most beloved accessory—from Manolo Blahniks to Frye boots.

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Interviews Do You Read Me?: Harvard Design Magazine Re-launches with an Issue on Reading

The distinguished Harvard Design Magazine has undergone a makeover with its summer 2014 issue (no. 38), introduced this June at the 14th International Venice Architecture Biennale. Guided by new editor in chief Jennifer Sigler, the biannual publication features a redesign by With Projects, Inc., led by creative director, Jiminie Ha. Sigler talked with Designers & Books about the magazine’s new direction.

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Book List of the Week Five Theorist-Designers and the Books That Inspire Them

Almost all designers are in effect theorists, but here are five spanning different generations who are as much known for their theoretical reseach and experimentation as for their physical products. The designers are: architects Peter Eisenman (IAUS founder) and Jürgen Mayer H. (Metropol Parasol), graphic designers Sheila Levrant de Bretteville (Women’s Graphic Center) and Prem Krishnamurthy (Project Projects), and product designer Jonathan Olivares (A Taxonomy of Office Chairs).

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Book List of the Week Four German Designers and the Books That Inspire Them

Four designers hailing from Germany are highlighted this week: graphic designer and “typomaniac” Erik Spiekermann (FontBook) and product/industrial designers Hartmut Esslinger (frog Design for Apple), Fritz Frenkler (frog Design), and Carola Zwick (Studio 7.5).

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Interviews The Folio Society: A Conversation with Joe Whitlock Blundell

The Folio Society, based in London, has been producing special editions of classic books since 1947. Joe Whitlock Blundell, design and production director of The Folio Society, answered some questions for us about the enduring allure of the beautifully crafted book and walked us through a Society book’s typical design process.

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Design Books to Win Win Copies of Jasper Morrison’s The Good Life and 100 Years of Swiss Graphic Design

We’re giving away copies of two new books from Lars Müller Publishers that showcase design inspiration and inspired design: The Good Life: Perceptions of the Ordinary by British industrial designer Jasper Morrison and 100 Years of Swiss Graphic Design.  Two winners will each receive a copy of both books. Enter to win (details below) through Tuesday, September 30, 2014, 11:59 PM (EST).

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Next Week's Preview

Book List of the Week Book List of the Week: Carlo Ratti

As founder and director of MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory, Carlo Ratti investigates how digital technologies are changing urban living. Trained as an architect (he runs an architecture firm in Turin, Italy) and engineer, he also has several patents to his name. His Digital Water Pavilion, exhibited at the 2008 World Expo in Barcelona, was hailed by Time magazine as one of the Best Inventions of the Year.

Interviews Being an Architect/Being a Writer: Ian Ritchie and Witold Rybczynski in Conversation

British architect-educator-author Ian Ritchie talks to U.S. architect-educator-author Witold Rybczynski about Ritchie’s career, including the making of his latest book, a two-volume opus; the favorite project he didn’t get to build; and why he writes poetry.

Daily Features Designers & Books Curates a Book Fair @ Dwell on Design NY, October 9–11

Designers & Books is curating a pop-up design book fair, featuring books from more than a dozen publishers and rare and out of print book dealers, at the first-ever Dwell on Design NY, October 9–11, taking place at 82 Mercer Street in New York’s SoHo. Visitors who stop by the book fair have a chance to win any of over 10 different design books in a special drawing.

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