Weekly Wrap-Up & Preview: September 26
September 26, 2014The 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
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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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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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For Fashion Week, here are 12 books on shoes—fashion’s most beloved accessory—from Manolo Blahniks to Frye boots.
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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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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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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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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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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).
More...Next Week's Preview
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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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