Bruce Hannah’s Book List
I was introduced to reading in my junior year at Pratt by Rowena Reed Kostellow, my mentor and teacher. After reading something I’d written, she suggested that I start reading the profiles in The New Yorker. Her thinking went that if you read well-written stuff, you would write better. I suggest books to my students for that very reason.
I’ve come to understand that most books, in the end, are about design in some way or another. The plots of most novels are designed, and the people who inhabit them are all struggling with creativity in one way or another. Books are also touchstones that remind us of something (or someone) that moves us or challenges us. Reading is also just plain fun, which may be its greatest pleasure.
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What is time? Why does it exist? When, some years ago, I asked students to design a clock, one student designed a clock made of chocolate that had only an hour hand. When I asked him why, he said, “It’s a Swiss clock, designed for Einstein.” I think Lightman’s book explains why that clock would have made sense to Einstein.
Reading Eureka was the first time I understood the effect ideas and inventions could have on humanity. It catalogues the greatest inventions in categories such as materials, mental aids, and key devices—inventions that seem completely logical and at the same time aren't. On the pages devoted to geometry there is a Chinese proof for the Pythagorean theorem that predates Pythagoras. This one bit of information changed how I look at the world.
I hate graffiti! I think it’s vandalism or worse, but I’m almost persuaded by Mailer’s prose and Naar’s photos to admit it might be art. Anyone who is interested in what art might or might not be should read this book. It’s also a wonderful look at New York City in the 1970s, a reminder of the good times and the bad. I always refer to this book when I’m starting to believe I know what design and art are and can define them very clearly.
The drinking man’s Sylvia Plath, Bukowski reassures me that the creative process is a minefield of disasters and successes. Every one of Bukowski’s books delivers a diatribe of angst about technology, “the Typer” (his manual typewriter), people (usually ex-wives or girlfriends), and society that make the writer crazy and unable to break writer’s block. It’s comforting to know that you are not alone in experiencing difficulties making something.
Why should we be comfortable? Witold Rybczynski explores the origins of this and other ideas that have consequences beyond just our domestic well-being. His concerns expanded from trying to save the world one toilet flush at a time to looking at the design ideas that might affect all of us long before the catch-phrase “green design” took hold. Again, required reading, if you really want to be a designer.
If you ever wondered why some kids tap their feet in class, this is the book for you. In Their Own Way is Armstrong’s take on Howard Gardner’s work with Project Zero on multiple intelligences. Word smart, number smart, picture smart, music smart, body smart, people smart, self smart, and nature smart are the ways we are all smart. Some of us tend to use some of the ways we learn and see the world more than we do others. A very helpful book if you profess to teach anything, and one that I find delightful, informative, and transformative. It helped me to understand that I can’t teach anyone anything, but I can show them what they don’t know, and perhaps might be interested in learning.
Whenever I’m tempted to do graphics I pull this book out and after looking through a few pages I’m cured of the affliction. Matisse invented modern graphics with this little publication that is so good you don’t even have to read French to enjoy the thoughts that cover every page.
Reading Toni Morrison allows one to enter a society that includes everyone. There are no barriers, but there is a lot of pain and joy and humanity. It isn’t a coincidence that Jazz is a great title—jazz is great music/art that transcends and transforms just about everything you think is true and false. The book also helped me understand what America might be all about.
Who knew that longitude as a navigational aid didn’t exist until a “tinkerer,” John Harrison, perfected the “clock”? Who knew there was a Longitude Act, passed by Parliament in 1714? These, along with a multitude of other facts and figures—including why there is Greenwich Mean Time—all become very clear once you read Longitude. One of those numbers that reads out on your iPhone telling you your location is longitude. Thank you, John Harrison.
The Mismeasure of Man helps explain the insanity of trying to measure intelligence, from the beginnings of the “science” of testing to our contemporary dilemma of testing everyone all the time. It helped make me skeptical of just about any measurement humans develop, from actual measurement (which is only important if one has capital to invest abstractly) to “normal” anything.
The life and times of Nobel Prize-winner Richard Feynman, in his own words. Read it and learn why his playing the bongos may have been more important than his creating some of the first theoretical physics drawings. It taught me that creating stuff has common vectors, whether you’re writing theoretical physics or doing furniture design. There are also some very funny stories and some terrific advice about life.
Reporting is something all designers should learn to do. John McPhee’s story of Henri Vaillancourt, one of the few people today who can build a bark canoe, is about the irony of craft and the survival of just about everything related to it. This is required reading in my design classes, not just because of the brilliant writing, but also because of the connections between design and craft. The history lessons are an added bonus.
The story “The Sixth Day” is a must-read for anyone ever caught up in one of those design meetings where everything is impossible and nothing can change, “because, that’s the way it is.” Levi’s explorations of the “mimer” (a duplicating machine that makes three-dimensional copies) and other fabulous American devices foretell much of what might be the future.
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.
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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.
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.”
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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