Designers & Books Blog

 

856 blog entries
By Greg Lynn October 21, 2013

I remember buying this as a teenager after having read all the Tolkien and C.S. Lewis stories. Many sketches and doodles came from that experience. These are great books to get you drawing gizmos and contraptions.

Guest posts
By Paul Makovsky December 1, 2011

Guest blogger: Paul Makovsky (Metropolis, New York)
Profile

We welcome guest blogger Paul Makovsky—editorial director of Metropolis magazine—who shares his selection of notable design titles published during 2011. More...

By Michael Manfredi December 20, 2013

As an architect who likes to cook, I can think of few cookbooks that are so “architectural.”

By Paul Marantz January 2, 2014

All you ever need to know about how we try to banish night.

One Book and Why
By Thom Mayne April 6, 2023

This month on “One Book and Why,” architect Thom Mayne recommends Italo Calvino’s reflection on what makes great writing, Six Memos for the Next Millennium. More...

By Margaret McCurry November 17, 2014

A client of mine once very graciously referred to me as the Jane Austen of architects, saying, “She can create a small world out of a small space, a microcosm in a two-inch piece of ivory.”

Archives & Libraries
By Elizabeth Meggs May 30, 2017

Designer and design history educator Elizabeth Meggs selects 16 books from the library of her father—the pioneering graphic design historian Philip B. Meggs (d. 2002) who authored the landmark Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, recently updated in a sixth edition—and her mother, art director and writer/illustrator Libby Phillips Meggs. More...

By Peter Mendelsund August 4, 2014

The book that, of all the books I’ve read, comes the closest to accurately reflecting this slippery world of ours. It is the book that feels, when one is reading it, the most like what it feels to be alive. Lesson(s) learned: Hold a mirror up to life.

By Peter Mendelsund November 21, 2013

My first and most profound lesson in world-building. Lesson learned: All you need is a crayon.

By Peter Mendelsund October 4, 2013

Lesson learned: Life can be messy and beautiful in equal measure. (Design can be, too.)