Newest Posts and Book Lists
163 blog entries
Steve Kroeter
Jun 5, 2012 0 comments

Architect Peter Bohlin: Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (Wilkes-Barre, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Seattle, San Francisco)
Profile   Book List
Architect Peter Bohlin has given us the elegant glass cubes and steel spirals that have defined Apple stores from New York City to Shanghai. At the same time, he and his firm, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, are known for public commissions such as the visitor center in Grand Teton, Wyoming; civic and academic projects including Seattle City Hall and buildings for Williams College and Carnegie Mellon’s Engineering Institute; and many private residences in wood and stone across the United States that are sensitively integrated into the landscape they occupy.

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Steve Kroeter
Aug 16, 2011 0 comments

Graphic designer Wim Crouwel (Amsterdam)
book list
When Wim Crouwel was interviewed a few years ago by AIGA/NY using the Proust Questionnaire, his reply to the question “What is your most treasured possession?” was “My library.” That answer caught our attention.

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Steve Kroeter
Apr 10, 2012 0 comments

Product Designer and Design Educator Bruce Hannah: Hannah Design and Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, NY)
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The books that Bruce Hannah chose for his Designers & Books list make up an eclectic selection reflecting the curiosity and far-reaching interests of an eminent product designer and also the breadth and conceptual perspective of a lifelong teacher.

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Steve Kroeter
Oct 4, 2012 0 comments

Architect Tod Williams: Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (New York)
Profile     Book List
Architect Tod Williams savors what he reads. “I read slowly and want to be deeply engaged,” Williams says in the introduction to his book list for Designers & Books.

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Steve Kroeter
May 14, 2013 0 comments

Textile design firm executive Michael Maharam: Maharam (New York)
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As CEO of his family’s over 110-year-old textile firm, Michael Maharam has introduced the work of modern and contemporary graphic, fashion, and industrial designers to the company’s commercial fabric lines. Hella Jongerius, Maira Kalman, Abbott Miller, and Paul Smith, among many others, have all designed for Maharam, which has become known for the progressive design and engineering of its textiles for architects and interior designers.

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Steve Kroeter
Jun 28, 2011 0 comments

Graphic designer Chip Kidd: Alfred A. Knopf  (New York) 
book list 
As a book jacket designer turned novelist, Chip Kidd is keenly attuned to the power of both the visual and the verbal. In an interview with Véronique Vienne for Designers & Books, he talks about the interplay of images, words, and ideas within the framework of his second novel, The Learners (2008), whose main character is a graphic designer working in advertising during the 1950s. In addition to his novels, Kidd, an art director at Alfred A. Knopf, has authored a number of books on comic-strip art. 

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Maria Popova
Mar 8, 2012 0 comments

Guest blogger: Maria Popova (Brain Pickings, New York)
Profile    Notable Books of 2011
Guest blogger Maria Popova—creator of Brain Pickings—looks at George L. Legendre’s recent book, which looks at pasta shapes as design statement.

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Steve Kroeter
Oct 23, 2012 0 comments

Architect Farshid Moussavi: Farshid Moussavi Architecture (London)
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Architect Farshid Moussavi—who will be the speaker this Thursday, October 25, in the Fall 2012 lecture series of the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD)—is the second designer in the collaboration between the GSD and Designers & Books that features book lists from a variety of GSD guest lecturers. Concurrent with this collaboration, a display of selections from Moussavi’s Designers & Books list as well as publications from the library’s collections by and about the architect and her work are on view at the GSD’s Frances Loeb Library through October 26.

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Steve Kroeter
Aug 16, 2012 0 comments

Product and jewelry designer Gijs Bakker: Gijs Bakker Design (Amsterdam)
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When in the early 1990s, Gijs Bakker co-founded (with Renny Ramakers) Droog Design—perhaps the most well-known contemporary design group to come out of The Netherlands—it was with the idea of challenging the design establishment to think about product and industrial design in new ways.

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Steve Kroeter
Mar 22, 2011 0 comments

If The Divine Comedy isn’t on Seymour Chwast’s book list, it isn’t because he’s unfamiliar with it. In keeping with his stated interest in “visual language referencing culture and literature,” Chwast—the founder of the legendary Push Pin Studios,* along with Milton Glaser and Edward Sorel—is the latest in a long line of noted artists to have provided a personal interpretation of Dante’s 14th-century epic poem

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