Designers & Books Blog

 

856 blog entries
Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter January 13, 2014

The son of a famous pair of designers—his father is Gijs Bakker, co-founder of the Dutch design collective Droog and one of the first and most influential conceptual designers; his mother is the late jewelry designer Emmy van Leersum—Aldo Bakker is known for his designs for furniture and tableware in materials such as wood, porcelain, copper, and glass that also have an interactive quality. Objects, he believes, “communicate emotion through association, touch, texture, and materiality.” More...

Book List of the Week
June 23, 2014

From our archive, we’ve brought together 10 prominent American women working in graphic design—as practitioners and authors—and the books that inspire them. Design classics and hidden gems, books on nonfiction subjects from art to food, and novels all make the lists. More...

Daily Features
By Angela Riechers, Superscript January 27, 2014

Dutch-born Irma Boom is widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost book designers, and is the youngest person ever to receive the prestigious Gutenberg Prize for a body of work. Her books are distinguished by her experimental approach to formats and a willingness to take design risks. Here she talks about book-making and her life in design. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter June 12, 2012

Graphic designer Rudy VanderLans: Emigre (Berkeley, California)
Profile    Book List
“I love it when a new technology is used to celebrate an old one,” writes graphic designer Rudy VanderLans in the introduction to the book list he recently sent along to us.

In this case he was talking about the fact that the digitally delivered Designers & Books website is very much about celebrating the medium of print. But the idea could easily be extended to VanderLans’s work as co-founder, with his wife, Zuzana Licko, of Emigre (1984–2005)—one of the most influential and controversial graphic design magazines ever, known for its experimental use of digital typeface design and layouts. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter April 9, 2013

Product/industrial designer Jens Martin Skibsted: KiBiSi and Biomega (Copenhagen)
Profile     Book List
Jens Martin Skibsted designs ahead-of-the curve bicycles for Biomega, a company he founded, and electronics, household products, and furnishings for the top Scandinavian industrial design studio KiBiSi, another firm he founded—along with Bjarke Ingels (BIG) and Lars Larsen (Kilo Design). He has been named a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader for his design thinking and runs Skibsted Ideation, a design and branding agency. More...

Daily Features
By Chappell Ellison, Superscript August 2, 2013

Maurice Sendak’s career extends far beyond Where the Wild Things Are to include over 80 illustrated books, numerous posters, performances, and projects. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter May 22, 2012

Product designer Jasper Morrison: Jasper Morrison Ltd. (London)
Profile    Book List
For British product designer Jasper Morrison design is a tool that should be used to improve the quality of “atmosphere.” He ruminates on this idea of atmosphere in his book Super Normal: Sensations of the Ordinary (co-authored with Naoto Fukasawa)—“a manifesto calling for an appreciation of the well-designed objects we use every day that often go overlooked or get taken for granted” More...

Best Sellers
February 13, 2014

This list of best-selling design books indicates the #1 seller for the month for a given store and is compiled from the individual best-seller lists for January 2014 provided by our U.S. featured booksellers. More...

Best Sellers
January 9, 2014

This list of best-selling design books indicates the #1 seller for the month for a given store and is compiled from the individual best-seller lists for December 2013 provided by our U.S. featured booksellers. More...