Book List of the Week: Hartmut Esslinger
Matching design to technology
By Steve Kroeter February 10, 2014
The founder of frog design, the company that worked with Apple in the 1980s to develop some of its most well-known products, Hartmut Esslinger has told the story of his years with Apple and Steve Jobs in two recent books: Design Forward and Keep It Simple (just released widely in the U.S. in January 2014), both from ARNOLDSCHE Art Publishers. Esslinger’s “lesson is about matching design to technology,” says Phil Patton, who reviewed Design Forward for Designers & Books as a Notable Design Book of 2013.
“Praise for Apple design,” Patton writes, “has tended to focus on Jonathan Ive and his staff and ignore the longstanding, but quite different contributions of Esslinger and Bob Brunner. In a reminder of the company’s earliest days, Esslinger includes photos of ‘concept’ products mocked up for Apple. These early Apple products suggest a wide level of experimentation. They include upright workstations, amazingly contemporary laptops, small computers (‘Baby Mac’) and the ’MacPhone,’ a slate with stylus and telephone handset—attached with a cord. In retrospect, the question that is clear and is the nature of Apple’s success was figuring out which technologies were mature enough for which designs.”
In Keep It Simple, subtitled “The Early Design Years of Apple,” Esslinger details his partnership as a designer with Jobs the entrepreneur, with the historically significant result that Steve Jobs made “strategic design” the core of Apple’s business strategy. In the process, as Esslinger describes in his book, Jobs had to overcome huge opposition both inside and outside of Apple.
“I read a lot of history,” Esslinger comments on the book list he sent to Designers & Books. Among the titles he chose, which range from John Steinbeck’s East of Eden to Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, is Meditations, the philosophical and spiritual reflections of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121–180), one of history’s great thinkers. Esslinger points out one of the aphorisms: “As a leader, do what you have to do and don’t try to be popular.”
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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