Book List of the Week

The Book List of the Week highlights the list of books provided by invited designers (including architects, fashion designers, graphic designers, interior designers, landscape architects, product designers, urban designers, and other design professionals) who have chosen books that inspire them and that have shaped their worldview or their ideas about design.
189 blog entries
Book List of the Week
June 9, 2014

Inspired by the recently opened 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, today’s Book List of the Week features the books chosen by seven designers working in Italy. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter June 2, 2014

We revisit graphic design icon Massimo Vignelli’s book list—the first book list ever posted on Designers & Books—and reflect on Vignelli (1931–2014), who passed away last week, as a lover of books and advocate of “knowledge in support of creativity.” More...

Book List of the Week
May 19, 2014

Books that illuminate! To mark longer, lighter days and the spring calendar of high-profile design events in May around the world, including New York’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF), which showcases product design in 11 different categories, and London’s Clerkenwell Design Week, we feature the books that inspire five designers of lamps and lighting. More...

Book List of the Week
May 12, 2014

Designers from the Netherlands and the books that have influenced them are the subject of today’s Book List of the Week. The contributing designers are Droog founder Gijs Bakker, product designer Aldo Bakker, graphic designer Wim Crouwel, architect Mels Crouwel, and architect and founder of MVRDV Nathalie de Vries. More...

Book List of the Week
May 5, 2014

This week we highlight five book lists chosen by British graphic designers and critics (some are authors of their own major books on graphic design), from Penguin book cover designer Coralie Bickford-Smith to Eye magazine founding editor and visual culture critic Rick Poynor. Our complete list of graphic designers includes 46 contributors. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter April 21, 2014

A book list from Dan Formosa, who in 1981 helped form Smart Design, a group based on the idea that design is first and foremost about people. His work on OXO Good Grips kitchen tools became a symbol of products designed to work for every user. The interface he created for XM/Sirius established the standard for satellite radio in the U.S. More...

Book List of the Week
April 14, 2014

Our contributing designers find inspiration and recall formative moments in reading children’s books. Here are five book lists from our archive that have included books written for children, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to Harry Potter. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter April 7, 2014

“My book list is like album tracks that take me back to a moment in time,” says Fiona Raby, a partner (with Anthony Dunne) in the industrial design research studio Dunne & Raby. The partners’ work encompasses “speculative everything,” to use the title of Dunne and Raby’s latest book, which sees design as a tool for speculating on how things might be and to imagine possible futures. More...

Book List of the Week
March 31, 2014

From Our Archive: April is National Poetry Month in the U.S. In honor, we take a look at five designers’ book lists from our archive that have included books of poetry—by authors ranging from Shakespeare to Mark Strand—as design inspiration. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter March 24, 2014

Anthony Dunne, Head of Design Interactions at London’s Royal College of Art and partner, with Fiona Raby in the design studio Dunne & Raby, offers a list of books that “celebrate parallel worlds, the imagination, and unreality in some way.” Dunne is a co-author of the recently published Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. More...