Book List of the Week: Emanuela Frattini Magnusson
Masterful writing as visual experience
By Steve Kroeter January 27, 2014
Recently named Global Head of Design for Bloomberg LP, the Milan-born architect and industrial designer Emanuela Frattini Magnusson has been creating award-winning products for over 25 years: as founder of her own firm, EFM Design; for Tibor Kalman; and for many leading international manufacturers. Her Propeller Table System for Knoll has been a best seller since its introduction in 1994.
Her book list, Frattini Magnusson says, “is extremely eclectic, but also very ‘loyal.’ Favorites have remained as such throughout the years, and have never been replaced—they just have become part of an ever-growing list.” Among the selections on design (“A few titles relate to my profession, but most of them don’t,” she notes) is last year’s Hidden in Plain Sight: How to Create Extraordinary Products for Tomorrow’s Customers, by Jan Chipchase with Simon Steinhardt. Frattini Magnusson calls the book the “ultimate guide to observing human behavior with an open mind. It sets the foundation through which to identify emerging issues and to build upon in order to problem-solve. An enlightened approach to understanding real human needs, and being better equipped to respond as a designer.”
Another book chosen is Le Corbusier’s Towards a New Architecture (on the book lists of 10 other Designers & Books contributors) which, at almost 100 years old, “retains the power of its clarity of vision and purity of ideals and intent,” according to Frattini Magnusson. She quotes Le Corbusier on beauty as “the overplus necessary to the human spirit,” and on poetry—which “not only lies in the written word. Objects which signify something and which are arranged with talent and with tact create a poetic fact.”
Commenting on her fiction choices, Frattini Magnusson highlights the connection between the poetic and the visual. About Thomas Mann’s Tonio Kröger, the story of “the struggle of the artist trying to be an accepted member of society,” she comments that Mann, referring to the book, said that poetry is “evoking emotion by talking about everyday things”—which, Frattini Magnusson notes, “applies equally to architecture.” Reading Giorgio Bassani’s 1962 novel The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, which follows an aristocratic Jewish family living in Ferrara during the time of Fascism, says Frattini Magnusson, “is full-immersion—masterful writing becomes a visual experience.”
Selecting books “both for content and for the love of paper and typography,” she also includes two titles from her childhood by Italian graphic designer Bruno Munari that are “a sampling of my cultural roots.” Munari’s Nella Nebbia di Milano (In the Fog of Milan) and Nella Notta Buia (In the Darkness of the Night) “sparked my love of paper with their printed vellum pages and perforated and cut-out cardboard inserts that progressively revealed the next layer of the story,” she says. “I still own them.”
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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Love Letter to a Garden by Debbie Millman
Love Letter to a Garden
By Debbie Millman
Contributions by Roxane Gay
Publisher: Timber Press
Published: April 15, 2025
From the award-winning artist, designer, and the host of the podcast Design Matters, Debbie Millman, this book tells the visual story of falling in love with gardening—and the philosophies that work conjures. Spread throughout are simple recipes using the garden’s ingredients from Millman’s wife, best-selling author Roxane Gay.
The Picture Book Book: The Art of Seymour Chwast by Seymour Chwast; curated by Steven Heller
The Picture Book Book: The Art of Seymour Chwast
By Seymour Chwast, curated by Steven Heller
Publisher: Gestalten
Published: June 2026
Seymour Chwast, legendary co-founder of Push Pin Studios, reinvented how we see and read picture books. The Picture Book Book gathers over 40 of his works, curated by Steven Heller, and offers a rare look at his playful, incisive approach to visual storytelling. From bold graphics to sly wit, Chwast’s books expanded the boundaries of design and children’s literature alike.
Seymour Chwast: The Works, edited by Steven Heller
Seymour Chwast: The Works
Edited by Steven Heller
Publisher: Prestel
Published: October 2026
Seymour Chwast’s work has shaped the look and language of American graphic design for more than seven decades. This expansive and visually rich volume — created in close collaboration with Chwast — presents the most comprehensive account of his life, ideas, and prolific creative output. Features a wealth of previously unpublished images and ephemera and a fold-out dust jacket with a collectible poster printed on the reverse. The book includes an afterword by Paula Scher.
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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