Creative Reading Lists for CreativeMornings
Designers & Books begins a collaboration with Tina Roth Eisenberg to provide monthly reading lists based on CreativeMornings themes.
By Steve Kroeter November 15, 2013
For the design-inclined and fans of things both visual and witty, Tina Roth Eisenberg and her swissmiss blog are a daily staple. Launched in 2005, each month her daily musings are seen and noted by more than 1,000,000 people around the world. Swissmiss was ranked number 14 in a list of the 50 world’s best design blogs by Times Online.
In 2008, out of her desire to provide a forum for the New York creative community to gather on a regular basis and meet, talk, listen, and have breakfast together, Tina founded CreativeMornings. The sessions take place on one Friday morning each month, are free and open to all, and in addition to eating, drinking, and socializing, include a short talk by someone known for being innovative, inventive, and interesting. Several hundred free tickets are offered for each session, and they are typically gone in three to five minutes after being offered online.
There have now been close to 60 CreativeMornings talks in New York. The list of those who have spoken includes: Debbie Millman, Paola Antonelli, Steven Heller, Seth Godin, George Lois, Maira Kalman, Charles Renfro, John Maeda, Maria Popova, Milton Glaser, and Michael Bierut.
This idea has also captured the interest of the creative communities around the world. There are now CreativeMornings chapters in 60 cities—from Aarhus to Zurich—one on every continent except Antarctica. Volunteer teams manage the events in each city, and there have been some 900 CreativeMornings presentations offered globally. You can access the archive of all the talks that have taken place in each of the cities here.
Each month all the talks in all the cities focus on a theme selected by CreativeMornings organizers. For November the theme is “Bravery.” Examples of past themes are “Play,” “Happiness,” “Money,” and “Food.”
As part of her ongoing search to extend and expand the ways that CreativeMornings touches its community, Tina has invited Designers & Books to work with her team to develop book lists related to the monthly themes. Each of the titles will chosen from the books that have been submitted to Designers & Books by our designer and commentator contributors.
The first book list has been developed for the CreativeMornings theme for November—which is “Bravery.” There are 10 books on the list, and they are wide-ranging in how they acknowledge “courageous actions and bold examples of heroism.” The titles are selected from the recommendations by our contributors like Michael Bierut and Maira Kalman—and among the books included for this month are Ai Weiwei’s Blog and Gandhi, An Autobiography. The full list can be viewed here, and readers are invited to add to this list via a special CreativeMornings addition to our Community Book Lists.
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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