Book List of the Week

Hardcovers and Paperbacks Will Always Rule: Gail Anderson’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter March 6, 2012

Gail Anderson

Graphic designer Gail Anderson: New York

Gail Anderson knows type. She’s made it the center of her much-admired work at Rolling Stone magazine and as the Creative Director of SpotCo, an agency specializing in graphic design for the theater world. With Steven Heller she’s written six popular books on type of all kinds, including New Ornamental Type and New Vintage Type. The team has a new book, New Modernist Type, coming out this fall. A recipient of the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award from the AIGA, Anderson is also an in-demand lecturer on graphic design topics.

New Ornamental Type, 2010 (Thames & Hudson)

Her list for Designers & Books includes “design books I can’t function without.” Among these are three books on record album cover art (Blue Note, In the Groove, and Alex Steinweiss: Inventor of the Modern Album Cover); John Lewis’s Printed Ephemera (also on the book lists of Seymour Chwast and Carin Goldberg), which “sets the standard”; and the American Type Founders Company’s 1923 Specimen Book and Catalogue (“A brick of a book . . . “ that will “teach you everything you need to know about classic typography and good design.”)

There’s also Make it Bigger, by Anderson’s mentor Paula Scher, about which Anderson says, “Design doesn’t get any more smarty-pants than Paula Scher. . . . I actually read Make It Bigger—meaning I didn’t just look at the pretty pictures, and scan the captions. That’s how smarty-pants it is.”

New Vintage Type, 2007 (Thames & Hudson)

Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and several childhood favorites also make the list. Says Anderson in her book list introduction, “Online design research is helpful and I do love my audio books when I’m driving, but regular old hardcovers and paperbacks will always rule.”

Note: New Modernist Type by Steven Heller and Gail Anderson will be released by Thames & Hudson in fall 2012.

View Gail Anderson’s Profile View Gail Anderson’s Book List

Author Q&A with Steven Heller: 100 Ideas That Changed Graphic Design

Author Q&A with Paula Scher: Maps

comments powered by Disqus

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.

Order the book.

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.

Order the book.

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.

Order the book.

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.

Order the book.

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.”

Order the book.

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.

Order the book.