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15 blog entries

Turning Off Reality and Letting Yourself Imagine: Jeanne Gang’s Book List—Interview by Paul Goldberger

Steve Kroeter

Dec 6, 2011 0 comments

Architect Jeanne Gang: Studio Gang Architects (Chicago)
Book List

Architecture critic Paul Goldberger: The New Yorker (New York)
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What happens when a Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic meets up with a MacArthur Fellow architect and the topic of their conversation is books? Shortly before it was announced that Jeanne Gang had been named by the MacArthur Foundation as a recipient of one of its 2011 awards, she and Paul Goldberger had a conversation about the book list that Gang submitted to Designers & Books. They also spoke about Gang's book Reveal, as well as how her idea of “turning off reality and letting yourself imagine” applies both to the design development process of a building and the interior monologue that goes on when you are reading a book.

Steve Kroeter

Sep 11, 2012 0 comments

Fashion designer Guo Pei: Rose Studio Fashion Co. Ltd. (Beijing)
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Design writer Zara Arshad: Design China (Beijing)
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Guo Pei—who has been called China’s answer to Alexander McQueen—talks to Design China’s Zara Arshad for Designers & Books—about the role of books in the fashion designer’s life and work.

Steve Kroeter

Jun 28, 2011 0 comments

Graphic designer Chip Kidd: Alfred A. Knopf (New York)
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As a book jacket designer turned novelist, Chip Kidd is keenly attuned to the power of both the visual and the verbal. In an interview with Véronique Vienne for Designers & Books, he talks about the interplay of images, words, and ideas within the framework of his second novel, The Learners (2008), whose main character is a graphic designer working in advertising during the 1950s. In addition to his novels, Kidd, an art director at Alfred A. Knopf, has authored a number of books on comic-strip art.

Steve Kroeter

Apr 2, 2013 0 comments

Design curator Aric Chen: M+ (Hong Kong)
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Design writer Zara Arshad: Design China (Beijing)
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The recently appointed Curator of Design and Architecture at M+, the new museum for visual culture that will be a centerpiece of Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, Aric Chen looks forward to developing a design and architecture permanent collection, including a library, for the museum.

Steve Kroeter

Nov 22, 2011 0 comments

Graphic designer Bob Gill (New York)
Book List

On a recent late Friday afternoon, Designers & Books visited Bob Gill in his studio on lower Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Gill, a founder of Pentagram's forerunner—Fletcher/Forbes/Gill—was seated in an Eames lounge chair next to a floor-to-ceiling wall of books. Scattered about were all the tools of the graphic design trade—of both the analog and digital variety: a Mac and trays of pencils and markers, a scanner as well as straightedges. The conversation with Gill covered his favorite books, the fact that he is not an avid reader, and comments about the many books he’s written, including his latest—Bob Gill, so far.

Steve Kroeter

Jun 26, 2012 0 comments

Interior, product, graphic, and fashion designer Todd Oldham: Todd Oldham Studio, Inc. (New York)
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Design editor and writer Wendy Goodman: New York magazine (New York)
Profile Video
Indefatigable designer, writer, and reader Todd Oldham talks to design editor Wendy Goodman of New York magazine in an interview for Designers & Books—about what (and how) he reads and writes. Authors Dorothy Parker and Amy and David Sedaris, artists Cindy Sherman and Tim Hawkinson, film director Sidney Lumet, and designers Roberto Burle Marx, Tony Duquette, Charley Harper, and Alexander Girard are all part of the mix.

Steve Kroeter

Oct 11, 2011 0 comments

Graphic designer Maira Kalman: M&Co (New York)
book list
Maira Kalman—graphic designer, illustrator, author of more than a dozen books for adults and children, and dedicated reader—sent us a book list that she introduces with, “Walk to a garden. Take a book with you, maybe a cup of coffee or tea. Just sit under a tree and read. That is the only answer to everything.” So Designers & Books decided to ask her not about “everything” but about a few things: books (on her book list and off), reading, and writing.

Steve Kroeter

Mar 12, 2013 0 comments

Product and graphic designer Freeman Lau: Kan & Lau Design Consultants (Hong Kong)
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Design writer Zara Arshad: Design China (Beijing)
Profile
Internationally renowned product and graphic designer Freeman Lau (Lau Siu-Hong), with more than 300 awards to his name, has designed everything from posters and books to prize-winning water bottle packaging and a series of intertwining chairs and stools. He is also recognized for his work as an educator and curator, and in 2011 was a curator of the Beijing International Design Triennial. Lau’s book CMYK (2012) was just released in Hong Kong and Beijing this past December. Design China’s Zara Arshad, in an interview for Designers & Books, sat down with Freeman Lau recently to talk about reading, writing, designing, and publishing books in Hong Kong and mainland China.

Steve Kroeter

Nov 29, 2011 0 comments

Architect James Biber: Biber Architects (New York)
Book List Video

Graphic designer Michael Bierut: Pentagram (New York)
Profile

Graphic designer and Pentagram partner Michael Bierut and one-time aspiring biologist turned architect James Biber have been friends, business associates, or both for over 20 years. They also share a major interest in books. Between the two of them they cover just about all the important ways that books can intersect your life: reading them, writing them, designing them, collecting them, being inspired by them—and in one case, fighting over them with a parent.

Steve Kroeter

Oct 25, 2011 0 comments

Graphic design curator, educator, and practitioner Ellen Lupton: Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum (New York) and Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore)
Book List
Being at the intersection, as she is, of the worlds of design, publishing, academia, and museums, Ellen Lupton has a unique perspective on the importance and power of language. In the introduction to her list of “Books Every Graphic Designer Should Read” she makes the (not intuitively obvious) claim that “reading and writing are fundamental skills for any graphic designer.” She describes writing as the process of “converting fleeting notions into concrete things”—which seems to be not a bad working definition of design itself—and asserts that those who are truly influential in graphic design are all “confident and creative writers.”

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