Graphic designer Sagi Haviv: Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv (New York)
Profile Book List
Director of Design and Production Tim Jones: Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA)
Profile
Harvard University Press is 100 years old this year. The venerable publisher, which has issued renowned scholarly series such as the Loeb Classical Library and the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures as well as numerous Pulitzer Prize-winning titles, is marking the anniversary by introducing a new visual identity—one that represents a significant departure from the traditional graphic imagery associated with the Press’s past. For some insights into how this all came about, Designers & Books talked with the designer of the new logo, Sagi Haviv, partner at Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv, and Harvard University Press’s Director of Design and Production, Tim Jones.
Newest Posts and Book Lists
162 blog entries
Mar 21, 2013
0 comments
Mar 19, 2013
0 comments
Graphic designer Peter Mendelsund: Alfred A. Knopf Books, Pantheon Books, Vertical Press (New York)
Profile Book List
“How I became a designer is anyone’s guess, but it certainly had nothing to do with reading design books,” says Peter Mendelsund, the book designer who created 11 of the winning book covers for the “50 Books/50 Covers” competition of 2011 and whose covers for Stieg Larsson’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy have been described by the Wall Street Journal as being “the most instantly recognizable and iconic book covers in contemporary fiction.”
Mar 12, 2013
0 comments
Product and graphic designer Freeman Lau: Kan & Lau Design Consultants (Hong Kong)
Profile Book List
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.
Mar 5, 2013
0 comments
Product/Industrial designer David Weeks: David Weeks Studio (New York)
Profile Book List
Why do fiction and narrative hold such a great appeal for designers? One well-put answer comes from product designer David Weeks. “Whether it's a minor character in The World According to Garp who has halitosis and is described as ‘dying from the inside out‘ or Sartre’s description of finding his hand on a doorknob in Nausea, the fleeting imagery created from reading a well-written sentence is an act of design in itself.”
Feb 26, 2013
0 comments
Architect Jens Holm: HAO/Holm Architecture Office (Copenhagen and New York)
Profile Book List
“After thousands of years and the recent rise of a multitude of storytelling platforms, books remain for me the single medium that manages to both inform and inspire without dictating a single visual truth or idea,” Danish architect Jens Holm tells Designers & Books.
Feb 19, 2013
0 comments
Design magazine editor Amanda Dameron: Dwell (New York)
Profile Book List
What books does the editor of a high-profile modern home design magazine read? Designers & Books went to Amanda Dameron, editor in chief of Dwell, to find out. “Last year I moved from the West Coast to New York, and I barely brought any furniture or clothes with me. What I did bring was 50 boxes of books and vintage magazines,” says Dameron.
Feb 12, 2013
0 comments
Architecture school dean Alan Balfour: College of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta)
Profile Book List
Dean of Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture Alan Balfour divides his book list for Designers & Books in a way that reflects his distinguished career as a scholar, author, and educator. The list contains, he states in his introduction, “first, books that have touched me in the last year or so, most related to supporting and stimulating my own writing; second, writers whose imaginations I can enter, whose books I can get lost within; and third, books that I often return to and continue to value.”
Feb 5, 2013
0 comments
Architect Victoria Meyers: Hanrahan Meyers Architects (New York)
Profile Book List
“I selected my books for many reasons,” Victoria Meyers writes in the introduction to her list for Designers & Books. “Some books have followed me around for a very long time (I started reading Frank Lloyd Wright’s writings when I was seven or eight). Some books on the list were given to me by relatives whom I was close to (The Poetry of Robert Frost, given to me by my aunt). Complete Poems and Selected Letters of Michelangelo catalogues a life that I can relate to—suffering because of the design process!
Jan 29, 2013
0 comments
Graphic designer Massimo Pitis: Studio Pitis (Milan)
Profile Book List
“My selection of books reflects my interests in history, sociology, design, and education,” Italian graphic designer and art director Massimo Pitis explains in the introduction to his Designers & Books book list. “What I propose here is a dive into the depths of design thinking—a sea where letters and ornaments, thoughts and words, passions and theories fluctuate constantly, producing new ideas and new words.”
Jan 22, 2013
0 comments
Product/Industrial and Interaction Designer Carola Zwick: Studio 7.5 (Berlin)
Profile Book List
“As a designer you are concerned with observing and understanding change and solving emerging needs and problems. In addition, your concepts and ideas as well as the change you hope to trigger with your design intervention need to be communicated clearly,” says Carola Zwick, who along with Burkhard Schmitz and Claudia Plikat co-founded the Berlin-based industrial design firm Studio 7.5.
