Alice Rawsthorn

Critic; Writer; Lecturer / Architecture; Fashion Design; Graphic Design; Interior Design; Product Design / United Kingdom /

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10 Great Books on Product Design

The toughest thing about choosing ten great books on product design was whittling down the long list. Product design may not have as erudite or provocative a critical culture as graphics or architecture, but it is so rich and complex a subject that it has inspired some wonderful books. . . . View the complete text

Some are monographs, of course. I chose one of my favorites—Sergio Polano’s study of the great Italian designer Achille Castiglioni. I could happily have added many more, such as Dieter Rams’s Less and More and Irma Boom’s beautifully designed survey of the history of Royal Tichelaar Makkum, the venerable Dutch ceramics manufacturer.

At a time when product designers are grappling with the challenge of transforming their way of working to embrace sustainability and inclusivity, it seems impossible not to include the book that anticipated those movements some 40 years ago, Victor Papanek’s Design for the Real World. The same can be said for two very different design manifestos: Christien Meindertsma’s Pig 05049, a stellar example of intellectually adroit, yet fully functional conceptual design; and Jasper Morrison’s A World Without Words.

Irma Boom’s eponymous mini-book on her work as a book designer is an exemplar of the book as an impeccably designed object, just as Reyner Banham’s Design by Choice is a template for thoughtful and engaging design writing. Product design has also benefited from being interrogated by gifted writers and thinkers from other disciplines. This list includes wonderful books by a social scientist in Richard Sennett, a semiologist in Roland Barthes, and a philosopher in Robert Grudin. Again, there were many more to choose from, notably The Lunar Men, a fascinating study of the role of pioneering scientists, inventors, and industrialists in Britain’s Industrial Revolution by the cultural historian Jenny Uglow.

Some of my favorite product-design books didn’t set out to explore design at all, yet do so adroitly, like the veteran war reporter C.J. Chivers’s study of the development and deadly impact of the AK-47 in The Gun.

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Nonfiction, Architecture

random order

1 book

Achille Castiglioni

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Sergio Polano

Poring over the hundreds of photographs and drawings in Sergio Polano's study of the great Italian designer Achille Castiglioni of the projects that he worked on from 1938 until 2000, first with his brothers Pier Giacomo and Livio, and then on his own, is akin to walking around one of my favorite design museums, the five first-floor rooms of the lugubrious 18th-century palazzo in Milan, which served as Castiglioni’s studio for nearly 60 years and are now conserved intact as Studio Museum Achille Castiglioni. . . . View the complete text

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