Peter Mendelsund
Peter Mendelsund’s Book List
I don’t believe I’ve ever read a “design book” in my entire life. (I don’t think I’ve ever read a single book devoted solely to the visual arts or architecture either, unless you include the occasional biography of a painter, or an essay collection here and there that might have happened to include some piece or other on design or the visual arts.) Furthermore, I have no formal training as a designer so I wasn’t asked to read these books in an academic program either. All of which is to say: I am completely virginal when it comes to the literature of art and design.
How I became a designer is anyone’s guess, but it certainly had nothing to do with reading design books. The seminal books, for me, were books that related to design only inasmuch as all of life is related to design—and literature and philosophy books have taught me about life: the forms life takes, the ways in which those forms of life can be organized, disorganized, and reorganized. These non-design books are the books that made me a better designer.
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Lesson(s) learned: Less is more; the world in a grain of sand; etc., etc.
Lesson(s) learned: Life can be messy and beautiful in equal measure. (Design can be, too.)
One of the ancillary benefits of having children is that it offers one an excuse to reread one’s favorite children’s books. Many times. I came back to Harold and the Purple Crayon when my first daughter was born and have subsequently read it out loud to both my children approximately one billion times. And the book holds up. It is a tale of a boy who makes his own adventure, and his own way through this adventure, with nothing more than the eponymous crayon. It was my first and most profound lesson in world-building. Lesson(s) learned: All you need is a crayon.
A sprawling novel that won the Nobel Prize in 1915 and was the most massively popular work of its time. Now largely forgotten (perhaps out of print even?). I read Jean Christophe in tenth grade at the urging of my grandfather Henoch Mendelsund. The book is based, roughly, on the life of Beethoven, and it was my first glimpse at the mythology of the artist-as-superhero. Lesson(s) learned: Nobody is as cool as he or she who makes things.
Lesson(s) learned: Humor and profundity can coexist. And: Style matters.
The book that, of all the books I’ve read, comes the closest to accurately reflecting this slippery world of ours. It is the book that feels, when one is reading it, the most like what it feels to be alive. Lesson(s) learned: Hold a mirror up to life.
Lesson(s) learned: Think things through. Be thorough, methodical, meticulous. When you write, speak, or commit an image to paper, know what you mean.
Ulysses is a novel that is intensely unified despite its being comprised of every stylistic and rhetorical literary and narrative device known to man. Lesson(s) learned: An artist can be a shape-shifter while retaining a strong identity and sense of integrity.
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What is Universal Everything? edited by Adrian Shaughnessy and Tony Brook
What is Universal Everything?
Edited by Adrian Shaughnessy and Tony Brook; designed by Spin
Publisher: Unit Editions
Published: June 2019
Matt Pyke, founder and creative director of Universal Everything, calls his studio a “digital art and design collective.” Now, after 15 years of revolutionary work in the digital realm, the studio has its first book. For anyone interested in the future of digital design, the book features a unique cover for each copy of the book (limited to 2,000)—every buyer owns a one-off.
The Future of Design: Global Product Innovation for a Complex World by Lorraine Justice
The Future of Design: Global Product Innovation for a Complex World
by Lorraine Justice
Publisher: Nicholas Brealey
Published: June 4, 2019
Internationally recognized product design expert, TED speaker, and consultant to companies like Microsoft and Levi’s, shares the ten global factors that directly impact product design success and failure.
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