Stefano Giovannoni

Product/Industrial Designer / Italy / Giovannoni Design

Stefano Giovannoni’s Book List

I think that it is very important as a designer to open one’s vision to the philosophical and sociological aspects related to the evolution of our society. I don’t know that any design book is so important to read: design books should be looked at in order to understand the concepts behind the projects illustrated through the images, but I’ve never found a design book deep enough for a broad vision of our profession.

9 books
Jean Baudrillard

In this book Baudrillard goes deeper into his earlier analyses of consumer society, critically examining its structure and paradigms.

Jean Baudrillard

An analysis of 1970s society through the development of advertisement and the new power of the media, especially of television.

Leander Kahney

This book succeeds in showing us the mind of the most important entrepreneur of our age. Steve Jobs was a perfectionist and a positive person, who created the ultimate “design company,” the reference for any designer and entrepreneur.

Andrea Branzi

A clear vision of how changes in society influence changes within design. Design might be compared to a culture born from the death of God, a God who lived for our fathers and who influenced history, science, and both public and private morality. Today we are more likely to be atheists.

Jean Baudrillard

This book created a new important point of view about the meaning of art and its vanishing with the end of the avant-garde in the late 1980s.

Achille Bonito Oliva

This book surveys the attitudes and beliefs of artists during the period of Mannerism in the 16th century. I think it’s a real masterpiece and a reference point for any critic of art. Achille Bonito Oliva analyzes the approach of artists to painting in this particular historical period with a very smart and elegant style.

Jean Baudrillard
Vanni Codeluppi Editor

In this book Baudrillard analyzes the concept of “merchandise,” with its cynical market value, as a crucial issue of consumer society. This book has been central to my design approach and the most important for my background.

Jean Baudrillard

This is one of the first books written by one of the most important theorists of our times, the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. Despite the fact that this book is not as mature as the ones Baudrillard wrote subsequently, it gives us an early clear vision of society in the near future, projected into the new millennium.

Thomas Friedman

This book, written by New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Friedman in 2005, describes the changing society at the beginning of the 21st century. With globalization, the Internet, and new technologies the world becomes flat, destroying all barriers to the dissemination of knowledge, and offering society the possibility of developing a transparent economy. We can visualize and communicate in real time with anyone all over the world, making a reality what Baudrillard had imagined and defined 20 years earlier as “the ecstasy of communication.”

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