The Book We Need Now: New from Stefan Sagmeister Daily Features

Renowned graphic designer and Designers & Books contributor Stefan Sagmeister brings us exactly the book we need now.

Titled Now is Better, this visual exploration of human progress over the past several centuries takes a long view that gives us cause for hope in the face of much of the current news.

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Imagining Information: Symbols, Isotype, and Book Design Rare & Beautiful

Rare book expert Peter Kraus explores some milestone moments in the history of infographics and book design.

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One Book and Why: Design School Dean Frederick Steiner Recommends . . . One Book and Why

In this summer installment of “One Book and Why,” Frederick Steiner, dean of the Stuart Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania, recommends Before Central Park, an authoritative recent chronicle of two centuries of the history of New York City’s most famous work of of urban landscape design

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Summer Reading for Design Lovers: The Story of Architecture Daily Features

What’s on our summer reading list? As design book devotees, we’re turning to The Story of Architecture by Witold Rybczynski.

Recently, Designers & Books had a chance to talk with the author about how he conceived his expansive and engaging history of buildings from the Stone Age to the present day—his 22nd book— and what readers can take away from it.

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Daily Features The Book We Need Now: New from Stefan Sagmeister

Renowned graphic designer and Designers & Books contributor Stefan Sagmeister brings us exactly the book we need now.

Titled Now is Better, this visual exploration of human progress over the past several centuries takes a long view that gives us cause for hope in the face of much of the current news.

More...

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Themed Book Lists

10 Books Featuring Buckminster Fuller
Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi: Best of Friends Shoji Sadao
Buckminster Fuller’s Universe Lloyd Steven Sieden
Critical Path R. Buckminster Fuller

Book List of the Week

The Books That Inspired Robert Venturi

Robert Venturi (1925–September 18, 2018), along with his partner and wife, Denise Scott Brown, was the original inspiration behind the founding of Designers and Books. Venturi and Scott Brown’s long list of the books that inspired them was one of the first we published, and it is our profound honor to feature it again.

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Daily Features

The Creative Interviewer: Debbie Millman on Why Design Matters

This Women’s History Month, we’re honored to showcase a new book by Debbie Millman, ebullient host of the award-winning podcast “Design Matters“ and a treasured member of our Designers & Books community. The newly released Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People (Harper Collins, 2022) is Millman’s “love letter to creativity.”

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Archives & Libraries

The Louis I. Kahn Collection at the Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania

Kahn’s original drawings models, and correspondence offer a “view from the drafting room” of the architect’s work, writes Witold Rybczynski.

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Most Frequently Chosen Books

10 Most Frequently Chosen Design Books
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture Robert Venturi
Towards a New Architecture (Vers une Architecture) Le Corbusier
Delirious New York Rem Koolhaas

Most Frequently Chosen Books

10 Most Frequently Chosen Non-Design Books
Ulysses James Joyce
Invisible Cities Italo Calvino
In Praise of Shadows Jun’ichiro Tanizaki

Interviews

Still Learning from Denise Scott Brown

Designers and Books spent an afternoon with architect and urban planner Denise Scott Brown at the suburban Philadelphia home she shares with her husband, architect Robert Venturi, talking with her about what went into making the book Learning from Las Vegas—and the studio class that prompted ither thoughts about the book’s significance today, new writing, and what she’s working on next.

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Design Matters: On Books

Design Matters Podcast on Books: Debbie Millman & Sheila Bridges

Debbie Millman talks to interior designer Sheila Bridges, named “America's Best Interior Designer” by CNN and Time magazine.

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Quote of the Day

An incredible book about an incredible designer, thinker, and bad-boy provocateur.