Designers & Books Blog

 

856 blog entries
Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter December 18, 2012

Product/industrial designer Jonathan Olivares: Jonathan Olivares Design Research (New York)
Profile     Book List
Jonathan Olivares generated quite a bit of notice last year with the publication of A Taxonomy of Office Chairs (Phaidon Press), one of the more unusual design books of 2011. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter January 31, 2012

Architect, interior designer, and product designer Shashi Caan: Shashi Caan Collective (New York and Edinburgh)
Profile    Book List
Born in India, educated in Europe, and with wide experience as a design practitioner and teacher in the U.S., Shashi Caan is the consummate global citizen. “I am an embodiment of my interpretation of the confluence of sometimes conflicting cultural views and constructs,” is how she describes herself in the introduction to the book list that she sent along to Designers & Books. More...

Daily Features
By Patrick Ciccone, Superscript September 20, 2013

A pioneering work in 1975, The Art of Design Management: Design in American Business explores whether the chief business of American business was design. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter September 21, 2018

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. More...

Book List of the Week
August 18, 2014

Kicking off an automobile-themed week, here are the books that inspire three distinguished names in car design—Chris Bangle (former Chief of Design for BMW), Thomas Girst (BMW’s Head of Cultural Engagement), and Phil Patton, New York Times “Wheels” blog writer and author of several books on car design. More...

Book List of the Week
November 3, 2014

More than 25 different books, from Achille Castiglioni to The Edifice Complex, have made an impact on three leading design design journalists: Alice Rawsthorn (New York Times, international edition), Julie Iovine (The Wall Street Journal), and Amanda Dameron (Dwell magazine). More...

Book List of the Week
December 15, 2014

This week we’re highlighting the books that inspire three architects working in California and the Pacific Northwest: Neil Denari (Los Angeles), Craig Hodgetts (Los Angeles), and Tom Kundig (Seattle). More...

Book List of the Week
November 10, 2014

Among the many prominent architects and designers who have collaborated on products with the American design firm Knoll are four who have sent us the books that have had an impact on their lives and careers. This week we spotlight the book lists of architects David Adjaye and Maya Lin, architect and industrial designer Emanuela Frattini Magnusson, and graphic design studio 2x4 and one of its founders, Michael Rock. More...

Book List of the Week
September 8, 2014

Happy Year of the Pig! Revisit these four designers from China and Hong—each from a different area of design. They include product and graphic designer Freeman Lau, interior designer Ed Ng, fashion designer Guo Pei, and architect Rocco Yim. Also see our list of 15 Books on China and Design. More...

Book List of the Week
August 31, 2016

Back to school in September? Here are four “dean’s lists” of books selected by Deborah Berke, Yale School of Architecture’s dean; Mohsen Mostafavi, who headed Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design through Spring 2019; Kent Kleinman, former dean of Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (now provost of the Rhode Island  School of Design); and Alan Balfour, former dean of the College of Architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Updated September 4, 2019. More...