Book List of the Week

The Book List of the Week highlights the list of books provided by invited designers (including architects, fashion designers, graphic designers, interior designers, landscape architects, product designers, urban designers, and other design professionals) who have chosen books that inspire them and that have shaped their worldview or their ideas about design.
189 blog entries
Book List of the Week
By Stephanie Salomon June 30, 2020

Milton Glaser (1925–June 26, 2020) “made graphic design look alive, vibrant, and human,” writes Rudy VanderLans. The Emigre Fonts cofounder is one of several designers who count the classic Milton GlaserGraphic Design, first published in 1973 and the most popular compilation of Glaser’s work, among the books that have inspired their careers. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter July 22, 2019

Cesar Pelli (d. July 19, 2019) has been recognized for a lifetime of distinguished achievement in architecture. He designed some of the contemporary world’s most famous buildings, notably the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (1997), the globe’s tallest buildings until 2004. Take a look at the books that inspired Pelli. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter July 11, 2019

This week we honor the life and work of Philip Freelon (1953–2019), chief architect of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., by re-publishing the list of books that inspired him. More...

Book List of the Week
June 5, 2019

As a tribute to architect Stanley Tigerman (1930–June 3, 2019), a giant of postmodernism, we are honored to share the list of books that inspired him, which he sent to Designers & Books in 2012. The list, he wrote, was “the tip of an iceberg that helps to define who I am in the autumn of my life.” More...

Book List of the Week
April 25, 2019

Recently named to TIME magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people of 2019, architect Jeanne Gang finds inspiration in reading and writing books. 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 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...

Book List of the Week
By Stephanie Salomon July 19, 2016

The creator of the Morgan Library & Museum’s celebrated signage recommends 5 favorite books and gets a book dedicated to her own career spanning more than 60 years as one of the world’s more respected calligraphers. More...

Book List of the Week
March 23, 2015

French graphic designer (Robert) Massin’s Letter and Image (La Lettre et l’Image)—a survey of letterforms and type from pre-history to the present—was first published 45 years ago, in 1970. Known for his experimentation with typography and layout, Massin (b. 1925) is also recognized as a scholar of graphic design history. Letter and Image makes the book lists of design critic Rick Poynor, graphic designer Paula Scher, and others. More...

Book List of the Week
March 2, 2015

First published in 1939 in Japanese and translated into English in 1977, In Praise of Shadows considers Japanese aesthetics and its emphasis on subtlety and nuance. Ten designers, including architect David Adjaye, fashion design curator Akiko Fukai, and lighting deisgner Paul Marantz, cite the book as an inspiration for their work. More...