Book List of the Week

Celebrating Our Anniversary: Five Designer Book Lists from the Archive

March 3, 2014

To celebrate the three-year anniversary of Designers & Books, launched in February 2011, we’ve brought together five book lists from our archive of more than 300 lists of books that have inspired designers and design commentators. This week’s sampling includes graphic designer Erik Spiekermann (which debuted in our post “Typomania”); architect Philip Freelon (“Imagining, Understanding, and Interpreting”); landscape designer Diana Balmori (“True Companions After Others Have Faded into Oblivion”); interior designer Jeffrey Bilhuber (“Embracing Opposites”); and interaction and product designer Carola Zwick (“Interaction and Information”). All 171 designer book lists can be found here and our 34 commentator book lists here.

Erik Spiekermann's Book List

This list was in my head, and I was thinking that getting the details and writing a few lines for each title would take a leisurely Sunday afternoon. It turned out to be a busy Friday morning instead. I’ve made this list from all the books I could reach from my desk at home without getting onto ladders. I have about 3,000 books, so there could easily be many more. As there is intelligent life outside the U.S., I have included some of my favorite books in German as well.

Philip Freelon's Book List

The majority of the books in my library are monographs and other volumes that document built and unbuilt work through photographs and written analysis/critique. I have not included these important and valued books on my list but have instead focused on the titles that have inspired me and broadened my understanding of the world—past, present, and future. My list includes books on design in general, architecture, photography, science, and science fiction. My interests, though varied, are centered on imagining, understanding, and interpreting environments.

Diana Balmori's Book List

This list of books is not at all homogeneous. But it isn’t random, either. These books have remained true companions of mine after others (although they produced immediate pleasure) have faded into oblivion.

Jeffrey Bilhuber's Book List

Here you will find a list of books that have inspired me in my professional and personal pursuits. Some I find I reference everyday, while others have simply stuck with me less as reference tools and more as life lessons.

Carola Zwick's Book List

As a designer you are concerned with observing and understanding change and solving emerging needs and problems. In addition, your concepts and ideas as well as the change you hope to trigger with your design intervention need to be communicated clearly.

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Announcements

Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister

Now is Better

By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023

Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.

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Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli

Design Emergency: Building a Better Future

By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022

Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.

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Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman

Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People

By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022

Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.

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Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber

Milton Glaser: POP

By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023

This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.

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Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange

Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall

By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022

Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”

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Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller

Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)

By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023

This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.

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