Product/industrial design

 

26 blog entries
Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter August 16, 2012

Product and jewelry designer Gijs Bakker: Gijs Bakker Design (Amsterdam)
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When in the early 1990s, Gijs Bakker co-founded (with Renny Ramakers) Droog Design—perhaps the most well-known contemporary design group to come out of The Netherlands—it was with the idea of challenging the design establishment to think about product and industrial design in new ways. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter March 12, 2013

Product and graphic designer Freeman Lau: Kan & Lau Design Consultants (Hong Kong)
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Design writer Zara Arshad: Design China (Beijing)
Profile
Internationally renowned product and graphic designer Freeman Lau (Lau Siu-Hong), with more than 300 awards to his name, has designed everything from posters and books to prize-winning water bottle packaging and a series of intertwining chairs and stools. He is also recognized for his work as an educator and curator, and in 2011 was a curator of the Beijing International Design Triennial. Lau’s book CMYK (2012) was just released in Hong Kong and Beijing this past December. Design China’s Zara Arshad, in an interview for Designers & Books, sat down with Freeman Lau recently to talk about reading, writing, designing, and publishing books in Hong Kong and mainland China. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter January 22, 2013

Product/Industrial and Interaction Designer Carola Zwick: Studio 7.5 (Berlin)
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“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,” says Carola Zwick, who along with Burkhard Schmitz and Claudia Plikat co-founded the Berlin-based industrial design firm Studio 7.5. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter March 20, 2012

Product designer Cleto Munari: Cleto Munari Design Associati (Vicenza, Italy)
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Cleto Munari is a designer and design impresario whose work has an especially close connection with the words of writers. In a recent series of limited-edition tables he produced for his first furnishings collection, he incorporated the language of poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Mark Strand—lines of their poetry as well as their drawings are etched into glass tabletops. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter March 25, 2013

Product/industrial designer Carl Magnusson: CGM Design LLC (New York)
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Design, believes Carl Magnusson, “must evoke an experience physically and culturally beyond its core function.” The eminent industrial designer—the winner of Contract magazine’s 2012 Legend Award for lifetime achievement—was talking about the “central message that stuck” from Steen Eiler Rasmussen’s Experiencing Architecture, on his book list for Designers and Books, but he was really talking about all of design. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter November 15, 2011

Product and interior designer Karim Rashid: KARIM Rashid Inc. (New York)
Book list

Prolific is a word that is frequently used to describe the designer Karim Rashid, and it’s easy to see why. His practice areas include home and office furnishings, personal accessories, furniture, lighting, interior design, packaging, fashion, graphics, exhibition design, identity programs, and various art media. Over 3,000 of his designs have been put into production for those on his client roster—a list that numbers more than 200, operating in over 35 countries on five continents. His Garbo waste can for the home accessories company Umbra has sold more than 7 million units. He has won more than 300 awards. Fourteen museums have his work in their permanent collections. More...

Guest posts
By Katarina V. Posch November 20, 2012

Design scholar Katarina V. Posch (New York)
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Product/industrial designer Eva Zeisel (New York)
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For this guest post, the daughter of the late Eva Zeisel, Jean Richards, asked design scholar and family friend Katarina V. Posch to write an appreciation of Zeisel, on the occasion of the release of the e-book Eva Zeisel: A Soviet Prison Memoir (2012). Compiled by Richards and Brent C. Brolin, the book presents details of the life of the remarkable designer, from whom Designers & Books had the pleasure of receiving a book list (a single book) in 2011. — SK More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter July 12, 2011

Product design executive Alberto Alessi: Alessi S.p.A. (Crusinallo, Italy)
book list
Alberto Alessi belongs to the third generation of one of the world’s great family dynasties in design. For over 40 years he has been at the center of managing the business and strategic affairs of Alessi S.p.A.—known for bringing innovative design to housewares—as well as coordinating the company’s product development relationships with notable architects and designers from around the world.  He answered some questions from Designers & Books about his book list and about his life, which has had design at its center.  More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter January 8, 2013

Product/industrial designer Jeffrey Bernett: CDS/Consultants for Design Strategy (New York)
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“School only teaches you so much,” says Jeffrey Bernett in his book list introduction for Designers & Books. The designer of acclaimed residential and office furniture, household products, lighting, packaging, and interior architecture for companies such as B&B Italia, Design Within Reach, and Herman Miller recommends reading broadly as not only “a quest to gain knowledge” but also “a thought-provoking journey in its own right.” More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter December 13, 2012

Product/industrial designer Stefano Giovanni: Giovannoni Design (Milan)
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On industrial designer Stefano Giovannoni’s book list for Designers & Books are five titles by the French philosopher and sociologist Jean Baudrillard. Why? Giovannoni thinks it’s very important for a designer “to open one’s vision to the philosophical and sociological aspects related to the evolution of our society.” “I’ve never found a design book deep enough for a broad vision of our profession,” he says in the introduction to his book list. More...