References and New Discoveries: Alexander Haldemann’s Book List
By Steve Kroeter July 9, 2013![]() |
Alexander Haldemann |
Branding design firm executive Alexander Haldemann: MetaDesign (San Francisco)
As head of MetaDesign, an award-winning brand-design agency that has developed brand systems for clients like Apple, Adobe, Current.TV, Nike, and Sony, Alexander Haldemann spends a lot of time thinking, writing, and speaking about the creativity needed to communicate the identities of some of the world’s most recognizable products. In a recent article he wrote for Computer Arts magazine, he observes, “A powerful brand core gives employees and consumers something to believe in. It can essentially form the soul of the brand that provides the entire experience.”*
Much of his thinking can be seen in the titles Haldemann selected for his book list—a list that reflects his Swiss upbringing, interest in typography, and international worldview (after leading MetaDesign’s Zurich office for ten years, he is now based in San Francisco). About all these books Haldemann says, “What they have in common is that they were all lying around piled on top of the books on the shelves, which suggests they are either important to me and I reference them often, or new discoveries, or both.”
From Füssli, the Wild Swiss, a survey of the work of Swiss painter and writer on art Johann Heinrich Füssli, edited by Christoph Becker, Haldemann takes away this insight: “What inspires me about Füssli is that he had an international consciousness—expressed in his art—in the 18th century, decades before direct flights and the Internet would make that an easy thing to do. He did it when it was hard.”
![]() |
From MetaDesign Blog article (June 13, 2013) on Alexander Haldemann’s “Branding: the Challenges of a Modern Market” in Computer Arts Magazine |
While he wasn't trained in graphic and information design, Haldemann has educated himself on the subject that permeates his work, and includes on his list two books on type. One is David McCandless’s Information Is Beautiful: “The book shows convincingly that to master the sheer complexity of data you first need a solid understanding of the issue at hand. . . It is one of the many duties of design to reduce information to an understandable level, and Information Is Beautiful gives a wonderful overview about how to do this.” The other book is Designers & Books contributor Erik Spiekermann’s Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works, which Haldemann says, “makes typography accessible to someone who has not studied design but who works in the design industry.” From the book, he “learned that typography really matters and has an unbelievable impact on the expression of a brand. The book shows you that with typography, small things matter. Likewise, the true power of a brand is in the details.”
Perhaps one of the most interesting titles on the book list in relation to brand design comes from Italian graphic designer Bruno Munari. Active in modernism, Futurism, and Concrete Art, in addition to his books on design and visual communication topics, Munari wrote Speak Italian: The Fine Art of the Gesture. Haldemann comments: “Italian is my second language, but I learned very quickly that, when it comes to understanding Italian, gestures are extremely important in communicating and telling stories. This insight has carried over into my work: brands, much like languages, are multi-sensory. To truly understand both people and brands, you have to go deeper than the surface and look at them from a different perspective.”
* Alexander Haldemann, “Branding: The Challenges of a Modern Market,” Computer Arts, vol. 2, part 4, Branding. Also www.computerarts.com and via MetaDesign Blog, June 13, 2013.
View Alexander Haldemann’s Profile View Alexander Haldemann’s Book List
See more commentators’ book lists
Announcements
Between Memory and Invention: My Journey in Architecture by Robert A.M. Stern
Between Memory and Invention: My Journey in Architecture
By Robert A.M. Stern
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2022
Architect, historian, and educator Robert A. M. Stern presents a personal and candid assessment of contemporary architecture and his fifty years of practice.
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.
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.
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York by Steven Heller
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York
By Steven Heller
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Published: October 2022
An entertaining coming-of-age memoir from Steven Heller, award-winning designer, writer, and former senior art director at the New York Times, that takes readers on a visually inspired look back at being at the center of New York’s youth culture in the 1960s and ’70s.
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.”
Buildings in Print: 100 Influential and Inspiring Illustrated Architecture Books by John Hill
Buildings in Print: 100 Influential and Inspiring Illustrated Architecture Books
By John Hill
Publisher: Prestel Publishing
Published: June 2021
This unique volume by the founder of the hugely influential architecture blog A Daily Dose of Architecture showcases the best illustrated architecture books ever published with an informed, personal, and engaging take on what makes the title unique and indispensable.
Popular NowWeekMonth
- The Creative Interviewer: Debbie Millman on Why Design Matters
- Le Corbusier: A Legacy in Books
- Eugene Feldman, Co-Editor, and Co-Designer of The Notebooks and Drawings of Louis I. Kahn
- The Illustrated Book in Italy, 1918–1945
- Louis Kahn: A Memoir
Recent Articles


