Review: Maria Popova - Elegantissima

Notable Books of 2012

Designer:

Maria Popova

Book:

Elegantissima

Review:

For more than three decades, graphic designer Louise Fili has been producing some of the most consistently exquisite typography, frequently hand-drawn and building upon thoughtfully curated vintage sources. In her decade as art director for Pantheon Books, she created nearly two thousand book jackets, each with remarkable attention to detail. Since 1989, she has expanded and extended her singular lens to restaurant menus and food packaging through her namesake design studio. The new monograph Elegantissima: The Design and Typography of Louise Fili offers, for the first time, a sweeping look at Fili’s work and the philosophy behind it. But Fili’s greatest gift is perhaps the extraordinary ability to seek out vintage gems —and to do so with great taste —which she then reimagines and combines into entirely new designs that aren’t mere homage to the past but, rather, an entirely original visual language with an entirely original point of view.

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