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.
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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Love Letter to a Garden by Debbie Millman
Love Letter to a Garden
By Debbie Millman
Contributions by Roxane Gay
Publisher: Timber Press
Published: April 15, 2025
From the award-winning artist, designer, and the host of the podcast Design Matters, Debbie Millman, this book tells the visual story of falling in love with gardening—and the philosophies that work conjures. Spread throughout are simple recipes using the garden’s ingredients from Millman’s wife, best-selling author Roxane Gay.
The Picture Book Book: The Art of Seymour Chwast by Seymour Chwast; curated by Steven Heller
The Picture Book Book: The Art of Seymour Chwast
By Seymour Chwast, curated by Steven Heller
Publisher: Gestalten
Published: June 2026
Seymour Chwast, legendary co-founder of Push Pin Studios, reinvented how we see and read picture books. The Picture Book Book gathers over 40 of his works, curated by Steven Heller, and offers a rare look at his playful, incisive approach to visual storytelling. From bold graphics to sly wit, Chwast’s books expanded the boundaries of design and children’s literature alike.
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.”
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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Recent Articles
Rick Poynor
Rick Poynor is a British writer, critic, lecturer, and curator, specializing in design, media, photography, and visual culture. He is Visiting Professor in Critical Writing in Art & Design at the postgraduate Royal College of Art in London.
He was the founding editor of Eye magazine in London, which he edited from 1990 to 1997, and he has contributed the “Critique” column to Eye since 1999. He has written a regular column for Print magazine since 2000. His articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in I.D., Metropolis, Harvard Design Magazine, Adbusters, Blueprint, Icon, Frieze, Creative Review, The Guardian, Financial Times, and many other publications. In 2003, he was a co-founder of Design Observer, where he blogs regularly.
Poynor’s first book, with the artist Russell Mills, was More Dark Than Shark (1986), a study of Brian Eno. Typography Now: The Next Wave (1991), the first survey to document the new digital typography, became an international bestseller. His books about design and the visual arts include Vaughan Oliver: Visceral Pleasures (2000); Typographica (2001); No More Rules: Graphic Design and Postmodernism (2003); Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design Since the Sixties (2004); and Jan van Toorn: Critical Practice (2008). He has published three collections of his essays and cultural criticism: Design Without Boundaries (1998); Obey the Giant: Life in the Image World (2001); and Designing Pornotopia (2006).
In 2004, he was curator of a major survey exhibition, “Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design since the Sixties,” at the Barbican Art Gallery, London. The show traveled to China and Switzerland. In 2009, he curated “Typographica” at the Kemistry Gallery, London. His most recent exhibition, “Uncanny: Surrealism and Graphic Design,” the first international and historical survey of this subject, ran at the Moravian Gallery in Brno, Czech Republic, in the summer of 2010 and at the Kunsthal, Rotterdam, in fall 2011.
Poynor was previously a visiting professor at the Royal College of Art (1994–99) and a research fellow at the college (2006–09). He has also taught at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht in the Netherlands. He is a frequent lecturer and has spoken about design and visual culture at public events, conferences, and design schools throughout Europe, the United States, Australia, and China. In 2007, he was a featured interviewee in the hit documentary Helvetica.
Contributed Articles
Rick Poynor names the book titles he likes because of the the way they sound, and the last book he'll read (if he has a chance to plan it), and gives more answers to Designers & Books’ questionnaire.
More...Guest blogger: Visual culture critic Rick Poynor (Design Observer, London)
More...Profile Notable Books of 2011
Guest blogger Rick Poynor—also a Designers & Books commentator—discusses Christian Patterson’s Redheaded Peckerwood (MACK, 2011). — SK