Alice Rawsthorn

From Sen no Rikyu, the 16th-century Buddhist priest who killed himself rather than acquiesce to a Japanese warlord’s demand that he compromise the purity of the tea ceremony, to Pope Paul V, who orchestrated the transformation of Donato Bramante and Michelanglo’s St. Peter’s Basilica into a bombastic, over-styled “baroque barn,” Design and Truth by the American philosopher Robert Grudin names and shames the heroes and villains, respectively, of design history.

The moral of the book is that designers should always be true to themselves, as Rikyu was, and never ever compromise, like Pope Paul V’s architectural patsies. “Good design enables honest and effective engagement with the world,” as Grudin puts it. “Poor design is symptomatic either of inadequate insight or of a fraudulent and exploitative strategy of production. If good design tells the truth, poor design tells a lie, a lie usually related, in one way or another, to the getting or abuse of power.” He then illustrates his point with a dazzling range of references, from the invention of the word “designare” in ancient Rome to Monteverdi’s Orfeo, Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, Palazzo Te in Mantua, his own beloved 1956 Norton Dominator 99 motorcycle, the Twin Towers in New York, and an oversized fridge that fell on—and nearly crushed—a handyman called Les, who was hauling it out of the Grudins’ kitchen.

Victor Papanek didn’t think much of designers—industrial designers especially. “There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a few of them,” he wrote in the opening line of Design for the Real World. “And possibly only one profession is phonier. Advertising design, in persuading people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have in order to impress others who don’t care, is probably the phoniest field in existence today. Industrial design, by concocting the tawdry idiocies hawked by advertisers, comes a close second.”

Ouch. Irascible though he was, Papanek was also thoughtful, sensitive, gutsy, and perceptive. He wrote Design for the Real World a little over 40 years ago, and most of its principles are as relevant now as they were then, if not more so. Dividing his book into two parts, the first entitled “How it is” and the second “How it could be,” Papanek explains clearly and persuasively that design should be more honest, humane, responsible, empowering, and inclusive, less about showy styling, and more about improving the quality of all of our lives, not least those who are disadvantaged, disabled, or excluded. Countless books have since been published on sustainable and inclusive design, but every designer should still read this one.

This is one of my favorite examples of a book as an extraordinary object. It is the first book on the work of the brilliant Dutch book designer Irma Boom. There are 704 pages bound into a tiny book—just 2 inches high, 1.5 inches wide, and 1 inch thick. When I first saw it, I presumed that the (lack of) size was a wry commentary on any or all of the following: a) the trend to produce very big, very blingy, often badly designed books; b) the realization that, since the microchip’s invention, the size of an object no longer necessarily bears any relation to its power; or c) the threat posed by the iPad, Kindle, and other electronic readers to the traditional books that Irma Boom has designed so beautifully.

In fact, it is a homage to the “mini-books” she makes whenever she starts work on a new product. They act as filters for her ideas, and help her to see the structure. As it costs nearly as much to produce a small book as a big one, no publisher had ever allowed Boom to produce a “real” book on this scale, and she seized her chance to do so with her own book. It is a beautiful thing, which proves decisively that big isn’t always better for books or anything else. Although future editions may be a little bit bigger than the original, because Boom has suggested to the publisher that each new version of the book should be roughly half an inch larger than its predecessor.

The problem with most conceptual design projects is that they’re more convincing in theory than practice. Pig 05049 is an inspired—and inspiring—exception, as a very rare example of a conceptual design in which the theoretical message is eloquently expressed by an end result, which also happens to be a fully functional product.

Pig 05049 is a book produced by the Dutch product designer Christien Meindertsma to tell the story of what happened to a single pig, the one identified by the number in the title, after it was slaughtered, and its various parts were shipped to different places all over the world. It then reveals the 185 different products to which that pig contributed. Not just sausages, bacon, ham, pork scratchings, mincemeat, and a pork pie, but also a cupcake, chocolate mousse, a gelatin leaf, chewing gum, a tattoo, various types of glue, safety gloves, a porcelain figurine, soap, a jigsaw puzzle, black pigment, a dog treat, cattle feed, anti-wrinkle cream, an artificial human heart valve, bullets, and the book itself—particles of Pig 05049 were used to make the jacket.