Ellen Lupton
Books Every Graphic Designer Should Read
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Whenever I feel desperately uninspired and there’s no ice cream in the house, I turn to my tattered old copy of this classic work by Roz Chast. Here, middle-aged angst meets existential dread and ill-fitting trousers. Chast creates quirky worlds with some shaky lines and a few words. This book will get you going when you’re craving ideas—or just having a bad hair day.
Ruder’s succinctly titled book embodies the ideals of the Swiss international style in its text, its visual content, and its rigorously structured pages. Whatever your own postmodern proclivities might be, this book endures as a masterpiece of method.
The first edition of this world-changing manifesto was designed by Muriel Cooper. Alas, the original design finds little expression in the current editions, but the text remains a profound celebration of surface. This is the New Testament of design theory.
The essays collected in this book shook my intellectual world when I first read them in college, and I continue today to force these texts upon my graduate students, who don’t always have the patience to wade through Barthes’s dense style. The reward is there for the patient. (If only the French had read Strunk and White.)
This compact little history of graphic design contains over 800 illustrations. In his crisp, smart narrative, Hollis follows the profession from the late 19th century to the close of the 20th. His book is small enough to fit in your purse and rich enough to account for the basic history of our profession.
I was determined at age ten to read all the works of Kurt Vonnegut. My vintage collection of four-dollar paperbacks still sits in my library. Vonnegut’s books successfully warped my preadolescent mind—none more so than Slaughterhouse-Five, which randomly mixes science fiction with vivid accounts of chaos and destruction during World War II. Novels like this one can inspire designers to think anew about the mixing of genres and vocabularies and the ability of words to create enduring images.
Derrida unleashed upon civilization his viral concept of “deconstruction” in this hugely influential text. The book is largely unreadable to Muggles like me, but its commentary on the interaction of writing, speech, and typography has shaped the way I read, write, and design. Its repercussions in the fields of art, design, literature, and fashion are legendary.
Typography manuals abound, but few are a pleasure to read, handle, and behold. Bringhurst’s book is one of the best guides ever devised on the principles and practices of typography.
After Kurt Vonnegut I read Stephen King, whose earliest books remain, to me, his most compelling. I feigned illness one Tuesday in ninth grade in order to consume Carrie without interruption. I was as shocked and aroused by King’s juxtaposition of straight narrative with fake news reports as I was by the mutual mass destruction of teenage girls. Any graphic designer interested in seeing popular culture practiced at its highest level will find astonishing inspiration in this camp masterpiece.
This oversized compendium of Bauhaus source material was designed with ruthless rationality for MIT Press by the great Muriel Cooper. It is the Old Testament of design theory.
This handy guidebook originated as a column in The Guardian (London). Written in an entertaining and accessible manner, Lodge’s book consists of short essays about literary techniques and concepts (beginnings, endings, dialogue, monologue, irony, point of view). Each essay is built around a substantial passage from some great work of fiction. It’s a wonderful book for any designer who likes to read and wants to write.
There remains no better guide to writing than this classic work. E. B. White reframed the ideas of his own English teacher into a charmingly proscriptive guide to building seaworthy sentences. Maira Kalman repackaged The Elements of Style in a later edition by illustrating the original book’s exemplary prose with her concise, declarative paintings. No writer or designer should be deprived of Kalman’s ingenious reissue of this useful book.
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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.
Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Milton Glaser: POP
By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023
This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.
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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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