Fiona Raby
Fiona Raby’s Book List
My book list is like album tracks that take me back to a moment in time.
Fiction
- filter by:
- all genres (0)
This must be one of my all-time favorite books! But also see “Foie Humain,” which centers on the Plantation Club, in Will Self’s Liver. The descriptions are pure genius, the engagement total—I am utterly absorbed.
Written in a strange language, coming from another place entirely, the idea that the material world could be shaped by and embody a very different set of values than the ones surrounding us today. The inventive and wondrous visual creativity in this book has fueled Dunne & Raby’s current fascination with a kind of imaginative speculative anthropology.
When Computer Related Design became Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art and our world broadened from digital technologies to more ethically troublesome bio-technologies, Tony (Dunne) and I struggled to convince designers that this might be something significant to think about. Oryx and Crake gave us the encouragement we needed. While reading it, we took great delight in identifying the many biotech references we had also come across in our own research.
The use of satire and the careful handling of the absurd is something Tony (Dunne) and I continue to pursue in our own work. How to make something sharp and knowing, layered and complex, and also, what to leave out. How to deliver a “lightness of touch,” which this book does beautifully.
As young researchers working in Computer Related Design during the early days, Dunne and Raby’s European sensibilities were regularly exposed to Silicon Valley techno-utopianism, much like Super-Cannes’s fictional “Eden-Olympia.” Among the beautiful gardens of Palo Alto’s research labs, and the super-bright minds focused on logic, processes, and systems, Antonio’s Nut House on California Avenue provided the only slightly grimy sanctuary.
Tony (Dunne) and I spent three years living in Tokyo straight after graduating from the Royal College of Art in London. Tokyo still continues to make an impression on us. The quirkiness of Murakami’s characters and the ease at which his idiosyncratic, imaginative world seamlessly intertwines with the everydayness of a playfully technological Tokyo is just pure pleasure and delight.
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.
.png)
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.
.png)
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.
Popular NowWeekMonth
- Archigram: The Magazine
- The Book We Need Now: New from Stefan Sagmeister
- Quote of the Day: Witold Rybczynski & Paradise Planned
- Summer Reading for Design Lovers: The Story of Architecture
- One Book and Why: Design School Dean Frederick Steiner Recommends . . .
Recent Articles
