Kit Hinrichs’s Book List
It’s interesting to be asked about what books have influenced my career. Although I am an avid reader (often of airplane trash), most of what has affected my career is the observation of what you see in everyday culture. My book list is a very broad array of books that have inspired, influenced, and informed my career through the editorial eye of the designer, artist, photographer, or writer who wrote, created, assembled, analyzed, and designed the material within the pages of these books.
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An in-depth look at one of the 20th century’s geniuses.
Western wear is one of America’s original clothing designs.
Irving Penn's imagery is the gold standard for art direction and photography.
On one of the most influential designers of the early 20th century.
A comprehensive and practical look at the origin and use of clichés.
Lois was perhaps the most influential art director in my life.
A very entertaining and contemporary look at historic typography.
Young was one of my most influential teachers on typographic spacing.
Guy is perhaps the most iconic and ironic designer working today.
Surely one of the best “thinkers” in photography.
A fabulous approach to understanding artists.
La crème de la crème of international poster design.
A great perspective on the American spirit through illustration; a win-win.
A collection of maximum wit with a minimum of line.
Morison was and is one of my typographic heroes—he influences me daily.
Perhaps the best examples of corporate design in print today, and all designed by one firm.
I collect all of Steven’s books and I just love illustration.
Folk art remains an entry level to all cultures and this book is a great guide.
The influence of these designers and their work is as fresh today as it was when they were created.
Perhaps the most influential documentarian of our (American) culture.
For me, Glaser is one of the most influential design thinkers in the world.
A classic book about one of the 20th century’s most influential imagery makers.
An interesting design comparison of one culture’s design aesthetic superimposed on another.
One of the best assemblages of illustration in America in the 20th century.
The best reference guide to American design, even if I didn’t make the cut!
Announcements
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture by Moshe Safdie
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture
By Moshe Safdie
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
Published: September 2022
One of the world’s greatest and most thoughtful architects recounts his extraordinary career and the iconic structures he has built—from Habitat in Montreal to Marina Bay Sands in Singapore—and offers a manifesto for the role architecture should play in society.
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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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Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People
By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022
Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York by Steven Heller
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York
By Steven Heller
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Published: October 2022
An entertaining coming-of-age memoir from Steven Heller, award-winning designer, writer, and former senior art director at the New York Times, that takes readers on a visually inspired look back at being at the center of New York’s youth culture in the 1960s and ’70s.
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.”
Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman
Women Holding Things
By Maira Kalman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: October 2022
In the spring of 2021, Maira and Alex Kalman created a small, limited-edition booklet, “Women Holding Things,” which featured select recent paintings by Maira, accompanied by her insightful and deeply personal commentary. The booklet quickly sold out. Now, the Kalmans have expanded that original publication into an extraordinary visual compendium. We see a woman hold a book, hold shears, hold children, hold a grudge, hold up, hold her own. In visually telling their stories, Kalman lays bare the essence of women’s lives—their tenacity, courage, vulnerability, hope, and pain.
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