Rudy VanderLans’s Book List
The books I’ve listed here came to mind immediately upon receipt of the invitation. They have inspired my design, photography, and editing work, and I know that I’ve learned from them and often refer back to them. What exactly I’ve learned from them is difficult to determine. But my work has improved over the years—at the very least it has grown more mature—and that didn’t happen all by itself. I blame that on the books I’ve read, particularly the ones listed here.
Also, I love this website. Just the fact that anybody would care to make such a big deal about books and about what designers read gives me hope. It feels good to know that people are still interested in books, particularly printed books. And I love it when a new technology is used to celebrate an old one.
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I'm unsure what I like more about this little book: the story, or the way the story is told. The book is a collage of various writing forms including memoir, verse, interview, poetry, newspaper account, dime store novel, even a sprinkling of images. It is a postmodern portrait of Billy the Kid and the West. It is like no other book on the topic. It opened my eyes to new possibilities of how to tell a story.
The idea of blending design into the environment by incorporating common, everyday forms, as opposed to applying a rigid, dogmatic language, was liberating for me.
This is the first design book I purchased shortly after I started design school. I was supposed to read Tschichold, Ruder, Hofmann, and all the other reductionists, which I did, eventually. But Glaser made graphic design look alive, vibrant, and human. The work seemed effortless, yet it was impossible to emulate. I know, because I tried.
Not much of a book in the traditional sense of the word, but inspirational for expanding the notion of what a book can be.
I figured that if I have read a book three times from cover to cover, it would be unfair not to list it here. On The Road painted a picture of the soul of America that I fell in love with.
This is by far the most used book in my library. It's been broken in like an old baseball glove, and it has all the wear and tear to show for it. I simply love to pull this book from its shelf, hold it in my hand, and flip through its pages. And each time I open it, I learn something new. It's an indispensable tool for design, writing, editing, and punctuation.
Just as quiet and unassuming as his photographs, Robert Adams’s writing is an exercise in restraint—clear and concise, yet nuanced and complex. Here’s a taste: “At our best and most fortunate we make pictures because of what stands in front of the camera, to honor what is greater and more interesting than we are. We never accomplish this perfectly, though in return we are given something perfect—a sense of inclusion. Our subject thus redefines us, and is part of the biography by which we want to be known.”
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Between Memory and Invention: My Journey in Architecture by Robert A.M. Stern
Between Memory and Invention: My Journey in Architecture
By Robert A.M. Stern
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2022
Architect, historian, and educator Robert A. M. Stern presents a personal and candid assessment of contemporary architecture and his fifty years of practice.
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.”
Buildings in Print: 100 Influential and Inspiring Illustrated Architecture Books by John Hill
Buildings in Print: 100 Influential and Inspiring Illustrated Architecture Books
By John Hill
Publisher: Prestel Publishing
Published: June 2021
This unique volume by the founder of the hugely influential architecture blog A Daily Dose of Architecture showcases the best illustrated architecture books ever published with an informed, personal, and engaging take on what makes the title unique and indispensable.
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