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Many designers know Beatrice Warde’s name because of her oft-quoted “type as crystal goblet” metaphor, while her husband (for a short time), Frederic Warde, a classical American type designer and illustrator, is known only to an ever-decreasing number of orthodox type mavens. But now, designer Simon Loxley, author of Type: The Secret History of Letters, has taken a stab at filling the biographical void with Printer’s Devil: The Life and Work of Frederic Warde, a deeply researched and surprisingly engaging account of Warde’s life within a circle of storied type and book men. Warde led a fascinating if not disturbing life. He was “highly anti-semitic” (he spoke of the Kill-A-Kike-A-Day-Club), writes Loxley. And his marriage was overshadowed by his homosexuality (“Tomorrow morning,” Beatrice Warde wrote to her mother, “...we go straight to Paris: but if F. will continue to ‘go straight’ after he reaches that gay city, I don't know”). Of course, there is also a lot about his collaboration with Stanley Morison and the design of his famed typeface, Arrighi, as well as for being the Zelig of the fine-printing community.
Warde was a troubled perfectionist during a period when fine printing and typography were keys to an exclusive club. He was, notes Loxley in the introduction, “a shadowy figure,” and “a gifted, self-destructive burn-out … [an] ambitious failure” whose “aspirations immolated on the pyre of personality defects.” But there is more than mere melodrama here. “I gradually developed not only respect for Warde’s devotion and commitment to his craft,” Loxley continues, “but also love for much of his substantial body of work.” Warde had his loyal critics. “Nothing he did, to my knowledge,” said George Macy who hired him to design for the The Limited Editions Club, “fails to satisfy the eye: even if it is true that his books often fail to satisfy the soul.”
Jerry Kelly’s elegant book design in the style of the times, set in Minion and Arrighi JK types, might turn off some younger potential readers, but it is a package worth savoring.
How can you ignore a book about a designer who is exposed and celebrated for many flaws and curious triumphs. Or one who “either sought out or bumped up against most of the key players of the period: Bruce Rogers, Daniel Berkeley Updike, Hans Mardersteig, Rudolph Ruzicka, Frederic Goudy . . .” all heroes of the age. If that’s not enough, Loxley proves Beatrice did much of the writing Warde put his name to. “I could write easily, perhaps better than he. So I helped as I could,” Beatrice is quoted as saying. What a juicy read.
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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.
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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