Gallery: Top Designers Give Us Their Summer Reading Picks
01book-helloworld
*[Hello World by Alice Rawsthorn.](http://www.amazon.com/Hello-World-Where-Design-Meets/dp/1468308068)* Design is still stereotyped and often identified with cute chairs, over-stylized products, and decoration. I cherish the way in which Alice embraces design across disciplines and across time. Indeed, she famously lists 18th-century pirates’ skull-and-bones icon as one of the first examples of successful brand design ever. She highlights design’s breadth, scope, importance, and vibrance. Moreover, Alice is a fine writer, so the book is also a great read. *From Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA.*
02book-speculative everything
[](http://www.amazon.com/Speculative-Everything-Design-Fiction-Dreaming/dp/0262019841/ref=pd_sim_14_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=14G43J09003BF07CZVZQ>Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. </a><br /> By its most commonplace descriptions, design should solve problems and match form with function. Through their studio projects and their work as educators in the Royal College of Art’s Design Interactions department, Dunne & Raby have formalized a new field of practice. Critical Design focuses on studying the impact and possible consequences of new technologies and policies, and of worldwide social and environmental trends, as well as on outlining new goals and areas of interest for designers. This speculative process does not immediately lead to useful objects, but rather to food for thought, whose usefulness is revealed by its ability to help others prevent and direct future outcomes. <em>From Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA. </em></p> )
03book-ouncedicetrice
[.Ounce Dice Trice by Alastair Reid.](http://www.amazon.com/Ounce-Trice-Review-Childrens-Collection/dp/1590173201)Every aspect of this book—the joyfully subversive text, the classical straight-man typography, the haunting Ben Shahn illustrations—has left a mark on me. It encourages children to bend, break and remake words, reassign their definitions at will, or just discard the meaning and play with the sound. Kurt Schwitters would have been delighted, Ferdinand de Saussure would have been appalled. Can children’s books ever again be as sly and potent as this? I don’t know, but I can’t imagine my childhood without this book. *From Tobias Frere-Jones, founder and typographer at Frere-Jones Type.*
04book- Rudolf Arnheim entropy and art
[Entropy and Art by Rudolf Arnheim.](http://www.amazon.com/Entropy-Art-Essay-Disorder-Order/dp/0520266005) I no longer remember how many times I’ve read this, either as a painter or a designer. It mulls over a persistent contradiction in the universe: the urge to create balance, and its inevitable decay—and how, from some perspectives, they lead to the same result. Weighty stuff, but it’s beautifully written, and the clarity itself is inspiring. *From Tobias Frere-Jones, founder and typographer at Frere-Jones Type.*
05book-thinking with type
[Thinking With Type by Ellen Lupton.](http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Type-2nd-revised-expanded/dp/1568989695) This is a deceptively simple book that at first appears like a how-to for would-be beginning designers but is actually a primer on the nature of visual communication and its profound (possible) impacts. *From John Maeda, design partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers.*
06book-just enough research erika hall
[](http://www.amazon.com/Just-Enough-Research-Erika-Hall/dp/1937557103/>Just Enough Research by Erika Hall. </a><br /> The early, missing connection between Don Norman’s work and the UX world that we know today. It’s Erika’s early view of the then emerging technology industry and its growing and grating friction on regular everyday people (instead of just nerds). <em> From John Maeda, design partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers. </em></p> )
07book-the success and failure of picasso
[The Success and Failure of Picasso by John Berger.](http://www.amazon.com/Success-Failure-Picasso-John-Berger/dp/0679737251) Although this book is not specifically about design, it is an astonishing insight into Picasso. Berger proposes that after the invention of Cubism, and specifically the painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Picasso became famous and for the first time developed an awareness of an audience. After that realization, he never again produced anything equal in quality or invention. If that’s what responding to an audience’s interest represents, professional life is probably impossible. *From Milton Glaser, graphic designer.*
08book-an engineer imagines
[](http://www.amazon.com/An-Engineer-Imagines-Peter-Rice/dp/1899858113>An Engineer Imagines by Peter Rice. </a><br /> The joy of design comes through in Peter Rice’s personal account of his most famous structural engineering projects. Beyond the technical feats—of which there are many, including his solution for defining the shells of the Sydney Opera House—there is his endless enthusiasm for creative problem-solving, making the book fun to read, interesting, and accessible. <em>From Jeanne Gang, architect. </em></p> )
09from-mod-to-memphis
[Mod to Memphis: Design in Colour, 1960s-80s by Anne Watson and Dennis Eggington.](http://www.amazon.com/Mod-Memphis-Design-Colour-1960S-80s/dp/1863170944) It covers a very important period in design that is often forgotten compared with the 1920-30s or 1950s. Color is such a force in design and yet nearly always treated as a secondary element. *From Gadi Amit, Founder of New Deal Design.*
10book-new british design
[New British Design by John Thakara](http://www.amazon.com/New-British-Design-John-Thakara/dp/0500274460/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1435845715&sr=8-5&keywords=new+british+design) I was floored by the deconstruction of the object, the rediscovery of the forms inside, and the new materials for electronic design.*From Gadi Amit, Founder of New Deal Design.*
11benm shahn
[The Shape of Content by Ben Shahn.](http://www.amazon.com/Content-Charles-Norton-Lectures-1956-1957/dp/0674805704) A series of lectures given at Harvard about the process of making art is one that I suggest to students at every chance. Notable is the essay titled “Biography of a Painting,” which traces a symbolic work that received a certain amount of criticism for being on the news. *From Steven Heller, design critic.*
12book-brave new world revisited
[Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley.](http://www.amazon.com/Brave-World-Revisited-Aldous-Huxley/dp/0060898526) It is not the novel but a collection of essays about how media manipulates modern existence. I’ve drawn many significant quotes from this sadly prescient book. *From Steven Heller, design critic.*
1341T287mQREL
[Synesthetic Design: Handbook for a Multisensory Approach by Michael Haverkamp.](http://www.amazon.com/Synesthetic-Design-Michael-Haverkamp/dp/3034607156) This amazing book explores the implications of design across the senses. Explore how vision interacts with sound, touch, smell, and taste. Haverkamp is a designer and researcher for Ford Motor Company in Germany. He is especially interested in the multisensory aspects of car design, but his book touches on nearly every discipline, from graphic design and architecture to products and interaction. The book is both scholarly and readable, with gorgeous diagrams by Andreas Hidber. There’s a CD in the back with amazing sound clips—you can compare the sounds of a pen and pencil, for example, or hear the way different car doors sound when they shut. *Ellen Lupton, typographer and curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.*
14book-barragan guide
[Barragán Guide by Luis Barragán, Ilaria Valente, Federica Zanco.](http://www.amazon.com/Barrag%C3%A1n-Guide-Fernanda-Canales/dp/9685208182) I think our childhood experiences are very influential in terms of shaping how creatively we think about the world. Having spent much of my adolescence in Guadalajara, Mexico, the work of Luis Barragán has been a great source of inspiration. Moving to Guadalajara from New Jersey opened my eyes to the emotional power of architecture. Barragán’s buildings brilliantly capture the vibrant colors, beautiful quality of light, and vitality of Mexico’s open public spaces. *From David Rockwell, architect.*
Gary Hannabarger/Corbis15David Foster Wallace
[Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars Over Usage by David Foster Wallace.](http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-04-0070913.pdf) It may seem odd, but the one piece of writing which has stuck with the design part of my brain—if there is such a thing—is an epic book review/essay written by David Foster Wallace for Harper’s Magazine‘s April 2001 issue: “Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage.” Twenty brilliant, insightful, often hilarious pages about the rift between two schools of lexicography: descriptive versus prescriptive. What is versus what should be. Every designer walks this line between working in established forms and creating new forms. *From Chester Jenkins, typographer and founder of Village.*
16jake-barton
[Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell](http://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Faces-Collected-Joseph-Campbell/dp/1577315936) and [Backwards and Forwards by David Ball.](http://www.amazon.com/Backwards-Forwards-Technical-Manual-Reading/dp/0809311100) These books are, in theory, anthropology and filmmaking books, respectively, but are actually the foundation for understanding storytelling, which is critical if you are going to try for reinvention. First, you need to understand the rules, before you bend, stretch, and break them. *From Jake Barton, Founder of Local Projects*
17book-flow
[Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.](http://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Perennial-Classics/dp/0061339202) This book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a psychology book that gives great insight into how our mind and motivation levels and how it relates to the creative processes. *From Jessica Walsh, partner at Sagmeister & Walsh.*
18book-the vignelli canon
[The Vignelli Canon by Massimo Vignelli.](http://www.amazon.com/The-Vignelli-Canon-Massimo/dp/3037782250) It’s a concise—yet highly biased—introductory book on design that I think can be enjoyed by non-designers and designers, especially for those who are interested in modern design. I resisted Mr. Vignelli’s thoughts throughout my entire design career, because I found them, well, limited in terms of thinking about the complexity of life. But now that I’m a little older, I can actually appreciate his dogma without agreeing with it. *From Natasha Jen, partner at Pentagram.*
