Books Received: Winter 2008

There are many books, some more interesting than others thanks for the recommendation.

Worst part about being in foreign country is I can't get my hand on those books as easily as I would have back in the US. But the best part about being in college is, I can request the dean of my department and have them buy it and put it in the Visual Communication reference library as soon as they are available.

Cool list of books.

I think Swiss Graphic Design: The Origins and Growth of an International Style, Paul Rand: Conversations with Students, and definitely Mr. Sagmeister's Things I have learned in my life so far are what I am interested in.

I usually don't read fiction but I want to try Chip Kidd's novel also.

I would recommend adding 'Horace Dorlan' by Andrzej Klimowski to this already fantastic list.

T

thats a lot of dead trees...

good to see 'design and the elastic mind' mentioned somewhere-even if it's on a list and in passing.
hmmm . . .

These reading lists are great — thank you!

so you poindexters get a bunch of free review copies, look through them and drool. but it seems most of the ones recommended are actually quite crap ones- probably friends or etc of the writers.

out of all this crapload above, the only three worth keeping are the antonioni, the reissue of la jetee, and the second edition of corbu's journey to the east. the rest can be sold at the strand, where for all of them i would probably get about five dollars.

"The Art of the American Snapshot"- Is a must own. It reminds us why we love family albums so much- even if the photos are blurry.

I read "Born Standing Up", Steve Martin's Bio, in one night. It gave me insight not only into how hard he worked at his craft, but also why he wanted to be learned and collect art.

I'll have to check out the others.
Thank you for sharing.

Anne T.

i've only recently been purchasing books. cutting back on mags and just recently purchased the graphic language of neville brody's and raf simons redux.

definitely looking into that swiss graphic design book.

I'm glad we have folks like John McGreevey out there to alert us to the high degree of graft and depravity that characterizes the design press. MUCH better to stick to the classics like US Weekly or other such elevated literature rather than pollute our minds with books that some so deludedly think constiture our culture.

so you poindexters get a bunch of free review copies, look through them and drool

I bought all the books I recommended with my own money, pal.

Dear DO editors,

Thanks, as always, for posting reading lists every now and then. I had a chance to look at Christopher Burke's Active Literature the other day, and was really impressed with how complete it seems... Like his other book for Hyphen, Paul Renner..., Burke is a serious researcher and has high standards. I am looking forward to reading it, and the same goes for other books in this list.

Many thanks to Design Observer for the link. For those concerned about dead trees and paying for books, you can download my booklet on information design for advocacy for free.

It's nice to see what you've got, I'd be curious to know more about some, feel free to review any of them in depth, my curiosity is certainly peaked.

If I may add the recently published catalog for the Emory Douglas show at LA MoCA/Design Center.
Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas
http://www.moca.org/emorydouglas/

The show and catalog are a provocative reminder of a domestic policy often overshadowed by the elaborate and persistent coverage of the concurrent war abroad. Highly recommended and rare reading. Perhaps one of two books on the subject, with such in depth coverage of the design which supported this movement.

NB: 100 Road Movies is by Jason Wood, not James Wood.

[Editor's Note: Nice catch. It's fixed. Thanks zbs for the correction.]

if michael beirut did buy all the books, then i apologize sincerely.

as for US weekly, that is beneath contempt. being for or against that does not necessarily equal to being for designobserver, though.

i just mention this because some of the above booklist contains books that are not available yet, as they have not been released and cannot be bought as such and are obtainable only via review copies.

kind regards,
john mac

John,

Michael does buy his books, so the accusatory tone and tentative apology is inappropriate. There are a few review copies on the list: we carefully positioned this as a "books received" list, since our experience is that our readers have various interests and we wanted a broad selection of current and soon to be released titles. Since I'm the one that put the three books on the list that you liked, let me say that we have thousands of readers and I don't assume everyone is interested in Antonioni, Marker and LeCorbusier. I'm happy that you found something that pleased you. Making nasty comments about others and other tastes is not really constructive: please do not do it here.

I find it so strange that you guys didn't mention any of the designers of these books. As a book designer, I'm used to the treatment -- even if a book's design is commented on in a review, the designer is never mentioned by name unless his name is Chip -- but I'd expect better from you.

Zach, a really interesting point.

(Let me note, however, that "you guys" includes three female contributors. In general, you should avoid the "you guys" syntax: it's not only inarticulate, it's sexist.)

As a rule, I think all of our contributing writers strive to credit designers in the images of work we show on the site in our posts. When we don't do this, we welcome your corrections.

For the books we list or recommend, adding credit for the designers (and let's not forget the illustrators and photographers) is simply too much information, and frankly too much work to do in a consistent manner. Since so many of the books we cover have a designer as the subject, I'm less worried about this than you. When we feature one of these books in a main post, I think we generally note the designer of the book.

I'm not aware that any book on this list was designed by Chip Kidd or was credited as such -- except for Kidd's novel where he was appropriately credited as an author. Since we've left out design credits on this list consistently, your last comment is simply wrong and silly.

Oh, what a relief! "Kind regards" from John MacGreevy after he bullies the "poindexters" (a term above contempt?) of DO into clarifying that rather than gathering payola from the world of books that are printed in 5,000 copies, maybe, they actually pay for at least some of them, on top of writing and editing and posting DO for nothing, while entertaining complaints about such an ethically sensitive contemporary conundrum as a review copy.

I just finished the Michael Bracewell Roxy Music book, really excellent read. Reminded me of the freedom and creativity I had at art college and the crazy things we used to do, the conflicts with tutors and the don't-give-a-shit-what-they-think attitude of youth. I may have lost that spirit somewhere along the line.

> Let me note, however, that "you guys" includes three female contributors. In general, you should avoid the "you guys" syntax: it's not only inarticulate, it's sexist.

Yes, a serious matter. For future posts and comments, might I suggest "yo".

Now yo get back to work.

William -- thanks for responding.

First (and least importantly): "guys", to many English speakers, is neither inarticulate nor sexist. I recognize that not everybody agrees, but it strikes me as a little rich for you to go all prescriptivist in re a blog comment. As to the Chip Kidd thing -- it WAS silly. It was a joke. I wasn't referring to your site in particular, but to talk of book design in general.

I really don't think that looking at the credits and adding a single line to each of these entries would be too much work or too much information. Ultimately it's fine if you don't want to do it -- it's your site -- but you could be more gracious in your reply, rather than simply calling my comment inarticulate, sexist, incorrect, and silly.

that is laundry list, all worth it im sure. Has anyone read some, let me know your thoughts as I am looking into tackling this list. Yes some I've read, however, I welcome your recommendations. Thanks in advance!