Protege of design legend Massimo Vignelli and partner in the New York office of the international design firm Pentagram, Michael Bierut has had one of the most varied careers of any living graphic designer. The projects he presents in this book illustrate the breadth of activity that graphic design encompasses today, his goal being to demonstrate not a single ideology, but the enthusiastically eclectic approach that has been a hallmark of his career. Each project is told in Bierut's own entertaining voice and shown through historic images, preliminary drawings (including full-size reproductions of the notebooks he has maintained for over thirty-five years), working models and rejected alternatives, as well as the finished work. Along the way, he provides insights into the creative process, his working life, his relationship with clients, and the struggles that any design professional faces in bringing innovative ideas to the world today. This revised and expanded edition of Bierut's bestselling monograph features new projects for major clients, such as Mastercard and The Poetry Foundation. Inspiring, informative and authoritative, How to... is a bible of graphic design ideas. With 833 illustrations in colour

A day-by-day celebration and exploration of the greatest architects and designers throughout history. Presented in an almanac style, The Architect and Designer Birthday Book is an informative, amusing, and beautifully designed celebration and exploration of the greatest talents to grace the worlds of architecture and design. With an entry for each day of the year, takes the reader through a diverse list of designers throughout history, offering a visual compendium of their extraordinary and sometimes surprising work. Featured profile names include: -Jules Feiffer, cartoonist, playwright, author, activist, clairvoyant born 26 January 1929 -Jingjing Naihan Li, designer born 05 January 1981?? -Mary Bright, artist, milliner, curtain designer born 11 January 1954 -Paul R. Williams, architect born 18 February 1894 -and more The Architect and Designer Birthday Book is a must-have for architects and designers everywhere.

Rare and difficult-to-find essays provide fascinating reading in this third anthology in the Looking Closer series, a matchless resource tracing the continuum of critical thought from graphic design¹s earliest days as a viable art and craft. Looking Closer 3 brings back into discourse more than thirty seminal essays by such distinguished figures as William Morris, Aldous Huxley, Alvin Lustig, and Paul Rand, reviving ideas of form and content as well as arguments over manner and style that have been lost for decades. For professionals, teachers, and students alike, this pivotal collection is an invaluable compliment to any design library.

A collection of writing about design from the influential, eclectic, and adventurous Design Observer. Founded in 2003, Design Observer inscribes its mission on its homepage: Writings about Design and Culture. Since its inception, the site has consistently embraced a broader, more interdisciplinary, and circumspect view of design's value in the world-one not limited by materialism, trends, or the slipperiness of style. Dedicated to the pursuit of originality, imagination, and close cultural analysis, Design Observer quickly became a lively forum for readers in the international design community. Fifteen years, 6,700 articles, 900 authors, and nearly 30,000 comments later, this book is a combination primer, celebration, survey, and salute to a certain moment in online culture. This collection includes reassessments that sharpen the lens or dislocate it; investigations into the power of design idioms; off-topic gems; discussions of design ethics; and experimental writing, new voices, hybrid observations, and other idiosyncratic texts. Since its founding, Design Observer has hosted conferences, launched a publishing imprint, hosted three podcasts, and attracted more than a million followers on social media. All of these enterprises are rooted in the original mission to engage a broader community by sharing ideas on ways that design shapes-and is shaped by-our lives. Contributors include Sean Adams, Allison Arieff, Ashleigh Axios, Eric Baker, Rachel Berger, Andrew Blauvelt, Liz Brown, John Cantwell, Mark Dery, Michael Erard, Stephen Eskilson, Bryan Finoki, Kenneth FitzGerald, John Foster, Steven Heller, Karrie Jacobs, Meena Kadri, Mark Lamster, Alexandra Lange, Francisco Laranjo, Adam Harrison Levy, Mimi Lipson, KT Meaney, Thomas de Monchaux, Randy Nakamura, Phil Patton, Maria Popova, Rick Poynor, Louise Sandhaus, Dmitri Siegel, Martha Scotford, Adrian Shaughnessy, Andrew Shea, John Thackara, Dori Tunstall, Alice Twemlow, Tom Vanderbilt, Veronique Vienne, Alissa Walker, Rob Walker, Lorraine Wild, Timothy Young