Recommended reading

The "Looking Closer" speakers' recommended reading lists:

Jeremy Aynsley

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Design history
Banham, Reyner. Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, Architectural Press, London, 1960.
An important corrective to Pevsner’s Pioneers of Modern Design, (1936) broadening to include Futurism and Expressionism in the Modern Movement.

Dennis, P. Doordan. Design History: an Anthology MIT Press, Cambridge Mass. 1995.
A useful collection of a variety of approaches to the subject drawn from the journal Design Issues.

Forty, Adrian. Objects of Desire Design and Society since 1950, Thames and Hudson, London, 1986.
A crucial text that places design in a social and economic context.

Giedion, Siegfried. Mechanization takes Command, A contribution to anonymous history, Oxford University Press, 1948.
One of the most formative texts in Design History, analysing the place of technology on anonymous design.

Meikle, Jeffrey. American Plastic, a Cultural History, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, 1995.
A rich, contextualised study of one material and its impact on design change.

Sparke, Penny. As Long as it’s Pink the sexual political taste, Pandora, London, 1995.
A broad historical review of how taste can be interpreted as a gendered phenomenon.

Design Criticism
Poynor, Rick. Design without Boundaries: visual communication in transition Booth-Clibborn Editions, London 1998. An interesting anthology on graphic design.

Lupton, Ellen. Design Writing Research Phaidon, London 1998. Writings on twentieth century design, linking history and criticism, with an emphasis on graphics.

Margolin, Victor & Buchanan, Richard. The Idea of Design MIT Press Cambridge, Mass., 1995.
A collection of essays from the design journal Design Issues exploring the meaning of products, design theory and design and culture.

Andrew Blauvelt

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Stephen Bayley General Knowledge London: Booth-Clibborn Editions, 2000 ISBN 1-86-154-068-X
Anthology of accessible writings by one of Britain’s leading design critics that includes a wide range of subjects, from the Millennium Dome and Cool Britannia branding campaigns to the history of taste.

Leonie ten Duis & Annelies Hasse, Eds. The World Must Change: Graphic Design and Idealism Sandberg Instituut, 1999 ISBN 90-6617-208-8
Excellent social history of graphic design in the Netherlands, from early avant-garde pioneers to today’s emerging practitioners, with essays and interviews that confront idealistic aspirations and their practical realities.

Jan van Toorn, Ed. Design Beyond Design Maastricht, The Netherlands: Jan van Eyck Akademie Editions, 1998 ISBN 90-6617-224-X
Proceedings of a conference of the same name held to investigate the possibilities of critical alternatives to both theory and practice with essays and responses by a wide range of participants from the U.S. and Europe.

Ellen Lupton & J. Abbott Miller Design, Writing, Research New York: Kiosk Books/Princeton Architectural Press, 1996
Anthology of important and accessible essays that integrate the history, theory and criticism of design with a wide variety of subjects, from the history of punctuation and stock photography to the circulation of graphic design in popular culture.

Andrew Blauvelt, Ed. “New Perspectives: Critical Histories of Graphic Design” Visible Language, 28:3, 29:1, 29:2, 1994-1995
Issued as three issues of the journal, this project contains 14 essays grouped into new theories and forms of writing history, social and cultural critiques, and new interpretative methods for the study of graphic design.

Meredith Davis, Series Ed. Design Research Bibliographies Chicago: American Center for Design and the Graphic Design Education Association, 1997
These annotated bibliographies identify resources in design planning, cognition and emotion, cultural studies, education and learning theory, and interaction and new media design that shape current thinking in design practice and education.

Peter Hall

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Design history
Banham, Reyner. “A Critic Writes” (California, 1999)
The plain-speaking Banham, with an encyclopedic knowledge of design history and the research skills of an investigative journalist, is a model for us all.

Pendergast, Sara (Editor). Contemporary Designers (3rd Ed) (Gale Group. 1997)
A reference book well worth the investment, for its breadth and extensive bibliographies.

Livingston, Allan and Isabella. “Graphic Design & Designers” (Thames and Hudson, 1992)
This paperback encyclopedia should be taken with a pinch of salt when it comes to claims of comprehensiveness, but it is undeniably useful in its span and refreshing in its brevity.

Lupton, Ellen. “Mixing Messages: Graphic Design in Contemporary Culture” (Princeton Architectural Press, 1996)
Lupton’s take on late 20th century graphic design is thoughtful and energetic, and revels in the late 1990s love affair with the vernacular. It would benefit from an update, but it’s liberating where others, notably Robin Kinross’s “Modern Typography” (Hyphen Press, 1992) are a little stultifying.

Design criticism
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies, 1957 (Hill & Wang, NY 1999).
The master of intertextual criticism, and very readable too.

Henri LeFebvre. “The Everyday and Everydayness,” in Architecture of the Everyday, (Princeton Architectural Press, NY 1997.)
A call to arms for individualism in a mass mediated universe.

Venturi, Scott Brown & Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas (MIT Press, 1977).
The notorious 1960s Yale school trip to the entertainment capital of middle America, in which Izenour’s dry wit and East Coast Academia’s enthusiastic immersion results in a text that changed the course of architecture, design and arguably, Vegas. Anticipates the point at which signs become buildings and vice versa.

Seabrook, John. “Bing! It’s Fabien” The New Yorker Jul 5, 1993
Hilarious reportage on Baron at a career peak.

Poynor, Rick. “David Carson Revealed,” I.D. Magazine, November 1995
Poynor bravely rereads the Carson myth at a moment when the designer is surfing his highest wave of popularity.

Steven Heller

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Books
Ackland-Snow, Nicola, and others. The Art of the Club Flyer. London: Thames and Hudson, 1996.

Adams, Steven. The Arts & Crafts Movement. Secaucus, NJ: Chartwell Books, Inc., 1987.

Becker, Stephen. Comic Art in America. New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1959.

Bierut, Michael, and others, editor. Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design. New York: Allworth Press, 1994.

Bierut, Michael, and others, editor. Looking Closer III: Classic Writings on Graphic Design. New York: Allworth Press, 1999.

Bilski, Emily D. Berlin Metropolis, Jews and the New Culture, 1890-1918. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1999.

Bird, William L., Jr. Better Living: Advertising, Media, and the New Vocabulary of Business Leadership 1935-1955. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1999.

Blackwell, Lewis, contributor. The End of Print: The Graphic Design of David Carson. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1996.

Cabarga, Leslie. Progressive German Graphics, 1900-1937. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1994.

Chernevich, Elena. Soviet Commercial Design of the Twenties. New York: Abbeville Press, 1987.

Clever, James. A History of Graphic Art. Ilkley, West Yorkshire, England: The Scholar Press Limited, 1977.

Collins, Michael. Towards Post Modernism: Decorative Arts and Design Since 1851. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1987.

Couperie, Pierre, and others. A History of the Comic Strip. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc. 1968.

Craig, James and Bruce Barton. Thirty Centuries of Graphic Design. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1987.

DeNoon, Christopher. Posters of the WPA. Los Angeles: The Wheatley Press, 1987.

Dluhosch, Eric and Rotislav Svácha, editors. Karel Teige 1900-1951: L’enfant Terrible of the Czech Modernist Avant-Garde. Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 1999.

Dormer, Peter. Design Since 1945. New York: Thames and Hudson, Inc., 1993.

Duncombe, Stephen. Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politie of Alternative Culture. London, New York: Verso, 1997.

Fabre, Maurice. A History of Communications. New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1963.

Friedman, Mildred. Graphic Design in America: A Visual Language History. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989.

Gonzáles, Julio. Lajos Kassák. Budapest: IVAM Centre, 1999.

Heller, Steven and Julie Lasky. Borrowed Design: Use and Abuse of Historical Form. New York: Van Notrand Reinhold, 1993.

Heller, Steven and Karen Pomeroy. Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design. New York: Allworth Press, 1997.

Heller, Steven. Design Literacy (continued) Understanding Graphic Design. New York: Allworth Press, 1999.

Heller, Steven. Paul Rand. London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 1999.

Heller, Steven and Louise Fili. Typology: Type Design from The Victorian Era to The Digital Age. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1999.

Heller, Steven and Anne Fink. Faces on the Edge: Type in the Digital Age. New York: Van Rostrand Reinhold, 1997.

Hekett, John. Industrial Design. New York: Thames and Hudson, Inc., 1993.

Hiesinger, Kathryn B. and George H. Marcus. Landmarks of Twentieth-Century Design: An Illustrated Handbook. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1993.

Hillebrand, Henri, editor. Graphic Designers in Europe/3. New York: Universe Books, 1973.

Hillebrand, Henri, editor. Graphic Designers in the US/2. New York: Universe Books, 1971.

Hollis, Richard. Graphic Design: A Concise History. London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd., 1994.

Holme, Bryan. Advertising: Reflections of a Century. New York: The Viking Press, 1982.

Hornung, Clarence P. and Fridolf Johnson. 200 Years of American Graphic Art. New York: George Braziller, 1976.

Horsham, Michael. 20s & 30s Style. London: Chartwell Books, Inc., 1989.

Labuz, Ronald. Contemporary Graphic Design. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1991.

Lesser, Robert. Pulp Art. New York: Gramercy Books, 1997.

Lewis, John. The Twentieth Century Book. London: Studio Vista Limited, 1967.

Lionni, Leo. Between Worlds: The Autobiography of Leo Lionni. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

Lupton, Ellen and Abbot Miller. Design, Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1999.

Marchand, Roland. Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: The University of California Press, 1998.

Martin, Diana. Graphic Design: Inspirations and Motivations. Cincinnati: Northlight Books, 1995.

McAlhone, Beryl, and others. A Smile in the Mind: Witty Thinking in Graphic Design. London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 1998.

McDermott, Catherine. Design Museum Book of Twentieth Century Design. Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1998.

Meggs, Philip B. A History of Graphic Design, First Edition. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1983.

Meggs, Philip B. A History of Graphic Design, Second Edition. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992.

Meggs, Philip B. A History of Graphic Design, Third Edition. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998.

Meggs, Philip B. 6 Chapters in Design: Bass, Chermayeff, Glaser, Rand, Tanaka, Tomaszewski. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1997.

Miller, J. Abbot. Dimensional Typography: Case Studies on the Shape of Letters, A Kiosk Report. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996.

Minick, Scott and Ping, Jiao. Chinese Graphic Design in the Twentieth Century, 1870-1920. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990.

Müller-Brockmann, Josef. A History of Visual Communications. Teufen, Switzerland: Verlag Arthur Niggli, New York: Visual Communication Books, Hastings House, 1971.

Parry, Linda, editor. William Morris. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1996.

Reed, Walt and Roger. The Illustrator in America: 1890-1980. New York: Madison Square Press, Inc. 1984.

Steranko, James. The Steranko History of Comics. Reading: Supergraphics, 1972.

Thomson, Ellen M. The Origins of Graphic Design in America. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1997.

Thorgerson, Storm and Powell, Aubrey. 100 Best Album Covers. London, New York, Sydney: DK Publishing, Inc. 1999.

Wrede, Stuart. The Modern Poster. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1988.

Whitford, Frank, editor. The Bauhaus: Masters and Students by Themselves. Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1993.

Periodicals
Advertising Age: The Advertising Century Special Issue. 1999

Communication Arts. Vol. 41, No. 1, 1999.

Journal of Design History. Vol 1, No. 1, 1988.

The New Yorker. April 19, 1999.

Print. Vol. 33, No. 6, 1989–Vol. 53, No. 3, 1999

Exhibition books, annuals, promotional material, newsletters
Albrecht, Donald, and others, essayist. The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997.

Groninger Museum. Memphis 1981-1988. Milan: Como Sud, 1990.

Lupton, Ellen. Mixing Messages: Graphic Design in Contemporary Culture. New York: Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution and Princeton Architectural Press, 1996.

Spiegelman, Art. Comix, Essays, Graphics and Scraps. 1998.

Graphis Design Annual 1998 and 1999. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, Inc.

Heller, Steven, editor. Design & Style-7, Bauhaus 1919-1933. Cohoes, NY: Mohawk Paper Company, distributors, 1989

American Design Century. Cloquet, MN: Potlatch Corp., distributors, 1999.

Apple Media Arts. vol. 2 no. 1, 1999.

Reference books and encyclopedias
Dormer, Peter, introduction. The Illustrated Dictionary of Twentieth Century Designers. New York: Mallard Press, 1991.

Crystal, David. The Cambridge Factfinder. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Julier, Guy. The Thames and Hudson Encyclopedia of 20th Century Design and Designers. London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd., 1993.

Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994.

Pile, John. Dictionary of 20th Century Design. New York: Roundtable Press, Inc., 1990.

Wallechinsky, David. The People’s Almanac Presents The 20th Century. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1995.

1995 Information Please Almanac Atlas & Yearbook. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995.

World Wide Web
Advertising Age. The Advertising Century. www.adage.com/century

Advertising Museum. Chronology. www.admuseum.org/mueum/timeline/s1b.html

Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. First in Line. www.detnews.com/AAEC/winter99/harvey/harvey.htm

Brown, David E. Brown. Punk is Not Dead. Metropolis Insites, July 1998. www.metropolismag.com

Communication Arts. www.commarts.com

Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. www.si.edu/ndm

Counterspace. www.studiomotiv.com/counterspace

Rochester Institute of Technology Design Archive. http://design.rit.edu/timeline.html

Emigre: www.emigre.com

Fuse 95. www.fontshop.de/fuse95/fusetalk

Graphis. www.graphis.com/main.EN.html

The Herb Lubalin Study Center for Design and Typography. www.cooper.edu/art/lubalin

Lange, Alexandra. The Bookmaker. www.design.rit.edu/timeline.html

National Cartoon Society. www.reuben.org/nsc_history.asp

Museum of Modern Art: www.moma.org

Print magazine. www.printmag.com/home/index.html

Razorfish studios. www.rsub.com/about.html

Razorfish Studios. TypoGRAPHIC. www.typographic.razorfish.com

Society of Illustrators. www.societyillustrators.org/permanent_collection

Scudiero, Maurizio. The Italian Futurist Book. www.colophon.com/gallery/futurism/index.html

Typereview. www.typereview.com

Typographic. www.TYPOgraphic.com

U&lc Online. www.esselte.com/itc/ulc/index.html

Yahoo News. www.dailynews.yahoo.com

Janet Hicks

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Copyright
“Art Law” by Ralph Lerner and Judith Bresler (published by Practicing Law Institute NYC).
This book is comprehensive and readable, with a good overview of copyright law.

The Artists Rights Society website, www.arsny.com
The website lists all of ARS’s member artists, and gives instructions about how to clear rights and copyright information.

Design
"Objects of Desire: Design and Society Since 1750," by Adrian Forty.
An indispensable critical survey that places design objects into historical context.

SMLXL, by Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau.
Koolhaas and Mau and their respective studios have established an anti-monument to “good design.” This book is one of the great public spaces of the last decade.

The New Typography: A Handbook for Modern Designers, by Jan Tschichold.
An important primer for the first generation of High Modernist designers, Tschichold’s book helped establish standardized rules for typography that went unchallenged for decades.

Maud Lavin

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Design history and criticism
Maud Lavin, Clean New World: Culture, Politics, and Graphic Design (Cambridge, Ma.: The MIT Press, 2001)
Looking at design in its cultural context from the 20s until today, this book explores how a designer or small group of designers can influence politics, mass media, and society.

Design criticism
Victor Margolin et al., special issue of Design Issues 11 (Spring 1995)
Deals with the expansion of design history into a more interdisciplinary design studies.

Design history
Mildred Friedman, ed, Graphic Design in America (NY and Mpls.: Abrams and Walker Art Center, 1989)
This is a seminal catalog on historical issues in U.S. graphic design.

Ellen Lupton, Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines from Home to Office (NY: Princeton Architectural Press and Cooper-Hewitt/National Design Museum, 1993)
This catalog places design objects in the context of gendered environments and women’s history.

Steven Heller, The Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption (NY: Allworth Press, 2000)
This book considers a politically loaded design symbol and the evolution of its meanings over time.

Matthew Teitelbaum, ed., Montage and Modern Life (Cambridge, Ma. and Boston: The MIT Press and the Institute of Contemporary Art, 1992)
This catalog considers a process aligned with modernity and its dissemination in art, design, and the mass media between the World Wars.

Ellen Lupton

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Jessica Helfand, William Drenttel, Michael Bieruit et. al., eds, Looking Closer III (New York: Allworth, 1999).
This is a great source of writings by designers from various periods in modern design history. It demonstrates that many of the last century’s great designers were serious thinkers, too.

Richard Hollis, Graphic Design: A Concise History. London: Thames and Hudson, 1994.
This is a well-written, compact, and handily designed little survey of modern graphic design. It’s the perfect textbook for design history classes because it’s cheap, portable, and packed with reference illustrations. Not a coffee table book!

Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour Learning from Las Vegas:
The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972, 1977. This classic work of postmodern design theory elucidates the relationship between architecture and graphic design in the age of Pop. The book is clever and accessible.

Roland Barthes. Mythologies. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1957, 1972.
Having long abandoned many other works of theory in my teaching of undergraduates, I still assign parts of this book each spring, specifically the essay “Myth Today.” I’m not sure if my students actually read it, but this great semiotic document continues to astonish me.

“First Things First Manifesto.” Adbusters, 2000. Also published in Emigre, Eye, and other magazines internationally.
Originally published in 1964. Rewritten and reintroduced in 2000 by Rick Poynor.
This short, passionate statement of belief in socially-oriented design is a great way to get students talking about the meaning and purpose of their work. It is useful in studio courses as well history/theory courses, and they really do read it.

Naomi Klein. No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. New York: Picado, 1999.
This work of polemic journalism firmly situates design within the economic/political realm, and it is useful for getting students to think about social activism.

Victor Margolin

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Victor Margolin, ed. Design Discourse: History Theory Criticism. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1989.

Robin Kinross. Modern Typography: An Essay in Critical History. London: Hyphen Press, 1992.

Sebastian Carter. Twentieth-Century Type Designers. London; Trefoil Books, 1987.

RHM: Robert Hunter Middleton, The Man and His Letters. Chicago: The Caxton Club, 1984.

Kenneth Day, ed. Book Typography 1815-1965 in Europe and the United States of America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.

Richard Hollis. Graphic Design: A Concise History. London: Thames and Hudson, 1994.

Paul Jobling and David Crowley. Graphic Design: Reproduction and Representation since 1800. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996.


Marty Neumeier
Design History
A History of Graphic Design, by Philip Meggs
With his monumental contribution, Meggs made it easier for designers to envision their work in terms of the long sweep of history instead of the latest annual.

Graphic Design: A Concise History, by Richard Hollis
Hollis views design history from a European rather than American perspective, condensing the material into a sort of Oxford Shorty of 20th-century designers.

Design Criticism
Design Writing Research, by Ellen Lupton and J. Abbot Miller
If you like to count angels dancing on heads of pins (as I sometimes do), this impressive compendium of design thinking will entertain you for months.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, by Steve Heller
Heller’s article, which ran in the AIGA Journal in the late 1980s, upset a lot of people by taking Paul Rand’s side against the flash artists of the early Macinstosh era. It turned out that history was also on Rand’s side.

Panel Review: Fisher Catalog, with Louis Danziger, Lucille Tanazas, Massimo Vignelli
In Critique #3, a panel if critics laid into a wildly extravagant catalog by Rick Valicenti, backing up their reviews with rigorous arguments in favor of clarity, focus, and effectiveness. Unfair? Perhaps. Interesting? Extremely. Important? Absolutely, in that it helped launch an attitude shift in design thinking.

Martin C. Pedersen

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S,M,L,XL, by Rem Koolhass and Bruce Mau
Not so much for Rem’s often dense and arcane design-speak, but for his realization that Mau’s design of the book was every bit as central to the book as the book’s overriding premise. The commercial success of the book also helped graphic designers emerge more fully as recognized “authors.”

Perverse Optimist, by Tibor Kalman
A dense, literate highly visual manifesto that crams a three-ring circus of ideas into the covers of a book and still manages to be highly entertaining. Kalman, in fact, is not afraid to entertain with ideas.

Covering The Sixties, by George Lois
The greatest covers in the history of American magazine journalism. Exhilarating (most of them hold up remarkably well) and sad (may how the range of what works commercially has shrunk!).

Modern Times and The Gold Rush, by Charlie Chaplin
Positive proof that dense, layered, sophisticated comedy doesn’t require a whole lot of words.

The Photographs of Edward Steichen
I went to a gallery recently and saw a retrospective and was struck the nature of his purely commercial work. It works as art today, proving that he couldn’t help himself (even on a Vogue photo shoot).

Rick Poynor

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Design history
Alvin Lustig, The Collected Writings of Alvin Lustig, New Haven: Holland R. Melson, 1958
A series of vivid insights into the concerns, beliefs and motivations of a key mid-century designer struggling to define the act of designing in the broadest personal, social and aesthetic terms.

Mildred Friedman and Phil Freshman (eds.), Graphic Design in America: A Visual Language History, Minneapolis: Walker Art Center/New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989
Still arguably the single most indispensable source of information and analysis of the development of graphic design in the US, with well-researched contributions by a range of historians and critics.

Robin Kinross, Modern Typography: An Essay in Critical History, London: Hyphen Press, 1992
More than fulfills its ambition to offer a brisk historical narrative, a springboard for further research, and a delineation of modern typography in its social, technical and material aspects, from 1700 to the postmodern present.

Johanna Drucker, The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909-1923, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994
This demanding, cross-disciplinary study of the materiality of visual representation—a decisive step forward from earlier, superficial accounts—reconnects typographic experimentation with art history and literature.

Robin Kinross, Anthony Froshaug (2 vols.), London: Hyphen Press, 2000
Few designers’ bodies of work have been subjected to such exacting, meticulous and exhaustive investigation, making this 16-year labour of love a model of its kind.

Design criticism
Harold Evans, Pictures on a Page: Photo-journalism, Graphics and Picture Editing, London: Heinemann, 1978 (republished by Pimlico, London, 1997)
A classic exercise in practical criticism (but much more than a “how-to” guide), punchily written and superbly picture-edited by a newspaperman who knows the craft from the inside—as provocative today as when it was written.

Dick Hebdige, Hiding in the Light: On Images and Things, London and New York: Routledge, 1988
Stylish, inventive, intellectually energetic notes on visual culture by an influential cultural studies writer attempting to reconcile life in the postmodern consumer culture with the search for value, meaning and direction.

Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller, Design Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design, New York: Kiosk, 1996 (republished by Phaidon, London, 1999)
A path-finding attempt—still one of a kind, at least in book form—to use the structural and stylistic devices of design itself as an agent of critical inquiry.

Julian Stallabrass, Gargantua: Manufactured Mass Culture, London and New York: Verso, 1996
Dense, difficult, politically committed, but consistently rewarding polemic, somewhat ahead of its time, that sets out to unlock the underlying meanings of graffiti, photography, computer games, automobile styling, and trash.

Ken Garland, A Word in Your Eye: Opinions, Observations and Conjectures on Design, from 1960 to the Present, Reading: University of Reading, 1996
Forty years’ worth of essays by one of the most consistent and distinctive voices among contemporary designers who also find time to write—notable for their warmth, humanity, questioning intelligence, and rejection of cant.

Matt Soar

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Design History
Blauvelt, Andrew (1994-1995) (Ed.). 'New perspectives: Critical histories of graphic design.' Visible Language 28.3, 28.4, 29.1.
A three-part “Special Project” that has important implications for design criticism and practice; see especially Blauvelt’s introductory essays.

Crimp, Douglas (1989) AIDS demo graphics. Seattle: Bay Press.
A visual history of inspired activism relating to the unending AIDS crisis.

Jobling, Paul & Crowley, David (1996). Graphic design: Reproduction and representation since 1800. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
One of the main virtues of this well-written book is that the authors “explore graphic design on an ideological level by placing it into its artistic, social and political contexts—a methodology which we feel is crucial to a full and richer understanding of the field.” (p.4)

Kalman, Tibor, J. Abbott Miller and Karrie Jacobs. ‘Good history/bad history.’ In Bierut, M. et al. (Eds.) (1994) Looking closer: Critical writings on graphic design. New York: Allworth Press, pp. 25-33.
An incisive essay that makes a virtue out of brevity; also some of the wittiest footnotes I’ve read.

McQuiston, Liz (1997) Suffragettes to she-devils: Women’s liberation and beyond. London: Phaidon.
A substantial graphic history of women’s political and cultural struggles in the last century.

Design Criticism
Becker, Howard (1984). Art worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.
This very accessible book argues that success in any art field has less to do with the triumph of individual talent or genius against the odds, and much more to do with the critics, editors and historians who inhabit the worlds of art.

Bolton, Richard (Ed.) (1989) The contest of meaning: Critical histories of photography. Cambridge: MIT Press.
An incisive collection of provocative essays on photographic practices, representation and reception.

Bourdieu, Pierre. (1984, trans. R. Nice). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Not easy reading, admittedly, but a profoundly important book littered with useful new ideas for understanding the social world; identifies designers and ad folk as a unified social class (the “new cultural intermediaries”) for whom taste is a defining feature.

Helm, Jelly. (2000, Winter). ‘Saving advertising.’ Emigre 53, pp. 4-20.
Just in case you (a) still had ideas about working in advertising instead of design, and/or (b) thought the coming environmental catastrophe might just go away if we ignore it—all from a man who knows.

Lavin, Maud (2001). Clean new world: Culture, politics, and graphic design. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Not yet published at the time of writing, but promises to be an important analysis of the limiting effects of commercial work on designers, and potential alternatives for cultural and political expression.

Video
(Note: If this category hadn’t been so difficult to address, I wouldn’t have ended up listing a video I worked on myself. Please forgive the plug.)

Bliss (Aus. 1985).
A glorious film adaptation of Peter Carey’s eponymous book, about an ad man in search of redemption.

The Ad and the Ego (California Newsreel, 1996) (57 mins.) www.newsreel.org
Apart from the distracting Negativland soundtrack, this critical video is a dizzying testament to the dubious and inescapable excesses of commercial imagery in, and on, our lives.

Frederick Goudy: Type designer in action (Paramount, 1933; 10 mins.; silent)
A rare glimpse into Goudy’s work on a new typeface (for Saks).

Killing us softly 3: Advertising’s image of women with Jean Kilbourne (Media Education Foundation 1998, 40 mins.)
An illustrated lecture that takes advertisers to task for their relentlessly exploitative use of images of women and women’s bodies in ads and commercials.

Alice Twemlow

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New Perspectives: Critical Histories of Graphic Design, Andrew Blauvelt, ed., Visible Language 28.3-28.5, Providence, 1994.
A valuable collection of essays that challenge accepted methodologies and push the boundaries of graphic design history, theory and criticism.

Vision in Motion, L. Maholy-Nagy, Paul Thebold and Company, Chicago, 1956
It provides an interesting document of the educational imperatives of the Institute of Design, Chicago, some wonderful images of space-time experiments and a utopian vision of the designer and artist’s role in society.

six (+2) essays on design and new media, Jessica Helfand, William Drentell, New York, 1997
A tiny book of philosophical musings about the ideas that are being shaped by information technologies, within and beyond the design world.

Eating the Image: Graphic Design and the Starving Audience, Frances Butler, Design Issues, 1:1, 1984
Because it addresses the issue of the consumption of graphic design.

The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, Pocket Cardinal, New York, 1966

Veronique Vienne

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Design history
The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body and Design, Galen Cranz

Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century, Greil Marcus

Architecture Without Architects, Bernard Rudofsky

Bauhaus: Crucible of Modernism, Elaine S. Hochman

The Master Builders: Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, The Norton Library

Writing: The Story of Alphabets and Scripts, Georges Jean

Design criticism
The Conquest of Cool, Thomas Frank

Ways of Seeing, John Berger

Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets, and Philosophers, Leonard Koren

In Praise of Shadows, Jauni’ichiro Tanizaki

Why Things Bite Back, Edward Tenner

Envisioning Information, Edward Tufte

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Edward Tufte

Visual Explanations, Edward Tufte