Art + Design Reference

By Yoko Ono Foreword by Sean Ono Lennon
Yoko Ono created An Invisible Flower when she was just nineteen years old, at the very start of her artistic career. Learn More

By Pantone
In this handy fan deck, international color authority Pantone takes the guesswork out of using color in bold and innovative new ways, sharing the wisdom that has made their professional products an essential resource around the globe. Learn More

This is a book by a company that dislikes advertising as much as anyone. Nevertheless, it makes adverts. Learn More

The latest book from the pattern cutting series from the Bunka Fashion College in Japan, school of Yohji Yamamoto. Includes 17 fashionable and achievable designs, with easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions and diagrams that guide the reader through the draping process. With a folded pattern at the back, this book provides inspiring ideas and highly practical techniques for anyone wanting to learn about draping. Learn More

By Sabrina Ward Harrison
Sabrina Ward Harrison, beloved artist behind the cult classic The True and the Questions, invites her dedicated fans on an all-new voyage of self-expression. Learn More

By Kelly Lynn Jones
An awesome celebration of a timeless pastime, this book collects constructible paper airplanes—and a few other airplane-inspired crafts—created by some of today’s hottest artists. Learn More

Mark C. Childs
Cities and towns are among humanity’s largest and most complex achievements. The buildings, public works, plazas and parks of even a small town embody substantial amounts of capital, energy, natural resources, history, and aspirations. Cities are among our greatest creations, yet typically no single individual creates them. Rather they arise from the dialog between multiple designers, clients, regulators, citizens, critics and users. Sometimes the cities and towns that emerge are glorious places. Too frequently they have only fragments of greatness or are soul-deadening and environmentally unhealthy. Learn More

Alex MacLean
Pilot and photographer Alex MacLean has flown his plane over large areas of the United States, documenting the landscape—from beautiful agricultural patterns to geometric city grids. In his new book, he directs his lens at the rooftops of New York City, showing the great complexity and life of the roofs of New York’s buildings. Depicting not only the city’s famous water towers, but pools, tennis courts, gardens, sunbathers, art, and restaurants up in the air, MacLean’s powerful images give readers a glimpse of a part of the city that usually remains hidden. Maps and captions help the reader to easily locate the photographs, and an essay by XXX puts MacLean’s work into context. Learn More

By Véronique Vienne
New in the "100 Ideas that Changed..." series, this illustrated guide to key ideas in graphic design in the last century is for anyone interested in the subject, from students to armchair experts.The book demonstrates how ideas influenced and defined graphic design, and also how those ideas manifest in objects of design. Learn More

Peter Jenny
This series of small primers on drawing encourages readers not only to pick up a pen and start drawing, but to see the world that surrounds them with fresh eyes. Visual thinking and using one’s imagination are skills that are often neglected in today’s world. With author Peter Jenny’s help, readers will learn to perceive their environment in a new way and will soon follow his lead, discovering the joy of drawing. Learn More

By Doug Aitken
During the past decade, Los Angeles-based artist Doug Aitken has created innovative video art by fracturing the narrative structures of his films across multi-screen environments. In the spring of 2007, Doug Aitken: Sleepwalkers premiered as a mo... Learn More

Peter Jenny
This series of small primers on drawing encourages readers not only to pick up a pen and start drawing, but to see the world that surrounds them with fresh eyes. Visual thinking and using one’s imagination are skills that are often neglected in today’s world. With author Peter Jenny’s help, readers will learn to perceive their environment in a new way and will soon follow his lead, discovering the joy of drawing. Learn More

The Architectural League of New York
Every generation thinks it is special, new, and different—and ours is no exception. What perhaps may make the claim stronger for the current generation are the circumstances: global networking and integration, and global economic and security crises; environmental activism and environmental catastrophe; virtual revolution and physical stagnation. Against these challenges and in light of the fundamental ruptures of the Great Recession, the committee posits that the future will operate on a wholly different paradigm. This difference will require architects and the discipline to practice architecture and design without preconceptions and assumptions, rethinking how designers engage constructively with our cities, our environments, and our societies. Not content to wait for the hoped-for return of economic conditions favorable to conventional ideas about architectural practice, architects must ask: What is the new role of the designer? Learn More

Pattern Magic Stretch Fabrics is the third in the series of cult Japanese pattern making books, now translated into English. The new volume looks at working with stretch and jersey fabric. Learn More

By Peter Jenny
The three books in the series each present a short introduction by Jenny and twenty-two easy exercises, with each book focusing on a different aspect: Notes on Drawing Technique takes actions such as gesticulating, touching, feeling, doodling, and moving as the starting points for putting pen to paper. Notes on Figure Drawing focuses on the archetypal presentation of the human figure, and Learning to See teaches the reader to discover art in everyday objects. Learn More

By Susan Peterson
Widely considered to be the most comprehensive introduction to ceramics available, this book contains numerous step-by-step illustrations of all ceramic techniques to guide the beginner, as well as inspirational ceramic pieces from international potters. For the fifth edition a new section on shino glazes has been added, as has revised information on new computer programs. Learn More

By Lynda Grose
This book examines how sustainability has the potential to transform both the fashion system and the innovators who work within it. Sustainability is arguably the defining theme of the twenty-first century. Learn More

There are many ways in which a product can be manufactured but most designers know only a handful of techniques. Both informative and incredibly easy to use, this bestselling book explains over 100 production methods in detail. With specially commissioned diagrams, case studies and step-by-step photographs of the manufacturing process, Making It uses contemporary design as a vehicle to describe production processes. Learn More

Footwear design has become the new dream career, and this book is the first guide to show the key skills and tips behind the trade, for both budding designers and anyone interested in shoes. Since Christian Louboutin and Manolo Blahnik became household names, footwear design is now one of the most lucrative strands of any fashion brand. Learn More

By Olga Reed
Good retail design must attract and keep customers, support a brand or store’s image, showcase the product, and work as a functional shopping environment. This book features 44 of the best recent examples of retail design from around the world, and examines the details within the larger decorative schemes. Most retail interiors have a comparatively short life, and economic realities influence choice of materials and methods of construction; while these will mainly be necessarily modest, style or a sense of luxury are effectively achieved by the creative consideration of detail. Learn More

Michael Bierut
Now in Paperback! A collection of essays by Michael Bierut, Pentagram partner, cofounder of the website Design Observer, and AIGA board member. Bierut is one of the best-respected and most-beloved writers within the graphic design field, a spokesman for the profession, and a man pretty much universally admired within the academy and among practitioners. This collection includes writings from the 1980s through today. Learn More

Alexandra Lange
Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities, the latest addition to the Architecture Briefs series, is a handbook on how to write effectively and critically about the contemporary city. Learn More

Andrew Shea
This newest title in the design briefs series is a compact, hands-on guide for graphic design professionals who want to start helping communities and effectuating social change in the world. Author Andrew Shea presents ten strategies for successful community engagement, grounding each one in two real world case studies. The twenty projects featured in the book are by both design professionals and students and range from creating a map of services for the homeless community in Santa Monica, helping Chicago’s Humboldt Park community by designing a website where donors can buy essential items for community members, to encouraging LA’s Latina community to go for an annual PAP exam in an attempt to prevent cervical cancer through carefully designed posters, murals, and other material. Learn More

Stylists are some of the most influential people working within the fashion industry, responsible for the final shape of many exciting works in popular culture. Learn More

This book takes readers behind the scenes in the world of advertising, showcasing 30 phenomenally successful campaigns from the last decade. Fascinating not only for industry professionals but for anyone with an interest in how ads are made. Learn More

Unlike other packaging titles, which simply provide templates to copy, this book enables designers of all packaging types to create 3-D packaging forms that are specific to their needs rather than based on an existing design. It teaches a simple ‘net’ construction system – a one-piece 2-D configuration of card seen when a 3-D package is opened out and flattened – which enables the designer to create a huge number of very strong 3-D packaging forms that are both practical and imaginative. Learn More

This innovative and unique book is a visual guide to the buildings that surround us, naming all the visible architectural features. Unlike other architectural dictionaries, the reader doesn't have to know the name before looking it up. Clear line drawings and extensive color photographs illustrate each of the main building types, from forts to churches, stately homes to skyscrapers. Learn More

By Anna Corba
Take a trip to Paris, without leaving your own backyard! Learn to create line drawings of all things quintessentially French with this charming volume filled with easy-to-follow exercises. Learn More

By Jeffrey T. Schnapp and Adam Michaels, introduction by Steven Heller, afterword by Andrew Blauvelt
The Electric Information Age Book explores the nine-year window of mass-market publishing in the sixties and seventies when formerly backstage players—designers, graphic artists, editors—stepped into the spotlight to produce a series of exceptional books. Aimed squarely at the young media-savvy consumers of the "Electronic Information Age," these small, inexpensive paperbacks aimed to bring the ideas of contemporary thinkers like Marshall McLuhan, R. Buckminster Fuller, Herman Kahn, and Carl Sagan to the masses. Graphic designers such as Quentin Fiore (The Medium is the Massage, 1967) employed a variety of radical techniques—verbal visual collages and other typographic pyrotechnics—that were as important to the content as the text. The Electric Information Age Book is the first book-length history of this brief yet highly influential publishing phenomenon. Learn More

By Parviz Tanavoli
Over the course of the past two decades a previously unrecognized genre of startlingly modern looking large flatwoven hangings and covers (gelims) has emerged from an isolated highland region in Mazandaran Province in northern Iran. Learn More

By Morag Styles
Children’s picturebooks are the very first books we encounter, and they form an important, constantly evolving, and dynamic sector of the publishing industry. But what does it take to create a successful picture book for children? In seven chapters, this book covers the key stages of conceiving a narrative, creating a visual language, and developing storyboards and design of a picturebook. There are interviews with leading children’s picturebook illustrators, as well as case studies of their work. Learn More