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Designers on Designing

Cell phones, watches, coffee cups, grand pianos, light fixtures, even a dog house. Consumer products are brought to life through designers’ imagination and ingenuity, and Terence Conran and Max Fraser present some of the biggest names in the business and the items they’ve created.

Between the covers of Designers on Design are interviews with more than a hundred designers, who answer such questions as:

Industrial Design A-Z

If you take even the slightest interest in the design of your toothbrush, the history behind your washing machine, or the evolution of the telephone, you'll take an even greater interest in this new book. Individual designers and design firms can be referenced directly via the A-Z of Industrial Design section. Here, you'll find the likes of Enzo Ferrari, Philippe Starck, Zanussi and Apple Computer, among many others. Exploding with color, aesthetic, and style, Industrial Design is both informative and fun. You'll have a hard time putting it down.

Patently Female: From AZT to TV Dinners, Stories of Women Inventors and Their Breakthrough Ideas

In their sequel to Mothers of Invention, Vare and Ptacek explore female innovators a role history has often failed to record, let alone reward. The first U.S. patent was awarded to a woman, Hannah Slater, in 1793, for perfecting cotton sewing thread. But the authors quickly demonstrate that women's inventions aren't limited to the home. Both the brassiere and the jockstrap were invented by women. Can't do without that cordless phone? Thank Terri Pall. Interested in voting reforms? Susan Huhn invented the most reliable and mobile voting machine. The brilliance of physicist Dr.

Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec

This book will look at the entire career of the French brothers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, widely regarded as two of the most exciting young European designers to have emerged in the last twenty years. The book will feature all of their work to date, a collection which includes commissions for Vitra, Alessi, and Cappellini amongst others and will open with an introduction by Anniina Koivu, editor of Abitare magazine.

Karim Rashid: Compact Design Portfolio

Gives you a little information about Karim Rashid himself, and then goes on to show many of the products he has designed. Very inspiring. Great coffee table book too in a compact size.

 

Objectified. (dvd)

OBJECTIFIED is a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them. Director Gary Hustwit (HELVETICA) looks at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets, profiling the designers who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It's about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability.

Elements of Design: Rowena Reed Kostellow and the Structure of Visual Relationships

A hands-on book design students and designers alike will welcome.Elements of Design is a tribute to an exceptional teacher and a study of the abstract visual relationships that were her lifelong pursuit. Rowena Reed Kiostellow taught industrial design at Pratt Institute for more than fifty years and the designers she trained-and the designers they're training today-have changed the face of American design.

The Design of Everyday Things

First, businesses discovered quality as a key competitive edge; next came service. Now, Donald A. Norman, former director of the Institute for Cognitive Science at the University of California, reveals how smart design is the new competitive frontier. The Design of Everyday Things is a powerful primer on how—and why—some products satisfy customers while others only frustrate them.

 

Personal Space; Updated, The Behavioral Basis of Design

Widely regarded as the classic text on user-centered design of public buildings and spaces, this book studies how people relate to the designed space around them and how the design of that space can affect their behavior. Its contents are based on comprehensive academic research, the conclusions it draws are highly applicable in real-world projects, and the style of presentation is lucid and interesting.

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