Spring 2001

Books received in Eye 39

24 books in brief

Bartlett Book of Ideas
Edited by Peter Cook
Bartlett School of Architexture, UCL £15
A dazzling, if expensive, college handbook, containing transcribed conversations in which faculty members congratulate themselves on their brillance.

Becoming Designers? Education & Influence
ed. Dudley / Mealing
Intellect Books, £14.95

Benzin: Young Swiss Graphic Design
Edited by Thomas Bruggisser and Michel Fries
Lars Müller Publishers, $55
A colourful overview that includes fresh work by Chalet, Müller +Hess (see Eye no. 32 vol. 8) and Grafikpraxis.

Chromophobia
David Batchelor
Reaktion Books, £12.95
A slim vehicle for arguments about colour.

Creativity Works
Edited by Anneke Elwes
Profile Books, £15
Interviews with corporate leaders, architects, entrepreneurs and academics on the nature of ‘creativity’.

Cuacamonga: Topography of the California High Desert
Rudy VanderLans
Emigre, $24.95
A photographic paean to the lost world of Beefheart, a sequel to Palm Desert.

Design for Interaction: User-friendly Design
Edited by Lisa Baggerman
Rockport, £27.50
Web, product and environmental design portfolios and commentaries.

Dotlinepixel: Thoughts on Cross-media Design
Michele Jannuzzi and Richard Smith
Gabriele Capelli Editore, CHF33/£18

Electronic Plastic
Jaro Gielens
Die Gestalten Verlag, £25.99
A showcase of rare, ‘old-school’ hand-held computer games from the 1970s and 1980s, a riot of tacky colour and imagery.

Futura
Designed by Ben Drury
Booth-Clibborn, £30
An elaborate, indulgent celebration of the Mo’Wax label’s favourite illustrator.

Imperfect Beauty
Charlotte Cotton
V&A Publications, £24.95
The star-crossed book of the show.

La Spirale, la Main at la Ménorah
Philippe Apeloig
Gabriele Capelli Editore, CHF33/£18
A bilingual project monograph, the second in GPE’S ‘directions’ series.

Mad Ave: Award-Winning Advertising from the Twentieth Century
Edited by Jackie Merri Meyer
Universe Press, £25
Assembled by Pentagram, Mad Ave is a showcase of the past century’s advertising, brought to us from the heaving archives of the New York Art Directors’ Club.

Moving Type: Designing for Time and Space
Matthew Woolmann and Jeff Bellatoni
Rotovision, £24.95

Grip
David Shrigley
Pocketbooks / Redstone Press, £7.99
Wicked thoughts and everyday people in an impoverished, compelling scrawl.

Reflections in Black
Deborah Willis
W. W. Norton, £50

Searching for the Perfect Beat
Jordan & Jordan & Hoeckel
Watson-Guptill, £16.95
Yet another compliation of club flyers.

Star Culture
Mark Sanders & Jefferson Hack
Design by Gareth Hague
Phaidon, £24.95
Celebrity explored through a collection of interviews selected from the first 60 issues of Dazed & Confused magazine.

10x10
Edited by Iona Bird & Vivain Constantinopolous
Phaidon Press, £35
An extravagant and literally weighty visual momument to the work of 100 architects, chosen and compiled by ten critics including Betsky, Salazar and Spiller.

They Called Her Styrene, Etc
Ed Ruscha
Phaidon, £14.95
Nearly 600 of Ruscha’s ‘word’ artworks, one per page, presented without comment in a thick, block, hardback.

Think of England
Martin Parr
Phaidon, £24.95

Travel Sickness
Ded Associates, written by Stephen Jones
Die Gestalten Verlag, £25.99
A self-indulgent slice of eye candy from the Sheffield design group, with words from the songwriter behind Babybird.

Vaughan Oliver: Visceral Pleasures
Rick Poynor
Booth-Clibborn, £30/US$49.95
Account of the designer behind the 4AD music label imagery, art directed by Oliver himself.

For The Voice
Vladimir Mayakovsky, El Lissitzky
The British Library
Facsimilie and translation in slipcase.

First published in Eye no. 39 vol. 10, 2001

Eye is the world’s most beautiful and collectable graphic design journal, published quarterly for professional designers, students and anyone interested in critical, informed writing about graphic design and visual culture. It is available from all good design bookshops and online at the Eye shop, where you can buy subscriptions and single issues.

EYE39