In the Land of Punctuation

Christian Morgenstern

A darkly delightful 1905 German ode to punctuation, newly illustrated in gorgeous typographic art by Indian graphic designer Rathna Ramanathan:

Design and Violence

Paola Antonelli

“Not only does violence appear to be morphing, but how we experience, perceive, and assess it is also shifting.”

Pause-giving meditations on design and violence by William Gibson, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Rob Walker, and other sharp minds:

An Eames Anthology: Articles, Film Scripts, Interviews, Letters, Notes, and Speeches

Charles Eames

“Design is a full-time job. It is the way you look at politics, funny papers, listen to music, raise children.”

Legendary designer Charles Eames on the value of the arts in education and his advice to students – immensely timely, triply applicable to the millennial generation:

In Praise of Shadows

Junichiro Tanizaki

“Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.”

Spectacular, unexpectedly life-changing read on ancient Japanese aesthetics and the beauty of darkness:

A Graphic Cosmogony

Some of today’s most exciting illustrators and graphic artists imagine the origin of the universe and how our world came to be:

About Time: A Visual Memoir Around the Clock

Vahram Muratyan

Our fraught relationship with time, in clever minimalist illustrations, plus my interview with designer Vahram Muratyan:

Ah-Ha to Zig-Zag: 31 Objects from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Maira Kalman

“Life is not a straight line. Life is a zig-zag.”

Maira Kalman’s imaginative design-history alphabet book, with a gentle message of embracing uncertainty and imperfection for kids and grownups alike:

Cosmigraphics

Michael Benson

4,000 years of our quest to understand the universe and our place in it, in rare cosmic maps – from the first moon map to the galaxy that inspired Van Gogh’s Starry Night to NASA’s modern visualizations:

The Best American Infographics 2014

“More isn’t always better: no more in information design than in poetry…”

The best infographics of the year and Nate Silver on the 3 keys to great information design:

Thoughts on Design

Paul Rand

Legendary designer Paul Rand on beauty, the power of symbolism, and why idealism is essential for creative work

Mapping It Out: An Alternative Atlas of Contemporary Cartographies

Hans Ulrich Obrist

“Maps are errors to arrive at truth.”

An atlas of alternative maps for understanding the world, featuring contributions by John Baldessari, Tim Berners-Lee, Louise Bourgeois, Yoko Ono, Kevin Kelly, Damien Hirst, Ed Ruscha, John Maeda, Sean Carroll, Douglas Rushkoff, Marcus du Sautoy, and more.

The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge

Manuel Lima

A magnificent 800-year history of visualizing science, religion, and human knowledge in symbolic tree diagrams

Philographics: Big Ideas in Simple Shapes

Genis Carreras

A visual dictionary of philosophy – major schools of thought in minimalist geometric graphics:

Things I have learned in my life so far, Updated Edition

Stefan Sagmeister

“Everybody who is honest is interesting.” … and other hard-earned learnings on life from Stefan Sagmeister, rendered as gorgeous typographic maxims