Book reviews

Authors: Phaidon Editors

This updated edition of Graphic: 500 Designs that Matter explores the work of over 400 designers from 33 countries across 5 continents, spanning from the 14th century to today. Featuring both iconic figures like Aleksandr Rodchenko and Paul Rand and lesser-known creators, the book includes diverse examples from the Gutenberg Bible to Joy Division album art. The large-format design allows for detailed images and in-depth descriptions of each entry, covering advertising, information design, posters, books, magazines, and logos. This comprehensive reference is ideal for design enthusiasts, professionals, and anyone interested in visual communication.

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Author: Philip Jodidio

Peeking behind the scenes of innovative homes, Philip Jodidio illustrates the evolution of today’s global architecture—from Samira Rathod’s House of Concrete Experiments in India to Tetro’s Açucena House in Brazil, which adapts to its natural terrain.

The houses featured in this book may be the first full generation to take advantage of the ubiquity of computing power—from design to fabrication—yet this high-tech approach has in no way diminished their variety and originality. In Italy, Mario Cucinella built TECLA – Technology and Clay, a 3D-printed house created entirely with raw earth. The unique house, printed in 200 hours with 60 cubic meters of natural materials, unveils potential low-cost, environmentally responsible approaches to architecture. In Hyderabad, India, Kanan Modi designed her House of Gardens not only to diffuse and reduce heat within the structure but also to invite the beauty of nature indoors—both essential in the face of rising temperatures and increasing urbanization.

These forward-thinking buildings were designed by capitalizing on technological advances such as video conferencing and 3D printing, fostering inventiveness and imagination, and yielding sustainable, site-specific homes. Atelier Bow-Wow virtually directed the construction of their Peninsula House on the Greek island of Antiporos during the COVID-19 pandemic; Mariko Mori’s Yuputira unifies her artistic and architectural aesthetics; and Anne Fougeron’s Suspension House breathes new life into a remarkable natural setting.

Detailing 59 cutting-edge projects from 25 countries—ranging from Guatemala and Slovenia to Norway and Vietnam—the third volume of the Homes for Our Time series takes readers on an illustrated visit of contemporary architectural gems, discovering the architects who are driving change in the field now, and in the future. These homes are the beating heart of creativity that will inspire architecture for decades to come.

Find out more about Homes for Our Time. Contemporary Houses around the World. Vol. 3 →

Author: Pentawards

The winning packaging designs from the 2021 and 2022 Pentawards.

In our seventh edition of The Package Design Book, we explore the world’s leading packaging design innovations from the 2021 and 2022 Pentawards competition. Now for the first time, it showcases entries into its new Sustainable Design category, highlighting designs from established industry professionals and young talent striving to reduce the impact of packaging on the planet.

This edition strongly focuses on innovative packaging design that honors sustainability, diversity and has an inclusive approach to design at its core. Submissions from over 60 countries have pushed the boundaries of visuals to create meaningful designs that are both a pure expression of their brands’ values and a delight for the consumers who buy them. This book epitomizes beautiful design concepts that were developed with integrity.

Alongside the thousands of submissions for the competition, the Pentawards Jury has also grown to an eclectic mix of 50 members representing 25 brands and 25 design agencies, including Amazon, Mars Food, Vault49, Estée Lauder, Superunion, Coty, WWF, and Stranger & Stranger. This volume comprises state-of-the-art packaging design that is not only witty, noble, and contemporary but illustrates the impact of this design discipline.

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Author: Laurent Jullier

A new introductory guide to the art of looking at and engaging with photography.

Photographs, even the most iconic, often have something seemingly obvious about them. They appear to represent the “real” world and our first instinct is that they can be easily interpreted, which is not always the case with paintings. But this sense of familiarity with photography can lead to ambiguities. Looking at Photographs outlines key approaches to help us understand why a photograph captures our attention and moves us. This introductory reference is structured to help you develop new and more in-depth ways of looking at images, whether as a viewer or practitioner—or just out snapping with your smartphone.

Everything counts in a good photograph, even down to the smallest details. Across seven chapters, visual culture expert Laurent Jullier discusses themes and concepts that are essential to understanding the medium, including photography as a reflection of reality; manipulation and defamiliarization; focus, perspective, and space; time and the moment; identity, portraits, and selfies; and the power of images.

With examples drawn from across the world and throughout the history of photography, from Louis Daguerre to Julia Margaret Cameron, László Moholy-Nagy, Dorothea Lange, Andreas Gursky, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Dayanita Singh, Eva Woolridge, and many others; in addition to a helpful glossary of terms, Looking at Photographs is not just about learning “how to read” photographs, it is about knowing how to ask the right questions when you look at images.

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Author: Philip Jodidio
Illustrator: Norman Foster

With a career spanning across continents and over six decades, the work of the renowned architect Norman Foster is nothing short of extraordinary. His creative innovation and holistic approach have made him one of the world’s most influential and well-known architects. From the Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California, to the Reichstag in Berlin, the enclosed court of the British Museum in London to the Millau Viaduct in France, with his practice of Foster + Partners, he has created celebrated landmarks that stand out for their inventive modernity and for what he calls “a sustainable approach to the design of the built environment.”

This is the first time Foster’s complete body of work has been published in one edition on such a grand scale. Giving a rare insight into the inner workings of his creative practice. It details his personal approach to his work, his inspirations, the link between art and architecture, and the significance and correlation between his passions, such as being an avid aviator, and his work.

The XXL monograph encompasses a lifetime of achievement and originality in two volumes. The first presents his architectural œuvre and is filled with numerous unpublished images and sketches handpicked by Foster from his archives. Paired with nearly 1000 illustrations, the second book contains eight essays he wrote explaining his sources of inspiration.

Aside from the 1999 Pritzker Prize, he has won the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal for Architecture, the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture, and the Gold Medal of the French Academy of Architecture. This is a magnificent visual journey not only through significant buildings of our time but also into the mind of a genius. Norman Foster sketched every page of this book and spent countless hours with the author and the graphic designer to make it one of the most remarkable architecture books ever published.

Also available as an Art Edition of 300 copies with a 1-meter-wide signed print of a drawing by Norman Foster, picturing the upcoming multifunctional community and business center InnHub in La Punt, Switzerland. The two volumes of this edition are collected in a custom-designed slipcase that folds into a book stand.

Find out more about Norman Foster: Net Works / Works →

Author: Zainab Bahrani

This expert guide to the art of Mesopotamia, spanning more than 8000 years, is especially important as this ancient cultural legacy is threatened by contemporary conflict.

Mesopotamia is considered the cradle of Western civilization, and the diverse societies that flourished there, nestled around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, were as culturally rich as this attribution would suggest. Spanning a significant historical period, from 8000 BCE to the arrival of Islam in 636 CE, Art of Mesopotamia explores spectacular structures and objects, as well as the techniques artists used, in order to gain insight into the beliefs and practices of ancient peoples. The volume also introduces the archaeologists who discovered these sites more than a thousand years later.

Richly illustrated with more than 400 full-color photographs, Art of Mesopotamia is an astounding record by award-winning author Zainab Bahrani of artworks from this region, many of which have in recent years been damaged or destroyed by war, and as such is of particular and lasting importance. It includes the most up-to-date scholarship and reflects significant new approaches to Mesopotamian art over the past few decades.

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Julian Schnabel (Contributor), Hans Werner Holzwarth (Editor), Louise Kugelberg (Editor), Laurie Anderson (Author), Eric De Chassey (Author)

Julian Schnabel makes art out of life, finding his materials in the fabric of the everyday. He uses broken plates as an improbable picture ground; he paints on velvet, market stall covers, army tarps, kabuki theater backdrops, and boxing ring floors, found surfaces that lend their own rich history to the artist’s exploration. A figurehead for the return of painting after his overnight success with a first New York solo show in 1979, he has since worked in a wide variety of media: making sculptures that transpose his pictorial forms into space as raw, seemingly time-worn artifacts; directing award-winning movies that paint portraits of artists and other subtly heroic figures; and even building his own dream of a Venetian palace in New York. “I want my life to be in my work, crushed into my painting like a pressed car. If it’s not, my work is just some stuff,” Schnabel has said, and this urgency permeates his oeuvre no matter what means or media the artist chooses.

Now available in a popular edition, the complete range of Schnabel’s work is portrayed in unprecedented depth in this TASCHEN monograph, made in dialog with the artist. The texts were contributed by friends and collaborators: Laurie Anderson draws an intimate portrait of Schnabel; in three essays by curators and art historians, Éric de Chassey discusses the paintings, Bonnie Clearwater the sculpture, and Max Hollein the site-specific work; Donatien Grau writes on the Palazzo Chupi, the artist’s extravagant home in New York’s West Village; while the novelist Daniel Kehlmann explores his cinematic oeuvre. This edition allows you to study the surfaces and artistic gestures and actions, offering the most generous opportunity to experience Schnabel’s art outside of meeting it in person.

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Author: Jessica Lack

An essential guide to the multifaceted and increasingly connected global art community from 1900 to today.

Global Art introduces some of the most significant art movements of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries that have challenged the status quo. Featuring fifty artistic developments from every continent, this volume covers movements born of decolonization, marginalization, and conflict. Ranging from the Saqqakhaneh artists of Iran to the Stridentists of Mexico, Experimental Workshop of Japan to America’s AfriCOBRA, it chronicles groups that have empowered and given voice to their members.

Packed with bold and illuminating illustrations, the book demonstrates the distinct but connected roles of global movements in creating cross-cultural dialogues in today’s art world. Journalist Jessica Lack provides historical context for each art movement, key cultural events, and interconnections, bringing to life the protagonists in each movement’s evolution.

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Author: Pepe Karmel

A major new survey that offers fresh insights on artworks by one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, Pablo Picasso, written by a leading authority on the master.

As one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, Pablo Picasso’s (1881–1973) artistic achievements are unparalleled. This important new introductory monograph, released to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the artist’s death, presents the beauty, power, and multiplicity of Picasso’s work across his paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints, and offers fresh analysis of the work of this great master for a twenty-first-century audience.

Since the 1980s, most books and exhibitions on Picasso have focused on the artist’s personal relationships, specifically on the representation of his wives and mistresses. Art historian and curator Pepe Karmel shifts the debate by considering Picasso’s works first and foremost as art, explaining how the artist’s style has evolved over the course of seven decades, introducing visual languages and narratives that have transformed modern art.

Arranged chronologically by themes and movements, Looking at Picasso is profusely illustrated with renowned paintings, such as the provocative Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and the monumental war piece Guernica, as well as lesser-known works, including Picasso’s animal sculptures and his animated reinterpretation of Velázquez’s seventeenth-century masterpiece Las Meninas.

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Author: Liam Caton

Introducing ‘The Art of AI Conversations: A Beginner’s Guide to Prompt Engineering’, a practical, comprehensive guide that demystifies the process of crafting effective prompts and brings the world of AI to your fingertips.

In this illuminating guide, you will unravel:

• The ABCs of AI prompt engineering: A step-by-step approach that helps simplify complex AI concepts
• How to create impactful prompts that elicit impressive AI responses
• In-depth insights into the workings of advanced language models like ChatGPT, empowering you to harness their true potential
• Practical, actionable guidance to use AI for your specific industry, project, or hobby
• Surprising connections of prompt engineering in diverse fields such as education, tech, and arts
• How to stay on the forefront of rapid AI advancements without getting overwhelmed
• Ethical considerations when crafting prompts and navigating the AI landscape, making sure your creations are fair and unbiased
• Unleashing your creativity to come up with inspiring prompts even when you think you’ve hit a block
• The importance of setting realistic expectations from AI and how to balance it with its limitations
• Myriad hands-on exercises to solidify your learning and immediately apply the learned concepts

And so much more.

But hold on, you might wonder, “I’m not tech-savvy, would this book still make sense to me?” or “I don’t want to waste time on fluff and repetitive content. Is this guide different?”

Here lies the real power of this guide. This book is specifically designed to be accessible even to beginners. It breaks down highly complex concepts into digestible chunks, eliminating unnecessary technical jargon. The unique approach is focused on practical, real-world applications, devoid of fluff and filler content.

So even if specializing in AI feels light years away or you’ve struggled with comprehending other resources in the past, ‘The Art of AI Conversations: A Beginner’s Guide to Prompt Engineering’ might just be what you need to make that quantum leap forward.

Find out more about The Art of AI Conversations: A Beginner’s Guide to Prompt Engineering →