I am thrilled about today’s launch of long anticipated Designers & Books. The site is the brainchild of my friend Steve Kroeter and was designed by no other than Pentagram.
Steve told me about the concept of the site months ago and I have been anticipating this day, where I can share his wonderful idea. Steve approached highly respected members of the the design community and asked them to send in a list of books that had an important, meaningful, and formative impact on their lives. Books that have shaped their values, their worldview, and their ideas about design.
From Vitruvius to William Morris to Frank Lloyd Wright to Edith Wharton to Le Corbusier to Paul Rand—there has always been a particularly special and robust relationship between designers and books: reading them, writing them, designing them, collecting them, learning from them, and being inspired by them. Designers & Books celebrates that relationship.
Congratulations Steve! I am raising a glass of bubbly stuff.
THIS IS AMAZING.
THANK YOU
I LOVE YOU
Feb 1st, 2011 / 5:08 pm
Tina:
Thanks much for your kind words about the launch of Designers & Books. Extremely generous of you. But as important, thanks for your encouragement over the past months (or has it been years?), and all the help and support you provided, which were so critical in getting the project to this point. Your insights about the overall design and specific features of the site, and your thinking about how to make the concept more interactive and more community-sensitive—were critical for us. And still are. Also, I have to say that getting D&B to this point makes me even more admiring (and I was already off the charts!) of what you’ve accomplished with swissmiss.
Steve
Feb 1st, 2011 / 6:47 pm
I love this. I just spent a pleasant hour dipping in and out of the designer profiles and their lists, ignoring an overwhelming list of things NOT done.
But my pleasure trip started out with a little frustration. Without first reading the entire Swiss Miss intro, I clicked to the site to find that the graphic and editorial cues didn’t immediately tell show me I’m looking at a vehicle to let me connect 50 designers to the important books in their lives.
>50 designers + important books in their lives<
It's totally "duh, of course" now that I know, but I had to work a little. Maybe it's my back-to-work Monday morning fog, or maybe it's because I'm an art director of book and cover designs and my tunnel vision focus is to ask "is this immediately clear to everyone?"
Maybe I've been living among editors too long…
Feb 7th, 2011 / 11:55 am