Thoughts on Design
1947 · 95 pages
Beauty and utility generate each other, Paul Rand argues, and the designer's job is fusing idea with image. He pulled European modernism into American advertising and made the trade take design seriously.
★ 4.5
The Books canon
Sourced and shelved.
Every book chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
The Classical Language of Architecture
1963 · 56 pages
Classical architecture is a language, Summerson argues, and the five orders are its grammar. He takes you from Roman temples to Baroque churches and shows what any columned facade is actually saying.
★ 5.6
Experiencing Architecture
1957 · 245 pages
Rasmussen teaches you to feel a building before you name its style: the hardness a child finds bouncing a ball off a wall, Rome's Spanish Steps descending in the rhythm of a polonaise.
★ 6.0
Critique of Judgment
1790 · 448 pages
Beauty sits in no object, yet you expect everyone to agree with you. Kant grounds that strange demand, and shows why a raging ocean enlarges the person watching it rather than crushing him.
★ 7.5