Design and the written word

If there’s one thing designers love to do when they’re not creating graphics and drawing up plans, it’s expressing themselves in written form. It stands to reason that your favorite architects and graphic designers might have something to say about the written works of others. Launched early last month, Designers & Books lists the favorite books of a number of internationally-known designers, including Milton Glaser, Stefan Sagmeister, and Robert Venturi, to name a few. If you’re ever curious about which texts inspired the creators of the Institute of Contemporary Art or the architect behind MIT’s Simmons Hall, you now know where to look.

For more on design and authorship, MIT’s Department of Architecture is hosting a symposium this Saturday entitled Beyond the Author. From their site:

Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author paved the way for a proliferation of studies that problematize, dismantle or critically reinforce the notion of individual or group authorship in art and architecture production. Established authors are questioned and replaced by multiple actors; agents perceived as incapable of intentional creative practices are re-conceptualized as true authors. Criticism of received notions of author and authorship advanced to the center of scholarly arguments in relation to both contemporary and pre-modern subjects.

It’s Saturday, March 5, from 9am to 6pm—details here.