Designers of Architecture Books

Graphic design is very important for the layout of architecture books, probably more than any other subject. The combination of text, photos, drawings, and other illustrations requires solid understanding and creativity to convey the various types of information to the reader. Architecture books are not easily translated to ebook formats, since the appearance of information on a page is extremely important: Images, different fonts, white space, the flow of information, and various other considerations point to static page layouts that are not yet translatable to electronic formats (outside straight PDFs) incorporating user-defined fonts, sizes, and so forth.

Needless to say, the graphic designer's role is crucial. Yet all too often they are unacknowledged beyond the copyright page and the author's thank you in their acknowledgments. To help remedy this deficiency, stemming from my own appreciation of good design in architecture books, I've collected a list of graphic designers below. This list is far from comprehensive; rather it is limited to designers that have a strong focus in books on architecture and design. Many were found by scouring my own library, so the list happens to be solely comprised of U.S. designers, many in and around New York City, a reflection of publishing's epicenter. To keep it simple the firms are listed alphabetically with a link to their homepage and a reference project. Please comment if there is a designer/design firm that you think should be included; I'll amend this post to make it more thorough and helpful for architects and writers looking for a graphic designer.

EA PROJECTS (Brooklyn, NY):

[Reveal by Jeanne Gang]

mgmt. design (Brooklyn, NY):

[Layered Urbanisms edited by Yale School of Architecture]

MTWTF (New York City):

[The Studio-X Guide to Liberating New Forms of Conversation edited by Gavin Browning]

Omnivore (New York City):

[Architecture at the Edge of Everything Else edited by Esther Choi and Marrikka Trotter]

over,under (Boston, MA):

[Micro Green by Mimi Zeiger]

Pentagram (London, New York City, Austin, Berlin):

[The L!brary Book by Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi]

Project Projects (New York City):

[Urbanisms by Steven Holl]

PS New York (New York/LA):

[Expanding Architecture edited by Bryan Bell and Katie Wakeford]

Jeff Ramsey (Brooklyn, NY):

[Building (in) the Future edited by Peggy Deamer and Philip G. Bernstein]

Starfish-Prime (Los Angeles):

[Urban Future Manifestos edited by Peter Noever and Kimberli Meyer]

Think Studio (New York City):

[Support and Resist by Nina Rappaport]

Thumb (Brooklyn, NY):

[Bracket 1: On Farming edited by Mason White and Maya Przybylski]

2x4, Inc. (New York City):

[Glass House by Toshio Nakamura with photogaphs by Michael Moran]

WSDIA | WeShouldDoItAll (Brooklyn, NY):

[The New York 2030 Notebook edited by Jeff Byles and Olympia Kazi]