Thoughts on Design

Suggested Readings

This book list is a select biography by Paul Rand, originally published in "From Lascaux to Brooklyn". It covers a range of topics and is a great list for any creative professional looking for more inspiration and exploration into art and theory.

This is certainly not an exhaustive list, but one that will provide endless discussion and learning.

Areas covered are:

• General Art Theory and Philosophy
• Modern Art History and Movements
• Typography and Design
• General, Sociology
• Art Biographies and Monographs
• Architecture
• Design History and Theory
• Geometry and Design
• Film

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General Art Theory and Philosophy

The Use and Abuse of Art

Jacques Barzun

Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism

Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present

Monroe C. Beardsley

The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

Harold Bloom

A History of Aesthetic

Bernard Bosanquet

Philosophies of Beauty

E.F. Carritt

The Principles of Art

R.G. Collingwood

A Companion to Aesthetics

David Cooper

Aesthetic.

Benedetto Croce

The Journal of Eugene Delacroix

Eugene Delacroix

Art as Experience

John Dewey

A Dictionary of Philosophy

Anthony Flew

Vision and Design

Roger Fry

The Philosophy of Art

Giovanni Gentile

Painting and Reality

Etienne Gilson

Language of Art

Nelson Goodman

System and Dialects of Art

John D. Graham

The Art and the Art of Criticism

Theodore M. Greene

Form and Function: Remarks on Art

Horatio Greenough

Art in Theory

P. Wood/C. Harrison

The Philosophy of Fine Arts

G.W.F. Hegel

Das Problem Der Form

Adolf Hildebrand

Introductory Readings in Aesthetics

John Hospers

Decline of the New

The Idea of the Modern in Literature and the Arts

Irving Howe

Homo Ludens

Johan Huizinga

Guide to Philosophy

Cyril E. Joad

Art and Freedom

Horace Kallen

Studies in Ancient American and European Art

George Kubler

Problems of Art: Ten Philosophical Lectures

Susanne Langer

Museum Without Walls

The Voices of Silence

Andre Malraux

The Meaning of Meaning

I.A. Richards/C. Ogden

The Meaning in Visual Arts

Erwin Panofsky

The Demands of Art

Max Raphael

Principle of Literary Criticism

I.A. Richards

The De-definition of Art

Harold Rosenberg

Theory and Philosophy of Art

Meyer Schapiro

Against the Interpretation and Other Essays

Susan Sontag

The Art of Thought

Graham Wallas

Axel's Castle

Edmund Wilson

The Art of the Italian Renaissance

Principles of Art History

Renaissance and Baroque

The Sense of Form in Art

Heinrich Wolfflin

Abstraction and Empathy

Wilhelm Worringer

The Essential Kant

Arnulf Zweig

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Modern Art History and Movements

Apollinaire on Art: Essays and Reviews

G. Apollinaire

Futurist Manifestos

Umbro Apollonio

Cubism and Abstract Art

Alfred Barr

The Mirror of Art

Charles Baudelaire

Art

Clive Bell

Modernism, 1890-1930

J. McFarlance/M. Bradbury

Theories of Modern Art

H.B. Chipp

The Cubist Epoch

Douglas Cooper

Modern Art and Modernism

C. Harrison/F. Frascina

This is Not a Pipe

Michel Foucault

Progress in Art

Suzi Gablik

Visions of the Modern

John Golding

The Great Experiment: Russian Art

Camilla Gray

19th and 20th Century Art

George H. Hamilton

The Social History of Art

Arnold Hauser

Modern Artists on Art

Robert L. Herbert

De Stijl: 1917-1931

Hans L.C. Jaffe

Modern Art and the Object

Ellen H. Johnson

Modern Times

Paul Johnson

The Dada Painters and Poets

F. Marc/W. Kandinsky

Dadaism and Futurism

Max Kozloff

The Symbolist Aesthetic in France. 1885-1895.

A.G. Lehmann

Ulm Design: The Morality of Objects

Herbert Lindinger

Wallace Stevens and Modern Art

Glen McLeod

The Dada Painters and Poets

Robert Motherwell

Foundations of Modern Art

Amedee Ozenfant

The History of Impressionism

Post Impressionism

John Rewald

Concepts of Modern Art

N. Stagnos/A. Richardson

A History of the Modern Movement

Kurt Rowland

Modern Art, 19th and 20th Century

Nature of Abstract Art

Meyer Schapiro

Wiener Werkstaette, Design in Vienna

J. Werner Schweiger

The Banquet Years

Roger Shattuck

Skyscraper Primitives

Dickran Tashjian

Art After Modernism

Brian Wallis

The Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago

Hans M. Wingler

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Typography and Design

William Caslon: 1693-1766

Johnson Ball

Postscripts on Dwiggins. Essays and Recollections

Paul A. Bennett

Line and Form

Walter Crane

Visual Language

P. Thompson/P. Davenport

Practice of Typography: Correct Composition

Theodore De Vinne

Layout in Advertising

William A. Dwiggins

Typographie

Ottl Eicher

The New Graphic Design

M. Kutter/K. Gersner

An Essay on Typography

Eric Gill

Graphic Design

Milton Glaser

Seymour Chwast, The Left Handed Designer

Steven Heller

Graphic Design Manual

Armin Hofmann

American Alphabets

Paul Hollister

The Printer's Terms

Rudolf Hostettler

Graphic Design

Werner Jeker

Writing and Illuminating and Lettering

Edward Johnston

The Art of the Poster

E. McKnight Kauffer

The Place, the Times and the Point

Uwe Loesch

The Art of Advertising

George Lois

Eric Gill

William Morris

Fiona MacCarthy

Typographers on Type

Ruari McLean

The Function of Esthetic Research

Enzo Mari

A History of Graphic Design

Philip Meggs

Graphic Design, Mendell & Oberer

Pierre Mendell

Letterforms. Typography and Scriptorial

On Type Design: Past and Present

Stanley Morrison

A.M. Cassandre

Henri Mouron

The Graphic Designer and His Design Problems

Joseph Muller-Brockman

Graphic Design

R. Tissi/S. Odermatt

Max Huber

Carlo Pirovano

Images sans Paroles

Gunther Rambow

Advertisement: Ad Vivum, Ad Hominum?

Paul Rand

Die Kunst der Typographie

Paul Renner

A Theory of Pure Design

Denman W. Ross

Typography

Emil Ruder

Basic Typography: Design with Letters

Ruedi Ruegg

Visuelle Kommunication: Ein Design-Handbuch

Anton Stankowski

Bruno Munari: Design as Art

Aldo Tanchis

Designing Books

The New Typography

Treasury of Alphabets and Lettering

Jan Tschichold

Printing Types

Daniel B. Updike

Design

Massimo Vignelli

Typographer and Designer

Wolfgang Weignart

Henryk Tomaszewski

Stanislaw Wieczorek

Ein Areitsbericht

Hermann Zapf

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General, Sociology

Flatland. A Romance of MAny Dimensions

Edwin A. Abbott

Art and Visual Perception

Entropy & Art

New Essays on the Psychology of Art

The Power of the Center

Toward a Psychology of Art

Visual Thinking

Rudolf Arnheim

The Art in Painting

Albert C. Barnes

Begin Here

A Stroll with William James

Jacques Barzun

Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

Daniel Bell

Aspects of Language

D.A. Sears/ D. Bolinger

The Beautiful Necessity

Claude Bragdon

All Consuming Images

Stuart Ewen

Objects of Desire: Design and Society

Adrian Forty

Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing

The Intelligent Eye

Richard L. Gregory

On Looking into the Abyss

Gertrude Himmelfarb

Culture of Complaint

Nothing if Not Critical

Robert Hughes

The Painter's Eye

Henry James

Pragmatism and the Meaning of Truth

William James

Tenured Radicals

Roger Kimball

Gestalt Psychology

Franz Koffka

Beer Can by the Highway

Made in America

John A. Kouwenhoven

The Age of the Avant-Garde

Hilton Kramer

Signs of the Times

David Lehman

The Age of Missing Information

Bill McKibben

The Book of Tea

Kakuzo Okakura

The Evolution of Useful Things

The Pencil

Henry Petroski

Amusing Ourselves to Death

The Disappearance of Childhood

Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

Neil Postman

Design for Escape

I.A. Richards

246 Little Clouds

Dieter Roth

Readings in Art History

Harold Spencer

Elements of Style

E.B. White/W. Jr. Strunk

Productive Thinking

Max Wertheimer

Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism

Born Under Saturn

The Divine Michelangelo

Gothic Versus Classic

Idea and Image: Studies in Italian Renaissance

Palladino and Palladionism

Rudolf Wittkower

On Writing Well

William Zinsser

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Art Biographies and Monographs

The Art of Cezanne

Karl Badt

Theo Van Doesburg

Joost Baljeu

Le Corbusier: Oeuvre Complete

W. Boesiger

Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp

Pierre Cabanne

Dubuffet

Andreas Franzke

Cezanne: A Study of His Development

Roger Fry

Magritte

Suzi Gablik

Life with Picasso

C. Lake/ F. Gilot

Brodovitch

Andy Grundberg

Gauguin

Rene Huyghe

Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture

Charles Jencks

Juan Gris

Daniel Kahnweiler

Point and Line to Plane

Wassily Kandinsky

The Paul Klee Notebooks, Vol 2: The Nature of Nature

Paul Klee

Functions of Painting

Fernand Leger

El Lissitzky

Sophie Lissitzky-Kuppers

Cezanne's Compositions

Erle Loren

William Morris

Fiona MacCarthy

Essays on Art, 3 vols.

The Non-Objective World

Kasimir Malevich

Select Writings

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

A Throw of the Dice: Life of Stephane Mallarme

Gordon Millan

Degas, The Artist's Mind

Theodore Reff

Cezanne: A Biography

Cezanne Letters

John Rewald

Picasso in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art

William Rubin

Kurt Schwitters

Werner Schmalenbach

Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography

Franz Schulze

Mondrian

Michel Seuphor

Max Ernst, Loplop

Werner Spies

William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary

Edward P. Thompson

Magritte: Ideas and Images

Harry Torczyner

Principles of Neo-Plastic Art

Theodore Van Doesburg

Van Gogh Letters

Vincent Van Gogh

Giorgio Morandi

Lamberto Vitali

John Dewey and American Democracy

Robert B. Westbrook

The Masterpiece

Emile Zola

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Architecture

Notes on the Synthesis of Form

Christopher Alexander

The Dynamics of Architectural Form

Rudolf Arnheim

Adolf Loos: Theory and Works

Benedetto Gravagnuolo

The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning

The Modulor 1 and Modulor 2

Towards a New Architecture

Le Corbusier

Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings

Edward S. Morse

Katsura, A Princely Retreat

Akira Naito

Shaker Built

J. Sprigg/P. Rocheleau

Houses and People of Japan

Bruno Taut

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Design History and Theory

Theory and Design in the First Machine Age

R. Banham

Space, Time, and Architecture

Sigfried Giedion

The Image and the Eye

In Search of Cultural History

Meditations on a Hobby Horse

The Sense of Order

Tributes: Interpreters of Our Cultural Tradition

E.H. Gombrich

The Language of Vision

Gyorgy Kepes

Art: The Revealing Experience

Kurt Kranz

The New Vision

Vision in Motion

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Technics and Civilization

Lewis Mumford

Design for the Real World

Victor Papanek

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Geometry and Design

The Painter's Geometry

Charles Bouleau

The Golden Number

Miloutine Borissavlievitch

Space in Medieval Painting

Miriam Schild Bunim

The Geometry of Art and Life

Matela Ghyka

Art & Geometry

William M. Ivins

The Theory of Proportion in Architecture

P.H. Scholfield

The Ten Books on Architecture

Vitruvius

Symmetry

Herman Weyl

Systems of Proportion

Rudolf Wittkower

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Film

Film as Art

Rudolf Arnheim

Film Essays

Film Form: Essays in Film Theory

The Film Sense

Sergei Eisenstein