Reader’s corner book of the month: June 2023
Featuring publications of relevance to our industry, including those cited in SDS e-newsletter lead articles and suggested additional reading, we’ve recently relaunched the SDS Reader’s Corner book of the month page. Each month we will showcase a suggested read that relates to our professional areas of interest, be it a seminal publication or something more tangential. We hope the books we select will offer you insights and inspiration.
If you any suggestions of books, particularly newly published ones, that you think would be of interest to our community, please email us: enquiries@signdesignsociety.co.uk.
For May ’23 we feature Everyday Streets: Inclusive Approaches to Understanding and Designing Streets, edited by Agustina Martire, Birgit Hausleitner and Jane Clossick (published by UCL Press on 25 May 2023).
Synopsis
“Everyday streets are both the most used and most undervalued of cities’ public spaces. They are places of social aggregation, bringing together those belonging to different classes, genders, ages, ethnicities and nationalities. They comprise not just the familiar outdoor spaces that we use to move and interact but also urban blocks, interiors, depths and hinterlands, which are integral to their nature and contribute to their vitality. Everyday streets are physically and socially shaped by the lives of the people and things that inhabit them through a reciprocal dance with multiple overlapping temporalities. The primary focus of this book is an inclusive approach to understanding and designing everyday streets. It offers an analysis of many aspects of everyday streets from cities around the globe, from the regular rectilinear urban blocks of Montreal to the military-regulated narrow alleyways of Naples, and from the resilient market streets of London to the crammed commercial streets of Chennai. Everyday Streets is a palimpsest of methods, perspectives and recommendations that together provide a solid understanding of everyday streets, their degree of inclusiveness, and to what extent they could be more inclusive.”
Reviews
BUY A COPY NOW! This publication is £35.00 paperback version via Bookshop.org, (also available as an Open Source PDF).
Previous books of the month
Incredible Journeys: Exploring the Wonders of Animal Navigation by David Barrie (published March 2020)
Why Public Space Matters by Setha M. Low (published March 2023)
Healthy Placemaking: Wellbeing Through Urban Design by Fred London (published January 2020)
Type Specimens: A Visual History of Typesetting and Printing by Professor Dori Griffin (published January 2022)
Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-Made World by Leslie Kern (published September 2021)
You Are Here 2: A New Approach to Signage and Wayfinding (published May 2022)
Typography: A Very Short Introduction by Paul Luna (published November 2018)
The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch (published June 1964)
Thinking With Type (2nd edition) by Ellen Lupton (published August 2010)
Soft City by David Sim (published August 2019)
Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado-Perez (published March 2020).
Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of how Humans Navigate the World by M. R. O’Connor (published July 2018)
The Happy Design Toolkit: Architecture for Better Mental Wellbeing by Ben Channon (published March 2022)
Architecture of Normal by Daniel Kaven (2022)
Bauhaus Typography at 100 by Ellen Lupton (2021)
Transit Maps of the World by Mark Ovenden (2015)
Designing Mind-Friendly Environments by Steve Maslin (2021)
The Natural Navigator by Tristan Gooley (10th anniversary edition 2021)
Type Tells Tales by Steven Heller and Gail Anderson (publication date April 2017)
Airport Wayfinding by Heike Nehl & Sibylle Schlaich (November 2021)
Type Directory by Peter Dawson and Tobias Frere-Jones (2019)
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit (2005)
Human Spatial Navigation by Arne D. Ekstrom, Hugo J. Spiers, Véronique D. Bohbot and R. Shayna Rosenbaum (2018)
Macdonald Gill: Charting a Life by Caroline Walker (2020)
Airline Maps: A Century of Art and Design by Mark Ovenden and Max Roberts, (2019)
Jan Tschichold and the New Typography by Paul Stirton (2019)
SDS e-newsletter lead article suggested book to read
Happy by Design: A Guide to Architecture and Mental Wellbeing (by Ben Channon, 2019)
Cognitive Mapping: Past, Present and Future (edited by Rob Kitchin and Scott Freundschuh, 2015)
Convivial Toolbox: Generative Research for the Front End of Design (by Elisabeth B. N. Sanders and Pieter Jan Stappers, 2012)
Graphic Design in Urban Environments (by Robert Harland, 2016)
Understanding Mobility as a Service: Past, Present and Future (by David Hensher, 2020)
Wayfinding (by Michael Bond, 2021)
Wayfinding: People, Signs and Architecture (by Paul Arthur and Romedi Passini, 2002)