Lars Müller is fascinated by the sans serif font. Following the highly successful Helvetica: Homage to a Typeface, published in 2005, the eponymous typeface has found even more fame with a documentary, demonstrating that there's a design-hungry audience out there, eager for the low-down on what many people simply take for granted.
Helvetica Forever: Story of a Typeface, also published by Müller, together with Victor Malsy, is the book for them. Beautifully designed, as one would expect, the book attempts to tackle the great paradox at the heart of Helvetica - how could a typeface designed for modest, almost invisible ubiquity, become such a well-known, almost iconic 'brand'.
Originally named 'New Haas Grotesk,' Eduard Hoffman's typeface became Helvetica, a name that was felt to help its international appeal. The Haas foundry never looked back, and the typeface became one of the foundation stones of 1960s design before becoming fully integrated into the digital era. Complete with reproductions of Hoffman's original design journals, this is the perfect book for design obsessives.
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In the frame: Layer is a new high-tech platform for displaying unique pieces of generative artA museum-grade canvas renders digital art with spectacular precision, cutting-edge tech and exacting industrial design
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Chrome tableware to make your dining setup shineOnce a hallmark of industrial and midcentury design, chrome is shining once again. The latest expression? Metallic dinner-, drink- and serveware that embody sophistication
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Serenity radiates through this Mexican home, set between two ravinesOn the cusp of a lakeside town, Mexican home Casa el Espino is a single-storey residence by Soler Orozco Arquitectos (SOA)
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Jamel Shabazz’s photographs are a love letter to Prospect ParkIn a new book, ‘Prospect Park: Photographs of a Brooklyn Oasis, 1980 to 2025’, Jamel Shabazz discovers a warmer side of human nature
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A life’s work: Hans Ulrich Obrist on art, meaning and being drivenAs the curator, critic and artistic director of Serpentine Galleries publishes his memoir, ‘Life in Progress’, he tells us what gets him out of bed in the morning
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Ed Ruscha and Ruthie Rogers team up on zingy new cookbookEd Ruscha and friend Ruthie Rogers, chef and River Café co-founder, have teamed up on a cookbook with a difference
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Thomas Prior’s photography captures the uncanny fragility of American lifeA new book unites two decades of the photographer’s piercing, uneasy work
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Cult classic ‘Teenagers in Their Bedrooms’ captures the angst of being a teenAre 1990s teens so different? Three decades after its original release, this photography book by Adrienne Salinger has been published again, by DAP
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Make the Booker Prize shortlist your new reading listThis year’s Booker Prize shortlist captures the emotional complexity of our times, with stories of fractured families, shifting identities and the search for meaning in unfamiliar places
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How to be butch: Clark Henley’s sharp, satirical and playful manual is back in printThe 1982 classic, ‘The Butch Manual: The Current Drag and How to Do It’, full of tongue-in-cheek advice, is available once again
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We are all fetishists, says Anastasiia Fedorova in her new book, which takes a deep dive into kinkIn ‘Second Skin’, writer and curator Fedorova takes a tour through the materials, objects and power dynamics we have fetishised
