Bookshelf / 42
02/25/2025

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Good design is about more than just appearance. It’s about intention, longevity, and function. In Objects to Use, Gijs Bakker reflects on his five-decade-long career, revealing a philosophy that values function over embellishment and material honesty over trends.

Bookshelf / 41
01/09/2025

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Published by the National Museum of Finland and edited by Florencia Colombo and Ville Kokkonen, Man Matter Metamorphosis: 10,000 Years of Design documents the continuous interaction between humans and matter, and the creation of a material culture, within the geographical area now known as Finland.

Bookshelf / 40
12/12/2024

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Founded by LinYee Yuan in 2017 and concluding its publication run in 2024, MOLD Magazine was the first of its kind: a food magazine that sparked vital conversations around food justice, waste, food systems, soil, and sustainability.

Bookshelf / 39
10/31/2024

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On Halloween, we will all see our share of masks: ghouls, goblins, clowns, monsters, superheroes, a Frankenstein or two. This combination of delight, confusion, and a little fear is captured in Face to Face, a volume of photographs by brothers Francois and Jean Robert.

Bookshelf / 38
09/26/2024

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Lichen, co-founded by Ed Be and Jared Blake in 2017, defies easy categorization. To many, it’s a store in Ridgewood, Queens that sells vintage furniture and objects. But the space, and the objects within, represent the center of an expanding universe of people, ideas, and community which define Lichen and set it apart from its peers within the design world.

Bookshelf / 37
08/15/2024

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What do Swiss Army knives, umbrellas, safari chairs, mesh grocery totes, and Edo-period Samurai helmets all have in common? They are all featured among other objects in Collapsible: The Genius of Space-Saving Design.

Bookshelf / 36
07/31/2024

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There are words so specific to the culture in which they were born that they lack direct translations outside of it. Denmark’s “hygge.” Hawai’i’s “aloha.” The many, more descriptive Aleut words for what we call “snow.”

Bookshelf / 35
06/20/2024

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Snedkernes Efterårsudstilling. Say that five times fast! Colloquially known as “SE,” and translating to “the Carpenters’ Autumn Exhibition,” Snedkernes Efterårsudstilling is an organized network of furniture designers and manufacturers in Denmark that has held an exhibition of new work annually since 1981.

Bookshelf / 34
05/22/2024

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Springtime in Brooklyn. A respite between winter’s frigid winds and summer’s sultry steam. Spirits lift and plants bloom. As designers whose work focuses on materials—and sustainability—we can’t help but notice the trees, resplendent and green.

Bookshelf / 33
03/21/2024

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Standard Issue is a multi-disciplinary studio. Graphic, industrial, and exhibit designers sit shoulder-to-shoulder with artists, architects, and writers, with some wearing more than one of those metaphorical hats.

Bookshelf / 32
03/06/2024

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How to sell a small, ugly, cheap, foreign car to the American public?

Bookshelf / 31
01/31/2024

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When is looking back progressive? When do flaws enhance beauty? When does slowing down enable great leaps forward?

Bookshelf / 30
01/18/2024

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W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America, published in 2018, features the complete set of drawings made by Du Bois and his students at Atlanta University for the 1900 World's Fair in Paris. The drawings, presented in full color, are striking and anticipate infographics and abstraction far beyond their time.

Bookshelf / 29
01/03/2024

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Chairman: Rolf Fehlbaum, by acclaimed designer Tibor Kalman, is ostensibly about chairs and a man, but really about much more than that. Within its 590 pages, there’s a lot about family, history, industry, culture, anthropology, and architecture. But—more than anything—this is a book about design.

Bookshelf / 28
12/07/2023

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Our bookshelf is full of monographs, most of which are oversized volumes featuring artists, architects, and designers. Nestled among these is a smaller, paperbound book about the choreographer Annie-B Parson, Drawing the Surface of Dance: A Biography of Charts (Wesleyan University Press, 2019).

Bookshelf / 27
11/22/2023

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Transcending Oppositions (Oris, 2018) is a beautifully compact monograph of Tadao Ando’s work that has been designed and produced with the same sensibility and poetics as the buildings he designs.

Bookshelf / 26
10/26/2023

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We often think of design as some act of conjuring: there is some blank slate and then, as if by magic, . . . voila! Let there be a light. Or a chair. Or a skyscraper. Sometimes this does happen. But far more often design involves collecting, curating, editing, and assembling. Start with the parts and create a thing.

Bookshelf / 25
10/03/2023

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We’ve been privileged in that several of our projects have involved the work of Charles and Ray Eames. They set a new benchmark, redefining what a multi-disciplinary design office could be and we’re unrepentant fans.

Bookshelf / 24
09/11/2023

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Today we observe the twenty-second anniversary of 9.11. It’s difficult for those who were not in New York at the time to understand just how devastating, how surreal, it was. We had fallen into a different version of history.

Bookshelf / 23
08/29/2023

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August in New York City. The evening breeze brings a reminder that the summer days are numbered, and with them the opportunities to enjoy a day by the pool.

Bookshelf / 22
07/13/2023

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New York, a quarter century ago. Before social media, or iPhones. People walked down the street with their heads up. Sometimes they made eye contact.

Bookshelf / 21
06/08/2023

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Yesterday, the skies above the northeast were a burnt orange haze and New York was declared the city with the worst air in the world.

Bookshelf / 20
05/18/2023

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On Friday, May 5th, the World Health Organization ended the global emergency status for COVID-19, more than three years after its original declaration. So where do we go from here?

Bookshelf / 19
05/02/2023

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We recently posted about Alvar Aalto’s Stool 60, seminal modernist design and an object of our admiration and affection. But, of its many fans around the globe, Daisuke Motogi

Bookshelf / 18
03/16/2023

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Ninety years ago, a Finnish architect named Alvar Aalto designed a three-legged stool with bent plywood. Combining modernist forms, revolutionary manufacturing techniques, and native Finnish birch, Aalto sought to create a universal piece of furniture. Simultaneously a chair and a table, it has remained in production, an icon of modernism, barely changing for nine decades.

Bookshelf / 17
02/27/2023

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A definition of “compact”: 415,000 entries originally distributed over 16,464 pages, then “micrographically” reduced to fit in two 8 pound books totaling 4,116 pages. These come housed in a navy blue slipcase, with a special compartment within which you’ll find a handy magnifying glass.

Bookshelf / 16
01/26/2023

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Many of us take safety at work for granted. With bright, tidy, and often sterile office spaces, we sit at our computers...

Bookshelf / 15
12/15/2022

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There are instances in which the line between design and art is indeterminate, an undefined frontier....

Bookshelf / 14
11/29/2022

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The central tenet of our design philosophy is that it is, first, a matter of problem-solving. This approach is beautifully displayed in Copenhagen, where a visit...

Bookshelf / 13
10/27/2022

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Sea of Buddha is a book that exists on both spiritual and secular planes. In 1995, after years of negotiation....

Bookshelf / 12
10/06/2022

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Weighing over eight pounds and featuring roughly 700,000 products, the McMaster-Carr annual catalogs are among the largest books on our shelf.

Bookshelf / 11
09/13/2022

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Tucked between the more traditional books on our shelves is slender grey box measuring about 8” x 8” and titled Willi Gutmann Cross Plates with Circles. Arranged within are five thin,

Bookshelf / 10
08/02/2022

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Andres Gonzalez’s American Origami (Fw:Books/Light Work, 2019) is a powerful book. Gonzalez has created a comprehensive and moving account of gun violence through memories. The

Bookshelf / 09
07/14/2022

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You Can Find Inspiration in Everything— (And If You Can’t, Look Again) (Violette Editions, 2001) arrives in a white, suitcase-sized, styrofoam container masquerading as a book.

Bookshelf / 08
06/30/2022

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For the past few years, Standard Issue has spent a lot of time thinking about pools. This began as an assignment for a valued client but has e

Bookshelf / 07
06/16/2022

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Please Do Not Touch (2018, Rizzoli) is a pithy and opinionated memoir by Murray Moss, who co-founded his eponymous store in New York’s SoHo neighborhood

Bookshelf / 06
06/01/2022

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There are books about Charles and Ray Eames that weigh ten pounds, exceed 500 pages, and document everything they ever designed, filmed, collected, built, said, or wrote.

Bookshelf / 05
05/19/2022

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This Mother’s Day intersected with our receiving Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births (2021), Michelle Millar Fisher and Amber Winick’s exhibition

Bookshelf / 04
04/28/2022

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Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, documents the seminal 1972 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, curated by Emilio Ambasz.

Bookshelf / 03
04/13/2022

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This issue we’re celebrating Little Brown’s 2011 re-issue of selected Malcolm Gladwell titles. “Malcolm Gladwell: Collected” is a slipcased set of three casebound books.

Bookshelf / 02
03/29/2022

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We’re closing out Women’s History Month by showcasing Woman Made: Great Women Designers (2021) by Jane Hall. We discovered this book last December at

Bookshelf / 01
03/15/2022

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Welcome to Bookshelf, a newsletter from Standard Issue celebrating the art of the book. We’re kicking off our series with a book written,

Introducing Bookshelf
03/08/2022

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We love books. Always have. We buy them to read, and reread. We buy them for reference. We buy them because we saw the exhibition, or because we wish we had. We buy them because they’re beautifully designed and superbly printed. We buy them because we admire the craft. Sometimes we buy them for no other reason than because they’re a joy to hold in our hands. Our shelves are overflowing with books, some bought decades ago—and some bought yesterday.