For more than three decades, renowned graphic designer and self-described Italophile Louise Fili has traveled the cities and countryside of Italy cataloging the work of sign craftsmen in whose hands type takes on new life with a tantalizing menu of styles. Classical, eclectic, or Futurist; in gold leaf, marble, brass, wood, wrought iron, enamel, ceramic, or neon; painted, carved, inlaid, etched, tiled, or stenciled— the creative possibilities are endless. Grafica della Strada is Fili's photographic diary of hundreds of Italy's most inventive restaurant, shop, hotel, street, and advertising signs. A major influence on Fili's own work, many of these marvels of vernacular design live on solely in this book, a typographic love letter to Italy that will be an inspiration to designers and Italophiles everywhere.

Organized by historical era and country of origin, each section of this dynamic compendium introduces the culture and aesthetics of the period, discusses how individual styles developed, and offers insights into the artistry of key typographers and foundries. 300 full-color illustrations.

Paris is a city of pure enchantment, and everyone who loves the City of Light has a Parisian muse, from the Tour Eiffel to crème caramel. For celebrated graphic designer and incessant flâneur Louise Fili, it's the city's dazzling signage. For more than four decades, Fili has strolled picturesque Parisian rues and boulevards with map and camera, cataloging the work of generations of sign craftsmen. Graphique de la Rue is Fili's photographic diary of hundreds of Paris's most inventive restaurant, shop, hotel, street, and advertising signs. Classic neon café signs are juxtaposed with the dramatic facades of the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergère. Colorful mosaics cheerfully announce hotel entrances, department stores, fishmongers, even public toilets. Hector Guimard's legendary entrances to the Paris Métro stations brush elbows with graceful gold-leaf and dimensional Art Deco, Futurist, or Art Nouveau architectural lettering, as well as whimsical pictorial signs (giant eyeglasses announce optiques, and oversized hanging shears indicate a knife and scissors maker). A major influence on Fili's own work, many of these masterpieces of vernacular design, now destroyed, live on solely in this book, a typographic love letter to Paris sure to inspire designers and armchair travelers alike.

Eight walks take shoppers to unique shops that uphold Italian standards of quality, craftsmanship, and creativity. With this discriminating book as a guide, visitors will find a trove of eighty shops that only native Florentines know well. In its pages you’ll find exquisite handmade lingerie, jewelry inspired by Renaissance paintings, handcrafted leather boxes, beautifully tailored shirts for men and women, vintage French and Italian designer clothing, shoes, hats, gourmet items, and much, much more. The walks include forty dining recommendations from where to get a quick caffe-ciok (“the best thing to ever happen to espresso, hot chocolate, and steamed milk”) to a sumptuous Tuscan meal. The book also serves as an informative guide to often perplexing opening days and hours, the always perplexing street numbering system, and shopping etiquette.

Over the last few decades, a rich and increasingly diverse practice has emerged in the art world that invites the public to touch, enter, and experience the work, whether it is in a gallery, on city streets, or in the landscape. Like architecture, many of these temporary artworks aspire to alter viewers' experience of the environment. An installation is usually the end product for an artist, but for architects it can also be a preliminary step in an ongoing design process. Like paper projects designed in the absence of "real" architecture, installations offer architects another way to engage in issues critical to their practice. Direct experimentation with architecture's material and social dimensions engages the public around issues in the built environment that concern them and expands the ways that architecture can participate in and impact people's everyday lives. The first survey of its kind, Installations by Architects features fifty of the most significant projects from the last twenty-five years by today's most exciting architects, including Anderson Anderson, Philip Beesley, Diller + Scofidio, John Hejduk, Dan Hoffman, and Kuth/Ranieri Architects. Projects are grouped in critical areas of discussion under the themes of tectonics, body, nature, memory, and public space. Each project is supplemented by interviews with the project architects and the discussions of critics and theorists situated within a larger intellectual context. There is no doubt that installations will continue to play a critical role in the practice of architecture. Installations by Architects aims to contribute to the role of installations in sharpening our understanding of the built environment.

This strikingly designed volume presents French Modern commercial graphic design in all its glory. Every aspect of French life in the lively and turbulent decades of the '20s and '30s is displayed in this rich compendium of highly stylized design concepts, including magazines, posters, brochures, and retail packages. From exhibition affiches proclaiming the dawn of a new cultural era and symbolic advertisements celebrating the marriage of man and machine to seductive perfume packages and exquisitely chic cocktail paraphernalia, this stunning survey offers a wealth of original artifacts - some never before seen in the United States - making it an essential reference for industrial designers, graphic artists, and anyone with an interest in the history of fine design and advertising.