Favorite Design Books Of 2013

8.25 x 10.5 inches, hardcover, 312 pages, 100 color and 250 black-and-white illustrations Suggested Retail Price: $55.00 From the Publisher. Visionary Danish architect Jørn Utzon was just thirty-eight years old when in 1957 he was named the surprise winner of an international competition to design the Sydney Opera House in Australia.

You might think that after nearly 30 years of writing and designing books, Chip Kidd-bard of Batman, Hipgnosis of the hardback-would be deep in his comfort zone writing a book about graphic design. As associate art director for Alfred A. Knopf, Kidd has created dozens of instantly recognizable covers, including Michael Chrichton's Jurassic Park and David Sedaris's Naked.

There are a lot of fascinating details hiding below the surface in the world of color. For instance, scientists once thought the average color of the entire universe was turquoise - until they recalculated and realized it was beige.

From the Publisher. Culled from our Illustration Now series is this selection of today's most successful and important illustrators from around the globe. In his introduction, Steven Heller fleshes out the challenging process of narrowing down a field of 600 illustrators to a selection of the 100 most significant.

CLOG, New York, 2013, English Suggested Retail Price: $15.00 From the Publisher. Rod Serling, creator of the 1950s television series The Twilight Zone, defined science fiction as "the improbable made possible." The same might be said for the practice of architecture. After all, architects by trade conceive of spaces, places, and worlds that do not (yet) exist.

¶&☞‡-@* ;-) Relax. Your screen is not playing tricks on you. These symbols are among the typographical marks that Keith Houston explores in his new book, Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols and Other Typographical Marks (W.W. Norton).