Humble Masterpieces: Everyday Marvels of Design

When you are a professional designer it is hard to find great ‘coffee table’ design books that have truly inspirational designs within the covers. But when I stumbled across Humble Masterpieces: Everyday Marvels of Design by Paola Antonelli (Curator of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art) I was so delighted by what I discovered within its pages that I couldn’t resist purchasing it.

The book is a small square volume (which is a nice change from big, unwieldy coffee table design books) that is full of photographs of beautiful, timeless everyday designs, each accompanied by a short history of the object. Each description also includes the designers name, manufacturers name, material and the year it was designed (where such information is obtainable, some of the objects have been around far to long making some details unobtainable – e.g.: the Whisk)

At its core Humble Master pieces is a fantastically curated collection of objects that is a celebration of the beauty found through simplicity in design.  Some of the objects contained within including the Bic Cristal, the Slinky, the pencil, the barcode and the Champagne Cork.

The designs within the book are so ingrained in the everyday, that if you haven’t yet utilised at least one of them I would be extremely surprised.

Humble Masterpieces: Everyday Marvels of Design is highly recommended for any designer who is searching for a truly inspirational book to add to their collection.

Humble Masterpieces: Everyday Marvels of Design by Paola Antonelli is available from Amazon.