Hara draws on more than three decades of experience as a designer, curator, educator, and collaborator. Rather than treating design simply as the creation of objects, he considers it a method for identifying possibilities and making complex ideas visible.

Across 208 pages, the book explores a Japan facing an aging population, changes in its manufacturing economy, and rapidly developing technology. Hara connects these challenges with design research and examples of creative problem-solving, arguing for a design culture capable of adapting while remaining rooted in distinctly Japanese approaches to aesthetics.

Compact in format and illustrated throughout, Designing Japan offers an insightful perspective on contemporary Japanese design from one of its most influential voices.

The selection shows how Japanese designers combined local graphic traditions with the international modernist currents of the period. Bold lettering, saturated color, geometric compositions, and playful illustrations appear throughout, including works by Sugiura Hisui, Tada Hokuu, Hamada Masuji, Fujisawa Tatsuo, Murayama Tomoyoshi, and Ishimoto Kikuji.

Printed in four colors, the set contains two copies of each design, for a total of 40 postcards. The 5 × 7-inch cards come in an illustrated keepsake box and can be mailed, framed, or kept as a compact reference to an important period in Japanese graphic design.

Braun: Designed to Keep tells the story of the German electronics company founded in 1921, and how it became one of the most influential names in modern product design. Published by Phaidon, the book gathers more than 500 images, including new photography of Braun’s iconic products, archival drawings, advertisements, internal documents, and correspondence. It also looks at the people behind the company’s design culture, from leadership teams to designers, placing Braun’s work within the broader history of postwar Germany and everyday life.

Compact and easy to dip into, this volume works as both a survey and a source of ideas. It captures a corner of design culture that often gets treated as novelty, but here feels surprisingly revealing. The objects and spaces featured in these pages say as much about human taste and domestic life as they do about pets themselves.

Breuer’s Bohemia follows the homes he designed in Connecticut and Massachusetts from the 1950s through the ’70s, and it treats them as more than isolated “great houses.” They’re part of a living scene: clients who became friends, weekends that turned into salons, and a tight circle that pulled architecture into the same room as art and literature. Rufus and Leslie Stillman and Andrew and Jamie Gagarin are at the center of it, with the larger cast orbiting nearby—Alexander Calder, Arthur Miller, Francine du Plessix Gray, Philip Roth, William Styron.

James Crump tells the story with the instincts of a filmmaker (his documentary shares the title), using original research and interviews to bring voices back into the rooms. The book is heavy on imagery—vintage shots, contemporary photography, and archival material you don’t usually see—which makes the houses feel less like icons and more like places where people argued, hosted, retreated, and kept building a version of postwar culture around the table.

The organizing idea is jeong—a Korean concept tied to affection, familiarity, and the bonds that form over time. Here it’s used in a practical way: as a lens on making and use, the relationship between maker, object, and the person who lives with it. The essays by Teo Yang, Beth McKillop, and J. Kathryn Hong help set that context, but the book is primarily visual: full-page photographs that let surface, proportion, and detail do the talking.

Even the production feels considered. It’s printed on tactile craft paper and stitch-bound in a traditional Korean style, so the book reads as an object in its own right—something you’ll want to keep on the table and return to.

Published by Phaidon, the book showcases Mendini’s multifaceted genius through well-known and previously unpublished images, artworks and documents. Penned by writer, designer, curator, and critic Stefano Casciani, a frequent collaborator and friend of Mendini, the book presents a more intimate view of the work and life of the renowned designer. Apart from furniture and product designs, readers can also discover personal photographs, ephemera and sketches. Finally, the book pays homage to the distinctive style of Alessandro Mendini with a pink cloth cover, an iconic magazine cover on the front, and a sketch of the acclaimed Proust armchair on the back.  A must-have for fans of Italian design.