Most of the time when we think about colour, it’s the red, the blue, the green, the yellow, the orange and the purple that we talk about. Black and white aside, these are the colours that go through the rainbows. Yet, nature is quite rich with all sorts of colour varieties giving us more options than we tend to take. Some of these varieties are nicely assembled in this new Atlas of Rare and Familiar Colour, where ten basic colours are put in their historical context to serve as the starting point for more variations of colour pigments. Each of these are presented in tiny recipients with their name on, and a short description and their origin inscribed next to them. Buy

This is C_NDY, the world’s first cross-dressing style magazine. Playful, inspiring, and available in a very limited edition, this Spring Summer 2018 release also passes a thoughtful note on the importance of positivity to one’s own wellbeing and that of his or her entourage. Featuring stunning images of bodies and garments, the big flashy pages of C_NDY depart from the glossy standard books of fashion and style and swoop into the bosoms of the truly avid fashion-maniakos. With every other page, begins a little story of cloth, body and identity, and lightsome words on love, friendship, community, beauty, pleasure and more. Buy

American Readers at Home is the lavishly designed outcome result of a 13000 miles long road-trip across America during and right after the presidential elections of 2016 which brought Donald Trump to the White House. These were highly contentious times in which American society was deeply polarised around all sorts of issues, from race and gender to immigration and employment. Swiss designer Ludovic Balland and his small team, were willing and able to navigate through the ongoing debates, running more than 200 interviews which draw an overview assessment of the electorate’s news consumption habits in this period. They investigated the role of the media in shaping opinions and documented key events such as the inauguration day and the Women’s Day march in Washington, capturing the gist of a defining moment in the history of the United State of America. Buy

On the occasion of ten years since moving its premises to Renens, Switzerland and since the creation of EPFL+ECAL Lab Institution to foster innovation in technology, design and architecture, the University of Art and Design Lausanne releases Making Sense – 10 years of Research in Art and Design. Essentially educational, this bilingual book is a designer-researcher digest that provides condensed, clearly presented information about the projects (in visual arts, cinema, graphic design/typography...etc) which were developed in the university’s programmes during these years. This includes a detailed listing of these projects, their leaders, collaborators, affiliated lecturers, sponsors, goals, methodologies, results and published material, in addition to two conversations on design research with designers Skylar Tibbits and David Reinfurt. Buy

Augmented Photography is the offshoot of a research project developed in the newly created Masters in photography at écal, the University of Art and Design in Lausanne. Seen in broad perspective, ‘augmented’ refers to the layer of reality that is building up due to the systematic interference of computers. This book looks on where photography stands in this new arrangement, in five chapters entitled ‘New Tools, Ubiquity, Materialisation, Perspective and Conversations’ respectively dealing with the role of technological innovations (i.e. algorithms) in the photo-creation processes, the implications of mass online circulation of photos, the contemporary approaches of morphing pictures into 3D, and the attitude of traditional institutions toward such changes. In a nutshell, Augmented Photography aspires to see the growing wild world of digital image-making and sharing, a bit more clearly. Buy

Berlin Living Rooms concludes Dominique Nabokov’s living rooms photo series, which started in New York, then moved to Paris and finally settles in the German capital. Different people including writer and opera director Jenny Erpenbeck, director of the Berlin Biennale Dieter Kosslig, and former editor-in-chief of German Vogue Angelica Blechschmidt, have agreed to open their doors and share some of what is usually part of a safely private world. We note that some of these chambers are unmistakably tidy and minimal, others, -through the suggestive power of their decorative items- recall a different era; be it the DDR, or the Weimar Republic, they are guaranteed to take you into wide-ranging departments of aesthetic preferences. It goes without saying that this book doesn"t really pretend to disclose all sorts of adopted styles of the Berlin dwellers as much as it offers an eclectic view on the taste of a city. Buy

This fruitful collaboration between theorist Louise Schouwenberg and designer Hella Jongerius follows an invitation by Die Neue Sammlung in Munich for the set up of an exhibition reflecting the museum’s rich, and world’s oldest archive of design. This book which accompanies the exhibition explores the underworld of the museum, pointing at the variety of meanings underlying the words “object” and “thing”. It also examines the relationships between “the new” which reflects the market’s obsessions with novelty for the sake of novelty and between “true innovations.” In striking high quality images, crisp colours and a round of hypothetical conversations and critical comments, Beyond the New ponders on the profound influences the things in our surroundings have on the quality of our lives and on shaping our very identity. Buy

Entkunstung is an independent journal with a bold reflective attitude on the contemporary art scene. It was launched online exactly one year ago, and since then four issues were published before being compiled into this book. With 34 contributions in English and German, it is more of an artists’ intellectual forum in the form of a yearbook. The first of the four issues puts “art” as a notion into perspective and brings up the non-self-evidentiality of the power of artworks. Art, cannot thrive in isolation from the work of the philosopher, the academic or the theoretician. The second issue ponders on the relevance of knowledge and intelligence to the aesthetics of an art creation. The third issue basically tries to figure the extent to which artists should stay engaged in political matters pertinent to human rights and climate change. Whereas the last issue digs even deeper and explores the different meanings of power through analysis of everyday “power-ful” moments.

In her book ‘Aveux Non Avenus, 1930, transgender artist Claude Cahun famously said ‘under this mask, another mask. I will never finish removing all these faces.’ Hers, are the deliberately shaped fragments of an identity, that of the writer, the artist and the transgender. But so are we all like Cahun striving on the power of our masks? How many of these one can, and needs to wear? And do masks hide or reveal us? In the Power of the Mask, Belgian designer Walter van Beirendonck makes a generous exposure to an avalanche of masks, beautifully pointing at their meanings and purposes throughout different cultures. Whether we like to wear masks for ritualistic, fetishistic or theatrical reasons, Beirendonck shows us that there are more to the mask than simply, hiding games. Buy

Typography, colour preferences, photography, symbols and information graphics are essentially the products of specific political and social contexts. And that’s what the Politics of Design examines. In other words, it"s about the different cultural fabrics of human interaction which produce the ideas, shapes and colors of design activities. By showing how design is attached to politics and societies of different world regions, the book aptly demonstrates why we grow to be culturally biased, and occasionally fail to communicate with each other despite our belief in the universality of our aesthetics. Organised according to the formal elements of graphic design: language and typography, colour and contrast, image and photography, symbols and icons, and information graphics, it"s is an ideal manual for the enthusiast of visual culture. Buy

Artist Batia Suter puts together what seems like an infinite collection of photographs into one comprehensive Parallel Encyclopedia, #2. Taken out of their original context the photos function in thematic clusters with occasional break of the black and white pattern with coloured photos. People, nature, people in nature, microscopic organisms, sculptures and artifacts intercommunicate as their narrative unfolds from one page to the next. Sometimes there is a common logic underlying the image clusters, for instance when they are visibly about anatomical parts of the human body or about sculptures, but it isn’t that evident, since there’s always an image that is a bit of an outcast to the grouping. With some common traits, it looks like it can somehow belong to it, but there’s something about it that pleads for difference. Buy

‘To the rebel girls of the world, you are the promise, you are the force. Don’t step back and everyone will move forward!’ This is the underlying message of the decidedly anti-princess book, Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls. The second volume juxtaposes a new mosaic of female profiles, from watchmakers and writers to chancellors and freedom fighters, treating girls -and boys indeed- with a set of formidable tales about the outstanding women who dared to brake with gender roles through unrelenting courage and hard work. Volume 2 for now only comes in its original english form, while Volume 1 is available in both, german and english. Buy