Our new guide to design is live! It is a love letter to the people who sat with a chair, a typeface or a soup can longer than seemed reasonable, and changed how the rest of us live.
Most of the world you touch today was designed by someone. The chair under you, the letters on this screen, the little walking man who tells you when to cross the street. We have spent seventeen years collecting the people who made those things, and this guide is for all of them.
It runs ten chapters, each opening with the designer whose work defines it. Buildings live in their own guide, so this one is about everything else: products, type, packaging, chairs, sneakers, toys, cars and the design you never notice.
Ten chapters, hung like a Calder
At the top of the guide, the chapters hang from a mobile in Calder’s colors. Every shape is a doorway. Tap one and it drops you straight into its chapter.
A walk through the chapters
01. Things That Move
Good design is innovative
Alexander Calder taught sculpture to dance. This chapter follows his mobiles into kinetic art, from Studio Drift’s rising flock of lights to a strandbeest walking down a Dutch beach on wind alone. Read chapter 1
02. Less, But Better
Good design is as little design as possible
 The original iPod, 2001 |  The first iPhone, 2007 |
 Ferrari Luce cabin, with LoveFrom |  Balmuda Sailing Lantern, with LoveFrom |
Dieter Rams and Jony Ive, and the long conversation between them. From a 1958 Braun pocket radio to the first iPod and iPhone, and lately a lantern for Balmuda and the inside of Ferrari’s first electric car. Read chapter 2
03. The Soup Can Problem
Good design is aesthetic
Andy Warhol saw that a soup can might be the most democratic design there is. This chapter is about packaging, from Campbell’s to a ketchup bottle that shows you the perfect pour. Read chapter 3
04. "In Quotation Marks"
Good design is honest
Virgil Abloh’s three percent rule, and the designers carrying his open door forward into sneakers, jackets and a dress grown from living algae. Read chapter 4
05. Letters With Feelings
Good design is thorough down to the last detail
Massimo Vignelli’s subway map, Paula Scher’s napkin sketch, Paul Rand’s logos and Milton Glaser’s I ♥ NY. Type and graphics with real feeling in them. Read chapter 5
06. Signs for Strangers
Good design makes a product understandable
Otl Aicher’s Olympic pictograms, Shigetaka Kurita’s first emoji and the walking men of the world’s crosswalks. Design that has to work for everyone, in every language. Read chapter 6
07. The Chair Is a Self-Portrait
Good design is long-lasting
Charles and Ray Eames and their bent plywood, Verner Panton’s one-piece chair, and Memphis throwing a party. Read chapter 7
08. Designed to Be Played
Good design makes a product useful
Gunpei Yokoi’s Game Boy and the LEGO brick, plus a Game Boy built from LEGO, braille bricks and a toy inventor with more than 800 toys to his name. Read chapter 8
09. Machines We Fell For
Good design is environmentally-friendly
The concept car designers who gave us glass pyramids and glowing tires, and our own series imagining cars by famous architects. Read chapter 9
10. The Invisible Ones
Good design is unobtrusive
Susan Kare drew the Mac’s first icons. This chapter is for the design you never notice, from the curb cut to a wheelchair that walks. Read chapter 10
From the shop
Lella and Massimo Vignelli designed Max in 1964. It won the Compasso d’Oro, went into the collection at MoMA, and is still made by Heller to be used every day. You will find it in chapter five, and on our shelves. Shop the Max collection
The Moss & Fog Shop is ours. Every piece is picked the way we pick stories.
Who did we miss?
Tell us about the designer who changed how you see things. Leave a comment, or if this landed in your inbox, just hit reply. We read every one, and the best answers might end up in the guide!
P.S. Each chapter of the guide opens beneath one of Dieter Rams’ ten principles of good design. Ten chapters, ten principles. We tucked a few other small nods in there too. See how many you can find!
More of our guides: Extraordinary Buildings, Paintings and Illustration, Retrofuturism and all the guides.
