Rating: 
Summary: From The New York Times:
Review: "Kalman (called Tibor even by those who do not know him) may be an obscure, egghead personality, but his work is everywhere. In the 1970s, he designed distinctive medieval-looking shopping bags for Barnes & Noble that became the signature for a global retail empire. He produced the memorable East-meets-West logo -- a coat of arms with chopsticks -- for the midtown Manhattan power room China Grill, and hilarious menus and advertising for the downtown after-hours mecca Florent. Kalman designed perhaps the '80s' greatest album artwork, for Talking Heads, matching the impenetrable nerdiness of lead singer David Byrne with a collage of color, primitive typography and techno-images. And he was behind Colors, Benetton's radical and mysterious magazine. His memorable images invariably evoke the response: "He did that? I love that." It is a body of work breathtaking to behold all at once, which is the best thing about "Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist" (Princeton Architectural Press, $60), a handsomely produced volume published last month that is an archive of and homage to the designer. The book is also an oddly appealing scrapbook of Kalman's passions, which include his family and his hard-to-nail-down politics. It is a playful greatest hits compilation of his most important work with M&Co, the groundbreaking design firm he founded with his wife and collaborator, the artist and children's book author Maira Kalman. In the fine print is his own story, entertainingly told by various contributors, including Kalman himself. He is interviewed by writer Kurt Andersen. We learn how the child political refugee from Eastern Europe fell in love with America even as he was repulsed by its capitalist excesses in the 1950s and '60s. At New York University, he joined SDS and in 1970 he made an illicit trip to Castro's Cuba to learn farming, which could have earned him a deportation hearing. He dropped out of NYU, and as a "paste and prop boy" making window displays for a college bookstore, he started his career. The store's owner, Leonard Riggio, was then cobbling together a retail business that would become Barnes & Noble... On balance, this book, like his work, is oddly touching for all its bluster. Unstated but poignant on every page is the hint of Kalman's struggle with cancer, which has taken a toll on his outward vitality and gives this whole volume the somber feel of a retrospective. His free will intact, Tibor Kalman lives on."
Rating: 
Summary: yes but...
Review: ...how much of the work on show did Tibor himself actually have a significant hand in? It ain't always clear. And early on there were a couple of turkeys, let's be honest. These (admittedly nit-picking) quibbles aside, this is a superb book that should inspire and delight - colors is a milestone that would be ahead of its time today. I should lighten up...
Rating:
Summary: cocktail table salvation
Review: Haven't much time (and this is obviously my first review) but here it is: this book is ALIVE - you keep opening it and finding something new/fun/provoking - kind of like casting a printed media i ching (is that the right spelling?) - I've never been particularly interested in design or typograhy before, but it opened me up to those - as well as being a tremendously fun book to have around.
Rating:
Summary: get this one before it sold out
Review: I don't own this book--yet. I read it at the bookstore and I am waiting for amazon to release it so that I can get the 18 dollar off the 60 dollar list price. This is a great catalogue of all the work Tibor has done in his career. The book starts with a series of Tibor's saying and open into the 'catalogue' itself. Each of them contains very detailed description of the design process so it's a great read. Good clean design by Bierut, as usual.
Rating:
Summary: If a man smiles at you...
Review: I first heard of Tibor Kalman while browsing a copy of "Interview", just to learn that it was a tribute. Sometime later, I found a smiling bookcover looking at me. I bought it. I was waiting for the bus and started to read it... I could not put it down again. I read textes, subtitles, infos, even the small characters of the work reproduced. It was not enough. It made me regain the somehow lost faith in design, showing me how humour, money and a cause could be combined together with surprising results.
Do not be fooled: this book goes beyond the cult of the author's personality; it shows brief, concept and ways of thinking which are useful to everyone, not only designers and students.
Although I knew it from the beginning, in the end I had tears in my eyes, because this man was gone and could no longer make our world a better place.
Rating:
Summary: If a man smiles at you...
Review: I first heard of Tibor Kalman while browsing a copy of "Interview", just to learn that it was a tribute. Sometime later, I found a smiling bookcover looking at me. I bought it. I was waiting for the bus and started to read it... I could not put it down again. I read textes, subtitles, infos, even the small characters of the work reproduced. It was not enough. It made me regain the somehow lost faith in design, showing me how humour, money and a cause could be combined together with surprising results.
Do not be fooled: this book goes beyond the cult of the author's personality; it shows brief, concept and ways of thinking which are useful to everyone, not only designers and students.
Although I knew it from the beginning, in the end I had tears in my eyes, because this man was gone and could no longer make our world a better place.
Rating:
Summary: The most inspiring book in my library
Review: I have tons of design books! Too many books! Of all the books this one travels with me everywhere I go just in case I need a little inspiration. Tibor and his pack of designers I believe have defined what design and communication is all about. They have pushed ideas to the point of rare novelty. With many of the designs in this book I can see that M&Co never stops asking the greatest of all creative questions: "What if?" There is only one thing I hate about the book - It makes me second guess everything that I do. Is it orginal? Is it "What if" enough? Am I following the creative line that is widely walked or have I grown enough spine to stray off the beaten path? ...Or am I just full of s**t?
Rating:
Summary: Even better when you re-read it!
Review: I left a review of the hardcover a long time ago. I'm reviewing the paperback because I actually bought a 2nd copy of the book (one to keep untouched and the other to read several times). And now that I've gone through the book for the umpteenth time, I want to add more thoughts to my last review... I'm begining to realize that the true magic behind the work of Tibor is that it's very personal. Tibor's work searches for some human quality inside us that it can appeal to. It relates to us as imperfect, informal human beings. Unlike most design today that is either self-indulgent or polished off and buttoned up, the work in this book seems to have a "come as you are" invitation to it. This was Tibor's gift. This was his major contribution to the work done in this book. As you surf through all 400+ pages you'll see that in the beginning his work was design "having something to sell". But suddenly his work detours and becomes design "having something to say." The best part about this book is that it brings us inside the minds of all the people Tibor worked with, worked for (clients) and worked against. The eye opener is that their was a lot of pain that went into the production of this work. You learn that Tibor's passion became a blessing and curse for those he colloborated with. But you begin to learn that these "mistakes, misunderstandings and mis-comprehensions" are often an unexpected ingredient in producing fresh and interesting work. I encourage this book to anyone who wants to see a new perspective on graphic design and the industry. But more importantly, it's a motivation for us to re-evaluate our own perspective on the industry.
Rating:
Summary: Even better when you re-read it!
Review: I left a review of the hardcover a long time ago. I'm reviewing the paperback because I actually bought a 2nd copy of the book (one to keep untouched and the other to read several times). And now that I've gone through the book for the umpteenth time, I want to add more thoughts to my last review... I'm begining to realize that the true magic behind the work of Tibor is that it's very personal. Tibor's work searches for some human quality inside us that it can appeal to. It relates to us as imperfect, informal human beings. Unlike most design today that is either self-indulgent or polished off and buttoned up, the work in this book seems to have a "come as you are" invitation to it. This was Tibor's gift. This was his major contribution to the work done in this book. As you surf through all 400+ pages you'll see that in the beginning his work was design "having something to sell". But suddenly his work detours and becomes design "having something to say." The best part about this book is that it brings us inside the minds of all the people Tibor worked with, worked for (clients) and worked against. The eye opener is that their was a lot of pain that went into the production of this work. You learn that Tibor's passion became a blessing and curse for those he colloborated with. But you begin to learn that these "mistakes, misunderstandings and mis-comprehensions" are often an unexpected ingredient in producing fresh and interesting work. I encourage this book to anyone who wants to see a new perspective on graphic design and the industry. But more importantly, it's a motivation for us to re-evaluate our own perspective on the industry.
Rating:
Summary: This book will change you
Review: It is unlike any design book i have in my library. A definite must have.
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