Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design
By Debbie Millman
Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design is a book about life, art, love, design, tunes, brands, poetry, shame, and even physics. In many ways, it is the culmination of over 25 years of working in the design business, and probably took its first shape when I began my radio show on design and culture, Design Matters, nearly five years ago.
In Look Both Ways, respected branding consultant and design community leader Debbie Millman has constructed a series of essays that examine the close relationship between design and everyday life. You'll find inspiration on every page as you meander through illuminating observations that are both personal and universal. Each beautifully illustrated essay reveals the magic - and wonder - of the often unseen world around us.
Excerpt from "Look Both Ways"
It occurred to me, as I stood there, that I could simultaneously, vividly look both ways - backward and forward, in time - at once. I remembered longing to know what was coming, who I would become and how. And I suddenly saw it all over again in front of me. The light was exactly the same, and as the sun fell and the summer shadows slivered against the elegant, lean, concrete towers in the distance, I recognized the smell of the warm air, the precise pink and grey of the coming dusk and the mysterious melancholy and joy of both knowing and not-knowing, and the continuity that occurs when both collide.—Debbie Millman
“Especially touching”
WILL NIXON
“Debbie Millman/Rodrigo Corral knock-out”
WE LOVE TYPOGRAPHY
“One of the most visually stunning books I’ve read in a long time. Debbie Millman’s essays about her life are expressed in an evocative and visual way. The essays are presented as paintings, cross stitches, chalk boards, drawings, index cards and more. A must read for those who believe design should be in every aspect of our lives.”
SCRIBD
“A design world powerhouse.”
CORE 77
“A very accomplished graphic designer.”
APARTMENT THERAPY HOUSE TOUR: DEBBIE UPGRADES TO MID-CENTURY
“What I loved so much about this book was how personal it is, and how open Debbie is expressing her fears, failures, and triumphs. Ultimately these personal things possess much more meaning, and are much more genuine than some logo we design for a client.”
DANIEL C. WIGGINS
“Millman’s day is spent in a milieu in which one generally does not benefit from telling deeply personal stories about oneself. In her business life she works a tough room, where revealing insecurities and engaging human-to-human are not considered a winning strategy. It took guts for Millman to publish a book that contains thinking on her own past and future, on her intimate confusions, errors in judgment, fallibility. She could have so easily stuck to what, for her, has proved a winning formula: the examination of other people’s methods of working, the definition of other people’s characters, values, beliefs. She could have avoided telling her truth, she could have spoken only in universals. She could have left the rock unbroken, never shown us the crystalline light in that geode. “
Communication Arts Review
COMMUNICATION ARTS
“Branding, design, style, new technologies and social media. We tend to look at all of them in isolation. Little do we realize sometimes that their is a very personal narrative that connects the things we buy, admire, use and connect with. Each of us is a part of a story with hundreds of tellers that represents the story of our lives.”
RADIO INTERVIEW WITH JEFF SCHECHTMAN ON KVON-AM IN SF
"The thought-provoking personal essays she wrote in Look Both Ways will convince you—through desire, envy, optimism, embarrassment, and love, why design is the answer to the question of what it is that makes people buy."
"The essays are presented in various methods of typographic expression, with twists and turns which illuminate and magnify the words into something more than a mere piece of prose. It’s a beautiful little gem of a book which can be dipped in and out of with none of the essays especially long, just the thing with a cup of coffee on a Sunday morning."
"It’s personal, and meant to be experienced as such, personally.
Personally, the…words made a difference in my life."
"Aside from the beautiful ways in which she designed and handlettered each essay, which instantly dropped me into Debbie’s world, or the constant connections she made with branding and art, I felt most moved by the stories of her life."
"Look Both Ways may have been the advice your mom gave you prior to crossing the street, but in Debbie Millman’s newest book of this title, it is the intersection of design and our everyday life that comes alive….it is a fun and unique read."
"Inspiration Overload Alert."