When Design Becomes a Story

In 2025, many design companies chose the book as a way to reflect on their journey, turning anniversaries, milestones and corporate visions into editorial narratives. From entrepreneurial memoirs to photographic projects and in-depth company studies, these volumes present design as a cultural process, shaped by people, relationships and ideas that evolve over time.
 

Nilufar Depot. The First Decade
Nilufar

Nilufar Depot: The First Decade is the celebratory volume marking the tenth anniversary of Nilufar Depot, the Milan-based design and visual arts space founded by Nina Yashar. Rather than a mere catalogue, the book acts as a living archive of the Depot’s first decade (2015–2025), chronicling its evolution through rare images, exhibition documentation, and critical essays by Annamaria Sbisà.

Spanning over 250 pages, the hardcover volume reflects on the Depot’s transformation from an industrial warehouse into a theatrical stage for design and experimentation, hosting landmark projects such as retrospectives on Lina Bo Bardi and Giancarlo Palanti, collective shows dedicated to emerging designers, and immersive installations blending historical and contemporary works. The book mirrors Nilufar Depot’s hybrid identity as both gallery and cultural hub, capturing the ideas, collaborations and curatorial risks that have made it a global reference point in the design world.

link to the book
 

100 YEARS, 100 INGREDIENTS
Amélie Ambroise – Arclinea

In 2025, Arclinea celebrated its centenary with a series of cultural initiatives reflecting on its history and on the values that have shaped the brand over time: the kitchen as a space for relationships, conviviality as an everyday gesture, and design as a way of bringing function and vision together.

With 100 YEARS, 100 INGREDIENTS, photography became the language chosen to express the deeper meaning of the anniversary. The book brings together one hundred images of ingredients selected as emblems of Italy’s gastronomic heritage, photographed by Amélie Ambroise with art direction by Juma. Simple elements—a piece of fruit, a head of garlic, a root—are isolated and elevated to almost sculptural subjects, captured in their purest state before becoming material for culinary creativity. More than a celebratory coffee-table book, the volume offers a visual reflection on food as a cultural language and on the kitchen as a place where design, art and everyday life meet.

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Il giorno in cui vidi una bella sedia
Eugenio Perazza – Rizzoli

There’s something undeniably fairy-tale about the title The Day I Saw a Beautiful Chair, and it’s an apt clue to the tone of the book. Eugenio Perazza, the founder of Magis, doesn’t retrace his company’s history as a timeline but as a kind of modern fable—woven from instincts, encounters, and objects that seem to carry a touch of magic. He moves between personal memories, turning points, and the moment he first fell in love with design, sparked quite simply by seeing a chair that struck him as “beautiful”.
More than a memoir, the book mirrors the evolution of Magis itself: a story told through anecdotes, entrepreneurial leaps, collaborations with celebrated designers, and a view of design as a playground for curiosity and experimentation. It’s less corporate tribute than human narrative, offering the portrait of a company born from a single intuition and grown through the ability to believe in ideas long before they took shape. In 2025, it stands as one of the most vivid and personal accounts of contemporary Italian design.

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Imprinting
Tipoteca Italiana

In 2025, Tipoteca Italiana marked its thirtieth anniversary with Imprinting, an editorial project created to place paper and print at the centre of graphic thought, as both material presence and cultural memory. The publication approaches letterpress printing not as a technique of the past, but as a living language that brings invention and discipline together through tangible signs, forms and materials.

Imprinting is a book to be experienced with both the eyes and the hands. Its 188 pages and 17 original inserts form a kind of atlas of printing techniques, ranging from handmade paper to woodcut, from traditional typography to digital printing, guiding the reader through a sensory journey of paper, fibres, inks and typefaces. Each numbered copy, made unique by the historical fragments it contains, becomes an invitation to rediscover the value of printed matter and the deep dialogue between design, craftsmanship and visual culture that Tipoteca has been preserving for three decades.

 

Vitra: The Anatomy of a Design Company
Deyan Sudjic – Phaidon

Recently published, Vitra: The Anatomy of a Design Company offers a deep look at Vitra, the Swiss design company that has shaped the way we live and work since the 1950s by collaborating with generations of designers. From Ray and Charles Eames to Jean Prouvé and Verner Panton, and more recent figures like Jasper Morrison, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Vitra’s story is inseparable from the iconic products and architectural works it has helped bring to life.

Written by Deyan Sudjic with contributions by Karen Stein and a photographic essay by Iwan Baan, the book goes beyond a typical corporate history to explore how Vitra’s cultural and social mission has influenced contemporary design, architecture, and product thinking. Spanning more than 450 pages with over 400 illustrations, it offers insight into the company’s long-term working relationships with designers, the rich architectural heritage of the Vitra Campus and a rare view into the role of design in business and creative process.

link to the book