As part of the Asia Pacific Design Library’s Designing for Happiness lecture series and exhibition, speakers were invited to choose five books that had a significant impact on their practice. The selection was exhibited, and purchased if not in the Library’s collection (cheating a little, Jason choose books that all needed to be added to the catalog).

Walter Benjamin Illuminations 1969

“Any order is a balancing act of extreme precariousness.”

Bob Dylan Chronicles 2004

“The song rose up until I could read the look in its eyes.”

Pierre Bernard My Work is Not My Work 2008

“There is no common good that leads automatically to a single form of public communication... What is required is an equally differentiated rhetoric that can establish rules for speaking in different situations, for different audiences and for the multifarious objectives of governments. The structure of the public domain implies a few common basic rules for this differentiated rhetoric: communication should be based on truth and reliability, centered on the dignity of the citizen, on what ties citizens together and maintains the community as a prerequisite for individual life. For the communication designer in the public domain that means an understanding of the democratic and constitutional values that are to be symbolised.”

John Berger Shape of a Pocket 2003

“All that is left to share is the spectacle, the game that nobody plays and everybody can watch.”

Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki The Zen Doctrine of No Mind 1991

“The attempt to reach light by dispelling darkness is dualistic, and will never lead to the proper understanding of the mind.”