A guidebook to the unnoticed yet essential elements of our cities, from the creators of the 99% Invisible podcast . Have you ever wondered what those bright, squiggly graffiti marks on the sidewalk mean? Or stopped to consider why you don't see metal fire escapes on new buildings? Or pondered the story behind those dancing inflatable figures in car dealerships? 99% Invisib A guidebook to the unnoticed yet essential elements of our cities, from the creators of the 99% Invisible podc...
| Title | : | The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design |
| Author | : | Roman Mars |
| Rating | : | |
| Genres | : | Nonfiction |
| ISBN | : | 0358126606 |
| Edition Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 400 pages pages |
The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design Reviews
I feel like this book was intended as just a signal, ?I?m so cool I own this book? and not actually to be read. The sections are so short as to barely convey any interesting information (the opposite of why the podcast is so good), and in dozens of places a picture or image of th...
"The 99% Invisible City" explains how different design features in cities have come about and why they are that way. These are short entries, only two or three pages long per topic. Rather than looking at the best design, we're often told about a poor design that doesn&a...
Potato-chip morsels of education and entertainment, and for some reason I kept hearing it in my head in Roman Mars's voice. But it never quite satisfies. It doesn't have the depth of discovery from the podcast. These are articles with scope instead of sprawling interviews ...
Reading about architecture can be fun, as well as learning about style elements, landscaping, even the urban animal populations and their effect on urban life. ...
This is not a book, it's a long and tedious list of random stuff loosely organized into chapters. It's the most bored I've ever been reading something fascinating. This is not a book, it's a long and tedious list of random stuff loosely organized into chapters. It's t...
I found this book to be fascinating! So many little tidbits to be discovered. From subjects as different as the meanings of those little colored paint markings you find on your road, to big things like decisions in historic preservation. It just amazed me as to how my eyes have been op...
The 99% Invisible City by Roman Mars is a free NetGalley ebook that I read in early October. Chapters on city planning, utilities, signage, and public works & safety - there's a mix of graphics in the sense that there ink drawings and photo-realistic illustrations. The scop...
This was a really fun book that apparently is a spin-off from the Podcast of the same name. I now have something else to binge listen to, woot! I don't really know how much of what is discussed in the book is really "invisible", other than the back-story behind many ...
Fascinating Text; Frustrating Lack of Illustrations This book is loaded with odds and ends that run the gamut from well organized long form essays to factoids and bits of trivia. The structure is a touch idiosyncratic but makes reasonable sense overall. I guess that figures for a bo...
This is a great coffee table book, full of short (1-2 page) stories about the little design choices around us that we never notice. It piqued my curiosity about a whole bunch of topics that I have to go Wikipedia now. One little quibble: the only non-text elements are charming pen illu...
I received a free digital copy of this book via NetGalley for an honest review. 99% Invisible is consistently one of my favorite podcasts. Even when episodes are focused on topics that I know something about, I always learn something new--and more frequently, the episodes highlight ...
yikes, what a disappointment this was, especially as a longtime fan of the show Save yourself the money (or effort to get from a library) and stick to the podcast and more importantly to the excellent website content. This book contains little of the narrative charm of the podca...
DNF. 2 pages isn't enough space to get into these topics with enough depth to find much beyond what could be surmised by looking at these objects in the wild. Essentially a book full of anecdotes, another example of the podcast -> book conversion that didn't seem to ef...
(audiobook) This is one of my favorite podcasts, and the book is like a whole bunch of podcast episodes. What's not to like? Lowering one star for the audiobook version because the print version has pictures that you don't get to see through your ears. But you can still tell ...
As a longtime listener to (who is still not yet caught up with) the podcast 99% Invisible I was excited for this book, perhaps because I didn't realize how much of it was just ... the podcast. I've listened to maybe half of the episodes, and every few pages I encountered some...
I really enjoyed this book. If you are inquisitive and like wandering around cities, noticing little details that seem to pop out at you-- sometimes strange or puzzling-- this book may take some of the mystery out of the equation. Other readers will find themselves searching for crypti...
Amazing stories! Would benefit from some additional photos to accompany key visual stories (although the drawings included are fantastic) ...
I discovered 99% Invisible's podcast in 2012 and they have been telling interesting design stories in new exciting ways. (I immediately digested their whole backcatalog) The 99% Invisible City is a wonderful revisiting and update of many topics, not a cut-and-paste of transcripts,...
Design is one of those things that one struggles to define, even though its one of the most prominent things around us. I did an internship at a design museum a few years ago, and while I have a better grip on it than I did before, I came out of it still hardly knowing how to describe ...
Pre-COVID days, I took public transport quite often. Unfortunately, I'm unable to read on the bus because I get travel sickness. I also can't do audiobooks for whatever reason. I'll sometimes listen to music, but? there's something about podcasts that make the bus...- Don't confuse this book with Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities ? they're really quite different things. This bumper pack of social history, engineering history and so on asks us to take a closer look at what makes a city, that we don't normally consider. Road layou...
- I'm a long time listener of the "99% Invisible" podcast and really expected to like this book. Unfortunately it felt overly broad. If they'd edited down the number of entries and included more on each topic it would have been so much better. As written it's a l...
Like an extended version of the "Stories" episodes that 99 Percent Invisible annually releases, this book jumps quickly from from topic to topic. However, it's well organized so that every story rolls up to a chapter theme, and more broadly the book focuses soley on desi...
I absolutely loved everything about this book - the illustrations, the subject, the style. It was so clearly written, yet well researched. My favorite chapter was the one on the raccoons and ths squirrels! ...
The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design by Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt is a fascinating collection of stories and descriptions that explain all sorts of things associated with city infrastructure. Many of these topics cover things that you?ve se...
This is an interesting book about city design that is mostly unknown, but the lack of photos is really frustrating. There are graphic illustrations at times, but as another reviewer mentioned, you really want to see pictures of the elements that are described. Also, I thought it would ...
This book is not for people who have regularly followed the podcast and/or have gone back and listened to all the episodes they've missed. I think that there were only maybe a half dozen articles in this book that are not from past episodes or articles. I know not everyone is int...- I am already a plaque reader, but this book opened my eyes to the unseen wonders of the city. ...
As a Beautiful Nerd, I'm beyond excited to hold this wonderful book in my hands. 99 Percent Invisible is a treasure trove of design-based trivia, of which is both eye opening and endlessly amusing. As a Beautiful Nerd, I'm beyond excited to hold this wonderful book in my hands....- Great read about (mostly) unknown city design. The graphic illustrations are an interesting design choice, too! ...
