Atlas of Furniture Design

Vitra Design Museum

2019




Published by the Vitra Design Museum, the Atlas of Furniture Design is an in-depth history of modern furniture design from the late 18th century until today, featuring 1,740 objects, spanning over 1,028 pages, and covering four epochs in modern furniture design history, starting in 1780 until the present day.

The museum's immense furniture collection is the foundation for this book, which took over 20 years to research. This project required an intuitive way-finding system. The solution was a cross referencing system of color-coded dots and object numbers to allow the reader to easily navigate through the atlas. The colors represent the different typologies of furniture in the book.

The system appears in all sections of the books - in object texts, infographics, and a large range of endmatter materials and indexes.

Much of the high volume information in the book is presented by numerous infographics spreads, providing multiple overviews on political and cultural events, styles and movements, as well as techniques and materials that changed and influenced furniture design throughout history.