Unit Editions

Books by designers, for designers.

Unit Editions is an independent publisher of books on graphic design and visual culture. Co-founded in 2009 by SPIN directors Tony Brook and Patricia Finegan alongside author Adrian Shaughnessy, Unit has to date published almost fifty books — most often monographs on individual designers and studios or deep dives into design history.

Pentagram: Living by Design marks the fiftieth anniversary of the international design firm and collects Pentagram work from across its lifetime together with a biographical essay on the group, plus partner profiles, selected writings and more. We were commissioned to design the book, which comes in two volumes at a combined 1400 pages. Our design includes three colour variations for the cover and a range of special colours and paper stocks. 

Unit’s mission is to pair high-quality design and production standards with insightful texts to do justice to subjects often neglected by mainstream publishers. Unit’s extensive archiving of design culture and the quality of its design and writing have gained it a strong reputation in the design community and enabled it to have a major impact on the design publishing world, with its books often highly sought after.

The majority of Unit books have been designed by SPIN, from its very first publications up until its most recent book (Pentagram: Living by Design). Examples include TD 63–73, a monograph on the pioneering Dutch studio Total Design; Manuals 1 and 2, comprehensive studies of corporate identity manuals; and Wim Crouwel: A Graphic Odyssey, the catalogue for the Design Museum’s exhibition of the same name. 

Our studio monograph SPIN: 360° was published by Unit Editions in 2015. Over the course of 500 pages, the book records more than two decades of work, offering an expansive and in-depth view of our output, history and culture. Looking at SPIN both from within and without, the book features contributions from leading designers and design writers, plus interviews and reflections with Spin teams and clients past and present. 

Since then, both issues of our journal Adventures in Typography have also been published by Unit. Spread over fifty-odd pages, each instalment of the journal is a visual record of our recent creative interests, taking an unorthodox look at the possibilities of typographic form. Playful, witty and experimental, Adventures in Typography offers us a way to share unseen and self-initiated work while showcasing the journeys the studio takes with lettering.