Book picks similar to
How to by Michael Bierut


design
graphic-design
non-fiction
art

Hello World: Where Design Meets Life


Alice Rawsthorn - 2012
    When deployed wisely, it can bring us pleasure, choice, strength, decency and much more. But if its power is abused, the outcome can be wasteful, confusing, humiliating, even dangerous. None of us can avoid being affected by design, whether or not we wish to. It is so ubiquitous that it determines how we feel and what we do, often without our noticing.Hello World explores design's influence on our lives. Written by the renowned design critic Alice Rawsthorn and designed by the award-winning book designer Irma Boom, it describes how warlords, scientists, farmers, hackers, activists and designers have used design to different ends throughout history: from the macabre symbol invented by 18th century pirates to terrorise their victims into surrender, to one woman's quest for the best possible prosthetic legs and the evolution of the World Cup ball.At a time when we face colossal changes, unprecedented in their speed, scale and intensity - from the deepening environmental crisis, to giant leaps in science and technology - Hello World explains how design can help us to make sense of them andto turn them to our advantage.

Typography Essentials: 100 Design Principles for Working with Type


Ina Saltz - 2009
    This comprehensive guide is intended to advance the progress of designers seeking to deepen their typographic expertise. Typography Essentials is a practical, hands-on resource to distill, organize, and compartmentalize—but not to oversimplify—the many complex issues surrounding the effective use of typography. It is for designers of every medium in which type plays a major role, and is organized and designed to make the process enjoyable and entertaining, as well as instructional.This book is divided into four easy-to-use sections: The Letter, The Word, The Paragraph, and The Page. Each of the 100 principles has an explanation and examples representing the principle in action.

The Sketchnote Handbook: The Illustrated Guide to Visual Note Taking


Mike Rohde - 2012
    Author Mike Rohde shows you how to incorporate sketchnoting techniques into your note-taking process--regardless of your artistic abilities--to help you better process the information that you are hearing and seeing through drawing, and to actually have fun taking notes. The Sketchnote Handbook explains and illustrates practical sketchnote techniques for taking visual notes at your own pace as well as in real time during meetings and events. Rhode also addresses most people's fear of drawing by showing, step-by-step, how to quickly draw people, faces, type, and simple objects for effective and fast sketchnoting. The book looks like a peek into the author's private sketchnote journal, but it functions like a beginner's guide to sketchnoting with easy-to-follow instructions for drawing out your notes that will leave you itching to attend a meeting just so you can draw about it.

User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play


Cliff Kuang - 2019
    Spanning over a century of sweeping changes, from women's rights to the Great Depression to World War II to the rise of the digital era, this book unpacks the ways in which the world has been--and continues to be--remade according to the principles of the once-obscure discipline of user-experience design.In this essential text, Kuang and Fabricant map the hidden rules of the designed world and shed light on how those rules have caused our world to change--an underappreciated but essential history that's pieced together for the first time. Combining the expertise and insight of a leading journalist and a pioneering designer, User Friendly provides a definitive, thoughtful, and practical perspective on a topic that has rapidly gone from arcane to urgent to inescapable. In User Friendly, Kuang and Fabricant tell the whole story for the first time--and you'll never interact with technology the same way again.

A Smile in the Mind


Beryl McAlhone - 1996
    Witty thinking is playfulness with ideas, words playing against images, and unexpected connections prompting new insights. It is clever thinking, not funny drawing.A Smile in the Mind analyses the intricate thought processes behind the apparently forward images. It shows how to make the case for witty solutions and, through a series of in-depth interviews with the world's top designers, suggests how to get inspiration. Gathering together the best examples of graphic wit over the past three decades, this book includes work from over 300 designers in the USA, Britain, Europe and Japan. Written with insight and a subtle lightness of touch, it offers designers a friendly read, a helpful sourcebook and a dynamic trigger for ideas.

Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams


Klaus Klemp - 2011
    His elegantly clear visual language not only defined product design for decades, but also our fundamental understanding of what design is and what it can and should do. Dieter Rams created ten rules of design more than twenty years ago. Sometimes referred to as the ten commandments, they are just as relevant today: Good design is innovative. Good design makes a product useful. Good design is aesthetic. Good design helps a product to be understood. Good design is unobtrusive. Good design is honest. Good design is durable. Good design is consistent to the last detail. Good design is environmentally friendly. Good design is as little design as possible. Less and More elucidates the design philosophy of Dieter Rams. The book contains images of hundreds of Rams's products as well as his sketches and models from Braun stereo systems and electric shavers to the chairs and shelving systems that he created for Vitsoe and his own company sdr+. In addition to the rich visual presentation of his designs, the book contains new texts by international design experts that explain how the work was created, describe its timeless quality, and put it into current context. In this way, the work of Dieter Rams is given a contemporary reevaluation that is especially useful in light of the rediscovery of functionalism and rationalism in today s design. Less and More shows us the possibilities that design opens for both the manufacturer and the consumer as a means of making our lives better through attractive, functional solutions that also save resources. "

Layout Essentials: 100 Design Principles for Using Grids


Beth Tondreau - 2009
    However, knowing how to bend the rules and make certain grids work for the job at hand takes skill.This book will outline and demonstrate basic layout/grid guidelines and rules through 100 entries including choosing the a typeface for the project, striving for rhythm and balance with type, combining typefaces, using special characters and kerning and legibility. These essentials of grid design are critical to the success of any job.

Typographic Design: Form and Communication


Rob Carter - 1993
    Staying abreast of recent developments in the field is imperative for both design professionals and students. Thoroughly updated to maintain its relevancy in today's digital world, Typographic Design: Form and Communication, Fourth Edition continues to provide a compre-hensive overview of every aspect of designing with type, now in full color. This Fourth Edition of the bestselling text in the field offers detailed coverage of such essential topics as the anatomy of letters and type families, visual communications and design aesthetics, and designing for legibility. Supplementing these essential topics are theoret-ical and structural problem-solving approaches by some of the leading design educators across the United States. Unwrapping the underlying concepts about typographic form and message, Typographic Design, Fourth Edition includes four pictorial timelines that illustrate the evolution of typography and writing within the context of world events - from the origins of writing more than 5,000 years ago to contemporary Web site and electronic page design. New features include: Full-color treatment throughout A new ancillary Web site containing resources for self-learners, students and professors (www.typographicdesign4e.com) Two new chapters: The Typographic Grid and Typographic Design Process An updated design education section that includes recent examples of projects assigned by leading design educators New case studies that showcase design for Web sites and animated typography projects Case studies detailing examples of visual identification systems, environmental graphics, book and magazine design, Web site design, type in motion, and wayfinding graphics Updated coverage of digital type technology

Designers Don't Read


Austin Howe - 2009
    He believes “in the wonder and exuberance of someone who gets paid-by clients to do what he loves.” Howe places immense value on curiosity and passion to help designers develop a point of view, a strong voice. He explores the creative process and conceptualization, and delves into what to do when inspiration is lacking. If there’s a villain in these elegant, incisive, amusing, and inspiring essays, it’s ad agencies and marketing directors, but even villains serve a purpose and illustrate the strength of graphic design “as a system, as a way of thinking, as almost a life style.” Howe believes that advertising and design must merge, but merge with design in the leadership role. He says that designers should create for clients and not in the hope of winning awards. He believes designers should swear “a 10-year commitment to make everything we do for every client a gift.” If this sounds like the designer is the client’s factotum, not so. Howe also argues in favor of offering clients a single solution and being willing to defend a great design. Organized not only by topic, but also by how long it will take the average reader to complete each chapter, Designers Don’t Read is intended to function like a “daily devotional” for designers and busy professionals involved in branded communications at all levels. Begun as a series of weekly essays sent every Monday morning to top graphic designers, Designers Don’t Read quickly developed a passionate and widespread following. With the approximate time each chapter might take to read, Designers Don’t Read’s delight and provocation can be fit into the niches in the life of a time-challenged designer. Or it may be hard to resist reading the entire book in one sitting!

This is Service Design Thinking: Basics – Tools – Cases


Marc Stickdorn - 2010
    Service Design is a bit of a buzzword these days and has gained a lot of interest from various fields. This book, assembled to describe and illustrate the emerging field of service design, was brought together using exactly the same co-creative and user-centred approaches you can read and learn about inside. The boundaries between products and services are blurring and it is time for a different way of thinking: this is service design thinking.A set of 23 international authors and even more online contributors from the global service design community invested their knwoledge, experience and passion together to create this book. It introduces service design thinking in a manner accessible to beginners and students, it broadens the knowledge and can act as a resource for experienced design professionals.

The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web


Jesse James Garrett - 2002
    This book aims to minimize the complexity of user-centered design for the Web with explanations and illustrations that focus on ideas rather than tools or techniques.

Microinteractions: Designing with Details


Dan Saffer - 2013
    With this practical book, you’ll learn how to design effective microinteractions: the small details that exist inside and around features. How can users change a setting? How do they turn on mute, or know they have a new email message?Through vivid, real-world examples from today’s devices and applications, author Dan Saffer walks you through a microinteraction’s essential parts, then shows you how to use them in a mobile app, a web widget, and an appliance. You’ll quickly discover how microinteractions can change a product from one that’s tolerated into one that’s treasured.Explore a microinteraction’s structure: triggers, rules, feedback, modes, and loopsLearn the types of triggers that initiate a microinteractionCreate simple rules that define how your microinteraction can be usedHelp users understand the rules with feedback, using graphics, sounds, and vibrationsUse modes to let users set preferences or modify a microinteractionExtend a microinteraction’s life with loops, such as “Get data every 30 seconds”

Designing with Type: The Essential Guide to Typography


James Craig - 1971
    New information and new images make this perennial best-seller an even more valuable tool for anyone interested in learning about typography. The fifth edition has been integrated with a convenient website, www.designingwithtype.com, where students and teachers can examine hundreds of design solutions and explore a world of typographic information. First published more than thirty-five years ago, Designing with Type has sold more than 250,000 copies—and this fully updated edition, with its new online resource, will educate and inspire a new generation of designers.

The Little Black Book of Design


Adam Judge - 2009
    Like an Art of War for design, this slim volume contains guidance, inspiration, and reassurance for all those who labor with the user in mind. If you work on the web, in print, or in film or video, this book can help. If you know someone working on the creative arena, this makes a great gift. Funny, too.Look for fresh aphorisms on our Facebook page.

Well-Designed: How to Use Empathy to Create Products People Love


Jon Kolko - 2014
    But in a world obsessed with the new, where cool added features often trump actual customer needs, it’s the consumer who suffers. In our quest to be more agile, we end up creating products that underwhelm.So how does a company like Nest, creator of the mundane thermostat, earn accolades like “beautiful” and “revolutionary” and a $3.2 billion Google buyout? What did Nest do differently to create a household product that people speak of with love?Nest, and companies like it, understand that emotional connection is critical to product development. And they use a clear, repeatable design process that focuses squarely on consumer engagement rather than piling on features for features’ sake.In this refreshingly jargon-free and practical book, product design expert Jon Kolko maps out this process, demonstrating how it will help you and your team conceive and build successful, emotionally resonant products again and again.The key, says Kolko, is empathy. You need to deeply understand customer needs and feelings, and this understanding must be reflected in the product. In successive chapters of the book, we see how leading companies use a design process of storytelling and iteration that evokes positive emotions, changes behavior, and creates deep engagement. Here are the four key steps:1. Determine a product-market fit by seeking signals from communities of users.2. Identify behavioral insights by conducting ethnographic research.3. Sketch a product strategy by synthesizing complex research data into simple insights.4. Polish the product details using visual representations to simplify complex ideas.Kolko walks the reader through each step, sharing eye-opening insights from his fifteen-year career in product design along the way.Whether you’re a designer, a product developer, or a marketer thinking about your company’s next offering, this book will forever change the way you think about—and create—successful products.