Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things


William McDonough - 2002
    But as architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart point out in this provocative, visionary book, such an approach only perpetuates the one-way, "cradle to grave" manufacturing model, dating to the Industrial Revolution, that creates such fantastic amounts of waste and pollution in the first place. Why not challenge the belief that human industry must damage the natural world? In fact, why not take nature itself as our model for making things? A tree produces thousands of blossoms in order to create another tree, yet we consider its abundance not wasteful but safe, beautiful, and highly effective.Waste equals food. Guided by this principle, McDonough and Braungart explain how products can be designed from the outset so that, after their useful lives, they will provide nourishment for something new. They can be conceived as "biological nutrients" that will easily reenter the water or soil without depositing synthetic materials and toxins. Or they can be "technical nutrients" that will continually circulate as pure and valuable materials within closed-loop industrial cycles, rather than being "recycled" -- really, downcycled -- into low-grade materials and uses. Drawing on their experience in (re)designing everything from carpeting to corporate campuses, McDonough and Braungart make an exciting and viable case for putting eco-effectiveness into practice, and show how anyone involved with making anything can begin to do as well.

You Can Draw in 30 Days: The Fun, Easy Way to Learn to Draw in One Month or Less


Mark Kistler - 2008
    With Emmy award-winning, longtime PBS host Mark Kistler as your guide, you'll learn the secrets of sophisticated three-dimensional renderings, and have fun along the way -- in just twenty minutes a day for a month. Inside you'll find:Quick and easy step-by-step instructions for drawing everything from simple spheres to apples, trees, buildings, and the human hand and faceMore than 500 line drawings, illustrating each stepTime-tested tips, techniques, and tutorials for drawing in 3-DThe 9 Fundamental Laws of Drawing to create the illusion of depth in any drawing75 student examples to encourage you in the process

The Best Camera Is the One That's with You: iPhone Photography


Chase Jarvis - 2009
    In The Best Camera Is The One That's With You, Chase reimagines, examines, and redefines the intersection of art and popular culture through images shot with his iPhone. The pictures in the book, all taken with Chase's iPhone, make up a visual notebook-a photographic journal-from the past year of his life. The book is full of visually-rich iPhone photos and peppered with inspiring anecdotes. Two megapixels at a time, these images have been gathered and bound into a book that represents a stake in the ground. With it, Chase underscores the idea that an image can come from any camera, even a mobile phone. As Chase writes, Inherently, we all know that an image isn't measured by its resolution, dynamic range, or anything technical. It's measured by the simple-sometimes profound, other times absurd or humorous or whimsical-effect that it can have upon us. If you can see it, it can move you.This book is geared to inspire everyone, regardless of their level of photography knowledge, that you can capture moments and share them with our friends, families, loved ones, or the world at the press of a button. Readers of The Best Camera Is The One That's With You will also enjoy the iPhone application Chase Jarvis created in conjunction with this book, appropriately named Best Camera. Best Camera has a unique set of filters and effects that can be applied at the touch of a button. Stack them. Mix them. Remix them. Best Camera also allows you to share directly to a host of social marketing sites via www.thebestcamera.com, a new online community that allows you to contribution to a living, breathing gallery of the best iPhone photography from around the globe. Together, the book, app, and website, represent a first-of-its-kind ecosystem dedicated to encouraging creativity through picture taking with the camera that you already have. The Best Camera Is The One That's With You-shoot!

Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace


Nikil Saval - 2010
    From "Bartleby the Scrivener" to The Office, from the steno pool to the open-plan cubicle farm, Cubed is a fascinating, often funny, and sometimes disturbing anatomy of the white-collar world and how it came to be the way it is—and what it might become.In the mid-nineteenth century clerks worked in small, dank spaces called “counting-houses.” These were all-male enclaves, where work was just paperwork. Most Americans considered clerks to be questionable dandies, who didn’t do “real work.” But the joke was on them: as the great historical shifts from agricultural to industrial economies took place, and then from industrial to information economies, the organization of the workplace evolved along with them—and the clerks took over. Offices became rationalized, designed for both greater efficiency in the accomplishments of clerical work and the enhancement of worker productivity. Women entered the office by the millions, and revolutionized the social world from within. Skyscrapers filled with office space came to tower over cities everywhere. Cubed opens our eyes to what is a truly "secret history" of changes so obvious and ubiquitous that we've hardly noticed them. From the wood-paneled executive suite to the advent of the cubicles where 60% of Americans now work (and 93% of them dislike it) to a not-too-distant future where we might work anywhere at any time (and perhaps all the time), Cubed excavates from popular books, movies, comic strips (Dilbert!), and a vast amount of management literature and business history, the reasons why our workplaces are the way they are—and how they might be better.

Alvar Aalto, 1898-1976: Paradise for the Man in the Street


Peter Gossel - 2004
    Aalto turned to ideas based on Functionalism, subsequently moving toward more organic structures, with brick and wood replacing plaster and steel. He also designed buildings, furniture, lamps, and glass objects. Contains approximately 120 images, including photographs, sketches, drawings, and floor plans Introductory essays explore the architect's life and work, touching on family and background as well as collaborations with other architects The body presents the most important works in chronological order, with descriptions of client and/or architect wishes, construction problems and resolutions The appendix includes a list of complete or selected works, biography, bibliography and a map indicating the locations of the architect's most famous buildings

The Basics of User Experience Design: A UX Design Book by the Interaction Design Foundation


Mads Soegaard - 2018
     You'll cover a wide range of topics over nine highly readable chapters, with each one acting as a mini crash course. By the end, you'll have been introduced to the key concepts, best practices, and guidelines in areas such as: - User Experience (UX) Design - Design Thinking - Usability - User Research - Interaction Design - Mobile Web Design - Information Visualization Whether you're looking to embark on a new career in the field of UX design, are trying to boost your current skill-set, or are simply interested in learning more about the topic, then this short ebook is the perfect place to start your journey! You can find out more about the Interaction Design Foundation at interaction-design.org. As an independent, nonprofit initiative, we are constantly striving to make design education as accessible and affordable as possible, no matter where you are in the world.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die


Chip Heath - 2006
    Meanwhile, people with important ideas--entrepreneurs, teachers, politicians, and journalists--struggle to make them "stick."In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps. Along the way, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds--from the infamous "kidney theft ring" hoax to a coach's lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony--draw their power from the same six traits.Made to Stick will transform the way you communicate. It's a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures): the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice.Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas--and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.

Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping


Paco Underhill - 1999
    Why We Buy is based on hard data gleaned from thousands of hours of field research–in shopping malls, department stores, and supermarkets across America. With his team of sleuths tracking our every move, Paco Underhill lays bare the struggle among merchants, marketers, and increasingly knowledgeable consumers for control.

Ways of Seeing


John Berger - 1972
    First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the (London) Sunday Times critic commented: "This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings . . . he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures." By now he has."Berger has the ability to cut right through the mystification of the professional art critics . . . He is a liberator of images: and once we have allowed the paintings to work on us directly, we are in a much better position to make a meaningful evaluation" —Peter Fuller, Arts Review"The influence of the series and the book . . . was enormous . . . It opened up for general attention to areas of cultural study that are now commonplace" —Geoff Dyer in Ways of TellingWinner of the 1972 Booker Prize for his novel, G., John Peter Berger (born November 5th, 1926) is an art critic, painter and author of many novels including A Painter of Our Time, From A to X and Bento’s Sketchbook.

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience


Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - 1990
    During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience teaches how, by ordering the information that enters our consciousness, we can discover true happiness, unlock our potential, and greatly improve the quality of our lives.

Municipal Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Council Housing


John Boughton - 2018
    This history begins in the slum clearances of the late nineteenth century and the aspirations of those who would build anew. John Boughton looks at how and why the state's duty to house its people decently became central to our politics. Traversing the UK, Boughton offers an architectural tour of some of the best and most remarkable of our housing estates, as well as many accounted ordinary; he asks us to understand better their complex story and to rethink our prejudices. His accounts include extraordinary planners and architects who wished to elevate working men and women through design and the politicians, high and low, who shaped their work, the competing ideologies which have promoted state housing and condemned it, the economics which has always constrained our housing ideals, the crisis wrought by Right to Buy, and the evolving controversies around regeneration. He shows how the loss of the dream of good housing for all is a danger for the whole of society - as was seen in the fire in Grenfell Tower.

Outspoken: Conversations on Church Communication


Tim SchraederPhil Cooke - 2011
    Unfortunately, most churches aren't doing a great job of communicating it. The way the world communicates has changed dramatically in recent years. With the rise of the web and social media, many churches are in the dark about where to go or what to do next. Drawing on the wisdom and insight from over 60 leading experts in various fields of church communication, this book provides a comprehensive resource for church leaders sharing how the church can leverage new media to effectively connect people with the gospel. From branding and design, to websites and social media, there are endless ways your church can cut through the static and help the message of the gospel be heard clearly. We've got a message worth sharing. It's time we learn how to communicate it and communicate it well. It's time to be outspoken!

It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be


Paul Arden - 2003
    If you want to succeed in life or business, this book is a must.

Amish Garden: A Year In The Life Of An Amish Garden


Laura Anne Lapp - 2013
    

Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education


Jay Timothy Dolmage - 2017
    For too long, argues Jay Timothy Dolmage, disability has been constructed as the antithesis of higher education, often positioned as a distraction, a drain, a problem to be solved. The ethic of higher education encourages students and teachers alike to accentuate ability, valorize perfection, and stigmatize anything that hints at intellectual, mental, or physical weakness, even as we gesture toward the value of diversity and innovation. Examining everything from campus accommodation processes, to architecture, to popular films about college life, Dolmage argues that disability is central to higher education, and that building more inclusive schools allows better education for all.