Book picks similar to
Marks of Excellence by Per Mollerup


design
graphic-design
non-fiction
reference

Principles of Form and Design


Wucius Wong - 1993
    This is a master class in the principles and practical fundamentals of design that will appeal to a broad audience of graphic artists and designers.

The Art of Color: The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color


Johannes Itten - 1961
    Subjective feelings and objective color principles are described in detail and clarified by color reproductions.

Designing with Web Standards


Jeffrey Zeldman - 2003
    And code. And code. You build only to rebuild. You focus on making your site compatible with almost every browser or wireless device ever put out there. Then along comes a new device or a new browser, and you start all over again.You can get off the merry-go-round.It's time to stop living in the past and get away from the days of spaghetti code, insanely nested table layouts, tags, and other redundancies that double and triple the bandwidth of even the simplest sites. Instead, it's time for forward compatibility.Isn't it high time you started designing with web standards?Standards aren't about leaving users behind or adhering to inflexible rules. Standards are about building sophisticated, beautiful sites that will work as well tomorrow as they do today. You can't afford to design tomorrow's sites with yesterday's piecemeal methods.Jeffrey teaches you to:- Slash design, development, and quality assurance costs (or do great work in spite of constrained budgets)- Deliver superb design and sophisticated functionality without worrying about browser incompatibilities- Set up your site to work as well five years from now as it does today- Redesign in hours instead of days or weeks- Welcome new visitors and make your content more visible to search engines- Stay on the right side of accessibility laws and guidelines- Support wireless and PDA users without the hassle and expense of multiple versions- Improve user experience with faster load times and fewer compatibility headaches- Separate presentation from structure and behavior, facilitating advanced publishing workflows

Creative Lettering: Techniques Tips from Top Artists


Jenny Doh - 2013
    Sixteen accomplished contributors—including calligraphers, painters, collagists, card makers, fiber artists, and graphic designers—give their personal perspectives on lettering. They all offer their favorite tools, how they use them, their signature technique with step-by-step instructions and photos, and an alphabet sampler of their own font. Gorgeous gallery images of each contributors work are also included. Contributors include:Andy Ainger   •   Francois Begnez   •   Flora Chang   •   Barbara Close   •   Philippe Debongnie   •  Karyn Denten   •   Aimee Dolich   •   Lisa Engelbrecht   •   Pam Garrison  •   Stine Kaasa   •   Rhianna Lederman   •   Martha Lever   •   Linda Schneider   •   Jessica Swift   •   Madeline Tomkins   •   Lori Vilegen   •

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.

The Art of Horizon Zero Dawn


Paul Davies - 2017
    The Art of Horizon Zero Dawn is the ultimate gallery of the hotly anticipated new IP from Guerrilla Games (Killzone series). It focuses on the stunning artwork used to develop the game, and includes over 300 images, sketches, and concept art, commentary throughout from the artists and creators. This is an in-depth insight into a world as beautiful as it is dangerous. Over 1000 years ago a cataclysm destroyed life as we know it, forcing humans to the brink of extinction. In our place machines rose, and nature took back our cities, until all that was left of our world was the rumours of the old ones and the ruins of a civilisation long past. The tribes of the new world live scattered, some small and humble, some as powerful as kings. If Aloy, an outcast and hunter, is to find her true place in this world she must combat the great robotic creatures of the land and uncover the mysteries of a lost civilisation.

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 A-Z of Visual Ideas: How to Solve Any Creative Brief


John Ingledew - 2011
    Aimed principally at the student market, the book shows where ideas and inspiration come from and helps unlock the reader s creativity, providing numerous strategies to help solve creative briefs and design problems. Using an upbeat, dynamic and easy-to-understand A Z format, the book reveals techniques that can be exploited to deliver ideas with greater impact, with each entry offering a different starting point. Entries include everything from Intuition and Instinct to Happy Accidents and Hidden Messages, and feature a section explaining how to use the idea or technique, providing readers with an infallible tool kit of inspiration. Including hundreds of inspirational quotes from creative people and packed with great examples of advertising campaigns, posters, book and magazine covers, illustrations and editorial images, this indispensable creative primer also includes previously unpublished photographic work.

Damn Good Advice (For People with Talent!): How To Unleash Your Creative Potential by America's Master Communicator, George Lois


George Lois - 2012
    Offering indispensle lessons, practical advice, facts, anecdotes and inspiration, this book is a timeless creative bible for all those looking to succeed in life, business and creativity. These are key lessons derived from the incomparle life of 'Master Communicator' George Lois, the original Mad Man of Madison Avenue. Written and compiled by the man The Wall Street Journal called "prodigy, enfant terrible, founder of agencies, creator of legends," each step is borne from a passion to succeed and a disdain for the status quo.Organised into inspirational, bite-sized pointers, each page offers fresh insight into the sources of success, from identifying your heroes to identifying yourself. The ideas, images and illustrations presented in this book are fresh, witty and in-your-face. Whether it's communicating your point in nanosecond, creating an explosive portfolio or making your presence felt, no one is better placed than George Lois to teach you the process of creativity.Poignant, punchy and to-the-point, Damn Good Advice (For People With Talent!) is a must have for anyone on a quest for success.

Can Jokes Bring Down Governments? Memes, Design and Politics.


Metahaven - 2013
    Strangling economies with their austerity policies, they assure us that they have no choice. In a world where “there is no alternative”, how do you dissent? Once upon a time, graphic designers would have made political posters and typeset manifestos. Today, protest has new strategies. Enter the internet meme. With its Darwinian survival skills and its viral potential, the meme is a way of scaling up protest. Hackers and activists have learned to unleash the destructive force of a Rick Astley video. They have let slip the Lolcats of war. Pranks have become a resistance strategy. As the rise of Beppe Grillo in Italy testifies, this may be the hour to fight nonsense with nonsense. Jokes are an open-source weapon of politics, and it is time to tap their power.

Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite


Paul Arden - 2006
    Filled with fun anecdotes, quirky photos, and off-the-wall business advice, the provocative sequel to "It's Not How Good You Are, It's How good You Want to Be" reveals the surprising power of bad decisions.

Inside Paragraphs: typographic fundamentals


Cyrus Highsmith - 2012
    This book goes in depth on setting tracts of text for long reading, with a strong emphasis on print.

The Art of My Neighbor Totoro


Hayao Miyazaki - 2005
    in Japan.

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.

The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life


Twyla Tharp - 2003
    It is the product of preparation and effort, and it's within reach of everyone who wants to achieve it. All it takes is the willingness to make creativity a habit, an integral part of your life: In order to be creative, you have to know how to prepare to be creative. In The Creative Habit, Tharp takes the lessons she has learned in her remarkable thirty-five-year career and shares them with you, whatever creative impulses you follow -- whether you are a painter, composer, writer, director, choreographer, or, for that matter, a businessperson working on a deal, a chef developing a new dish, a mother wanting her child to see the world anew. When Tharp is at a creative dead end, she relies on a lifetime of exercises to help her get out of the rut, and The Creative Habit contains more than thirty of them to ease the fears of anyone facing a blank beginning and to open the mind to new possibilities. Tharp's exercises are practical and immediately doable -- for the novice or expert. In "Where's Your Pencil?" she reminds us to observe the world -- and get it down on paper. In "Coins and Chaos," she provides the simplest of mental games to restore order and peace. In "Do a Verb," she turns your mind and body into coworkers. In "Build a Bridge to the Next Day," she shows how to clean your cluttered mind overnight. To Tharp, sustained creativity begins with rituals, self-knowledge, harnessing your memories, and organizing your materials (so no insight is ever lost). Along the way she leads you by the hand through the painful first steps of scratching for ideas, finding the spine of your work, and getting out of ruts into productive grooves. In her creative realm, optimism rules. An empty room, a bare desk, a blank canvas can be energizing, not demoralizing. And in this inventive, encouraging book, Twyla Tharp shows us how to take a deep breath and begin!