Designing for People


Henry Dreyfuss - 1967
    Dreyfuss have shaped the cultural landscape of the 20th century. Written in a robust, fresh style, this book offers an inviting mix of professional advice, case studies, and design history along with historical black-and-white photos and the author's whimsical drawings. In addition, the author's uncompromising commitment to public service, ethics, and design responsibility makes this masterful guide a timely read for today's designers.

The Information Design Handbook


Jenn Visocky O'Grady - 2008
    The Information Design Handbook celebrates graphics that are exemplars of communication and esthetics, and reveals the thought processes and design skills behind them. This comprehensive guide to creating information graphics is packed with essential design principles, case studies, color palettes, trouble-shooting tips, and much more. Designers will learn to achieve graphics that are visually striking yet concise and supremely funcitional with this must-have resource.

Seductive Interaction Design: Creating Playful, Fun, and Effective User Experiences


Stephen P. Anderson - 2011
    Anderson takes a fresh approach to designing sites and interactions based on the stages of seduction. This beautifully designed book examines what motivates people to act.Topics include: AESTHETICS, BEAUTY, AND BEHAVIOR: Why do striking visuals grab our attention? And how do emotions affect judgment and behavior? PLAYFUL SEDUCTION: How do you create playful engagements during the moment? Why are serendipity, arousal, rewards, and other delights critical to a good experience? THE SUBTLE ART OF SEDUCTION: How do you put people at ease through clear and suggestive language? What are some subtle ways to influence behavior and get people to move from intent to action? THE GAME OF SEDUCTION: How do you continue motivating people long after the first encounter? Are there lessons to be gained from learning theories or game design? Principles from psychology are found throughout the book, along with dozens of examples showing how these techniques have been applied with great success. In addition, each section includes interviews with influential web and interaction designers.

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.

Design as Art


Bruno Munari - 1966
    Munari insisted that design be beautiful, functional and accessible, and this enlightening and highly entertaining book sets out his ideas about visual, graphic and industrial design and the role it plays in the objects we use everyday. Lamps, road signs, typography, posters, children's books, advertising, cars and chairs - these are just some of the subjects to which he turns his illuminating gaze.How do we see the world around us? The Penguin on Design series includes the works of creative thinkers whose writings on art, design and the media have changed our vision forever.Bruno Munari (1907-1998), born in Milan, was the enfant terrible of Italian art and design for most of the twentieth century, contributing to many fields of both visual (paint, sculpture, film, industrial design, graphics) and non-visual arts (literature, poetry). He was twice awarded the Compasso d'Oro design prize for excellence in his field.If you enjoyed Design as Art, you might like John Berger's Ways of Seeing, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'One of the most influential designers of the twentieth century ... Munari has encouraged people to go beyond formal conventions and stereotypes by showing them how to widen their perceptual awareness'International Herald Tribune

How to


Michael Bierut - 2015
    Featuring more than thirty-five of his projects, it reveals his philosophy of graphic design—how to use it to sell things, explain things, make things look better, make people laugh, make people cry, and (every once in a while) change the world. Specially chosen to illustrate the breadth and reach of graphic design today, each entry demonstrates Bierut’s eclectic approach. In his entertaining voice, the artist walks us through each from start to finish, mixing historic images, preliminary drawings (including full-size reproductions of the notebooks he has maintained for more than thirty-five years), working models and rejected alternatives, as well as the finished work. Throughout, he provides insights into the creative process, his working life, his relationship with clients, and the struggles that any design professional faces in bringing innovative ideas to the world.Offering insight and inspiration for artists, designers, students, and anyone interested in how words, images, and ideas can be put together, How to provides insight to the design process of one of this century’s most renowned creative minds.

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.

Manufacturing Processes for Design Professionals


Rob Thompson - 2007
    They have to be knowledgeable about a vast repertoire of processes, ranging from what used to be known as traditional "crafts" to the latest technology, to enable their designs to be manufactured effectively and efficiently. Information on the internet about such processes is often unreliable, and search engines do not usefully organize material for designers.This fundamental new resource explores innovative production techniques and materials that are having an impact on the design industry worldwide. Organized into four easily referenced parts—Forming, Cutting, Joining, and Finishing—over seventy manufacturing processes are explained in depth with full technical descriptions; analyses of the typical applications, design opportunities, and considerations each process offers; and information on cost, speed, and environmental impact. The accompanying step-by-step case studies look at a product or component being manufactured at a leading international supplier.A directory of more than fifty materials includes a detailed technical profile, images of typical applications and finishes, and an overview of each material's design characteristics. With some 1,200 color photographs and technical illustrations, specially commissioned for this book, this is the definitive reference for product designers, 3D designers, engineers, and architects who need a convenient, highly accessible, and practical reference.

What They Didn't Teach You In Design School: The Essential Guide to Growing Your Design Career


Phil Cleaver - 2014
    Though predominantly serving as a useful guide and bridge in the first year of your career as a designer, it should also be considered an essential tool that can be consulted when you're unsure of what to do next. Begin with the essentials of beginning your design career, like building your resume and portfolio, seeking out opportunities, and preparing for and securing interviews.More than just helping you get a job, however, this career guide serves to help you succeed in whichever design position you land. Learn how to effectively work with other designers and your own clients, keep up to date with the industry, hone your business skills, and much more. From the day after graduation to the completion of your first year as a design professional, this career guide will help you stay on top of your game.In What They Didn't Teach You in Design School you'll find:11 chapters covering topics ranging from software skills, print production, and designer relations, to good design practice, web skills, and working with external suppliersHelpful design advice that you'll want to return to again and againA word from the author:"Working in a studio is hugely different from studying; this book is aimed at helping you through the transition and giving you the ammo to climb this massive new learning curve." --Phil Cleaver

Design Is the Problem


Nathan Shedroff - 2008
    In Design Is the Problem, Nathan Shedroff examines how the endemic culture of design often creates unsustainable solutions, and shows how to ensure that design processes lead to more sustainable products and services.

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.

101 Things I Learned in Architecture School


Matthew Frederick - 2006
    It is also a book they may want to keep out of view of their professors, for it expresses in clear and simple language things that tend to be murky and abstruse in the classroom. These 101 concise lessons in design, drawing, the creative process, and presentation--from the basics of "How to Draw a Line" to the complexities of color theory--provide a much-needed primer in architectural literacy, making concrete what too often is left nebulous or open-ended in the architecture curriculum. Each lesson utilizes a two-page format, with a brief explanation and an illustration that can range from diagrammatic to whimsical. The lesson on "How to Draw a Line" is illustrated by examples of good and bad lines; a lesson on the dangers of awkward floor level changes shows the television actor Dick Van Dyke in the midst of a pratfall; a discussion of the proportional differences between traditional and modern buildings features a drawing of a building split neatly in half between the two. Written by an architect and instructor who remembers well the fog of his own student days, 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School provides valuable guideposts for navigating the design studio and other classes in the architecture curriculum. Architecture graduates--from young designers to experienced practitioners--will turn to the book as well, for inspiration and a guide back to basics when solving a complex design problem.

Why Fonts Matter


Sarah Hyndman - 2016
    But how do fonts affect what we read and influence the choices we make?This book opens up the science and the art behind how fonts influence you. It explains why certain fonts or styles evoke particular experiences and associations. Fonts have different personalities that can create trust, mistrust, give you confidence, make things seem easier to do or make a product taste better. They’re hidden in plain sight, they trigger memories, associations and multisensory experiences in your imagination.* Fonts can alter the meanings of words right before your very eyes.* See what personalities fonts have, and what they reveal about YOUR personality.* Explore how you respond to fonts emotionally and can make fonts work for your message.* Be amazed that a font has the power to alter the taste of your food.This book is for anyone who is interested in giving words impact, who loves words and how they influence us.

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.

101 Design Methods: A Structured Approach for Driving Innovation in Your Organization


Vijay Kumar - 2012
    Strategists, managers, designers, and researchers who undertake the challenge of innovation, despite a lack of established procedures and a high risk of failure, will find this an invaluable resource. Novices can learn from it; managers can plan with it; and practitioners of innovation can improve the quality of their work by referring to it.