50 Must-Read Design Books to Inspire
Sometimes it’s just nice to sit down. At other times, switching back and forth between browser tabs or windows to try out a technique you’re reading about is too much of a pain, so it can be nice to crack open a book that sits on your desk in an easy to reference position. Yes, reading is truly old-school, but there’s nothing like holding a real book in your hands. So, for all you iPad fans out there, prepare to go back in time and get schooled paper-style. Sometimes you don’t know what you want until you see it right in front of your eyes so go ahead and scan this list and make sure to chime in with any books you feel we might have left out.
From Lascaux to Brooklyn, Paul Rand
Visually and verbally arresting, the present title successfully distills major tenets from Rand’s critically acclaimed career in graphic design, advertising, and academia.
1,000 Retail Graphics, JGA
A virtual catalog of ideas for inspired retail design.
IdeaSpotting, Sam Harrison
IdeaSpotting shares creativity techniques and offers real and unique insight into the creative process, as well as exercises to help anyone generate viable business ideas.
The Smashing Book, Smashing Magazine
The Smashing Book shares technical tips and best practices on coding, usability and optimization and explores how to create successful user interfaces and apply marketing principles to increase conversion rates.
The Best of the Best Brochure Design, Jason Godfrey
This collection the “best of the best” brochure design into one stunning showcase, compiling hundreds of ideas, pages of inspiration, and armloads of advice for professional graphic designers and students alike.
Designing Brand Identity, Alina Wheeler
This book is a well organized, well designed overview of brand identity in the corporate world and an excellent introduction into what branding is, how it is created and used.
Creative Characters, Jan Middendorp
Creative Characters is a collection of in-depth interviews with the most influential typeface designers in the business as well as up-and-coming young guns, who discuss the motives and methods behind type.
The Elements of Typographic Style, Robert Bringhurst
The Elements is an in-depth look at typography and all of it’s elements. Also included are techniques for creating beautiful typography and is an essential addition for professionals who regularly work with typographic designs.
Logo Design Love, David Airey
Logo Design Love shares clear explanation of the design process, using a wide assortment of real-life examples to support it’s points. Anyone involved in creating visual identities, or wanting to learn how to go about it, will find this book invaluable.
3D Typography, Jeanette Abbink and Emily CM Anderson
Abbink and Anderson have compiled this book as a reaction to the fact that so much of today’s typography is conceived via two-dimensional screens. Like Gutenberg and generations of typeface designers who worked with physically shaped and cast lead type, these artists return the literal heft to letters.
How To Be A Rockstar Freelancer, Cyan and Collis Ta’eed
Covering everything from getting started to expanding your business, How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer is the official FreelanceSwitch book.
Adventures in Letterpress, Brandon Mise
Adventures in Letterpress shuns standard mass-produced fare, favoring the beauty and physicality of doing things the old fashioned way. Framed by interviews of the people keeping the tradition alive, the book’s photographs feature the delicate details and exciting and edgy designs that make clear why there is a renewed interest in letterpress posters, cards and packaging.
Rework, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
Part entrepreneurial handbook for the twenty-first century, part manifesto for anyone wondering how work really works in the modern age, Rework is required reading for anyone tired of business platitudes.
Recharge Your Design Batteries, John O’Reilly
Recharge Your Design Batteries will help shock you out of your complacency, inspire you to look in new directions for radical solutions, and invite you to hone entirely new skill sets.
How to Use Images, Lester Meacham and Lindsey Marshall
This book teaches you how to select and use images for a range of applications, including: magazines and newspapers, posters, booklets, books, leaflets, stationary, book and CD covers, advertising and promotional material, packaging, point of purchase, web pages, and digital advertisements.
Modular Web Design, Nathan Curtis
This book defines the role of components and why they matter, maps out how to organize and build a component library, discusses how to use components in practice, and teaches a process for documenting and maintaining components.
In-House Design In Practice, Cathy Fishel
This book is a resource for professionals working in-house for many different kinds and sizes of companies. Through practical advice and inspirational examples of in-house designers who have met familiar challenges, readers will gain knowledge on building a design-centric company.
12 Ideas for Visual Communication, Mechthild Waidmann
The words explaining the fundamentals and theories of visual communication are few, but clear it’s the book’s design, attractively conveyed and sensually illustrated with concrete examples, that proves these authors practice what they preach.
The Fundamentals of Design Management, Kathryn Best
The Fundamentals of Design Management emphasizes the inter-disciplinary nature of design management, and as such is of relevance to those from a number of backgrounds: art and design, business, marketing or media.
Web Bloopers, Jeff Johnson
Provides web designers with the do’s and don’ts of designing web site graphic-user interfaces (GUI).
Designers Don’t Read, Austin Howe
Designers Don’t Read is intended to function like a “daily devotional” for designers and busy professionals involved in branded communications at all levels.
The CSS Detective Guide, Denise R. Jacobs
The CSS Detective Guide aims to help, by teaching real world troubleshooting skills. You’ll learn how to track clues, analyze the evidence, and get to the truth behind CSS mysteries.
The Unlimited Freelancer, Mason Hipp and James Chartrand
The Unlimited Freelancer shares stories, guides, examples, and resources for growing beyond your freelance career and creating a successful business that lets you make more money, have more free time, and do more of what you love.
HTML & CSS : The Good Parts, Ben Henick
The Good Parts shows you how to work with HTML and CSS far more effectively than is standard practice for most web developers. Whether you handcraft individual pages or build templates, this book will help you get the most out of these tools in all aspects of web page design-from layout to typography and to color.
Motion Graphics Now, Daniel Blanco
A stunning visual resource; the most original electronics, books, magazines and brochures, disks, clothing, toys, shoes, skateboards, logos, accessories, food, transportation, restaurants, and more are included here, making this book a must-have for marketing executives, graphic designers, students, and business people everywhere.
Thinking in Type, Alex W. White
This book covers all of the basics about type design and in-depth information is provided on more advanced topics such as the differences between type applications, how typography creates identity, and what readers look for and respond to.
Design Literacy, Steven Heller
This update to the first book to provide explicit case histories of the successful marriage of form and content in graphic design explores more than 125 classic and contemporary works-30 of them brand new-explaining why they are aesthetically significant and how they function as good design.
Masters of Design, Sean Adams
Masters of Design profiles twenty well known designers, who are recognized for the particular areas of design in which they’re profiled in the Masters series. The profiles are not only inspirational, but they provide real-world advice and support designers can use in their projects.
Really Good Logos Explained, Margo Chase
In Really Good Logos Explained, some of today’s top creative minds critique and appraise over 500 examples of truly exceptional logos, and explain what makes them work. The insight provided by these four outstanding editors is – like the logos themselves – succinct, specific and effective.
Glimmer, Warren Berger
Humanity’s problems can be designed away with ingenious products and catchy marketing, according to this giddy manifesto.
Everyone is a Designer, Mieke Gerritzen and Geert Lovink
With visual contributions, quotations, and short essays from dozens of international designers, thinkers, critics, and strategists, this book presents a new manifesto for the design economy of 2010 and beyond.
Deconstructing Product Design, William Lidwell
This book deconstructs the design and functional elements and innovations of 100 extremely successful and groundbreaking products.
A Fine Line, Hartmut Esslinger
Hartmut explains innovation through the lens of design, and it’s about time we gained his valuable perspective.
Design Disasters, Steven Heller
How do designers who are really, really good (we swear!) turn a disaster into a triumph? Read this book and find out, as dozens of top names reveal the heartbreaking—and sometimes hilarious—mistakes they have made and talk about how they were able to grow from the experiences.
Idea-ology, Stanley Hainsworth
This book will take readers on an unprecedented visual journey through the minds of today’s best design thinkers via interviews and project case studies, exploring and revealing the sources of the concepts behind the projects. A visual and informational feast!
The Design Entrepreneur, Steven Heller
This book will survey the innovative entrepreneurial options a broad group of contemporary graphic designers have engaged in over the past decade, while also addressing the creative, fabrication and promotion issues necessary to bring unique products to the marketplace.
Signage Systems and Information Graphics, Andreas Uebele
A signage system is much more than just a set of symbols. As well as its practical application, it helps to create an identity for a space and can add decorative flair to any built environment.
Process, Jennifer Hudson
This book provides an in-depth study of the creative and manufacturing processes behind 50 contemporary domestic design objects. Chosen from all around the world, they span furniture, lighting, tableware, textiles, and other products.
Verb Crisis, Mario Ballesteros
Verb Crisis tackles the conflict that marks the collision between the physical nature of the architectural commission and the demands of a world that is increasingly dense and interdependent, a world marked by undeniable environmental problems and economic inequalities.
RGB: British Graphics, Marc Valli
A comprehensive, up-to-date collection of the most exciting new graphic-design in the United Kingdom.
Identity Crisis, Jeff Fisher
Identity Crisis showcases recent identity work for a variety of industries and acts as a guide designers can use to show their clients the power of rethinking and redesigning their identities.
Buying In, Rob Walker
Walker is one of the prime analysts dedicated to probing our minds, our behavior, and, specifically, our buying patterns. He addresses the demand for authenticity and the nearly accidental formation of consumer communities, almost in spite of commercial persuasion campaigns, creating a real connection that many Americans are seeking.
The Back of the Napkin, Dan Roam
A remarkably comprehensive system of ideas. Everything in the book is broken down into steps, providing the reader with tools and rules to facilitate picture making. There are the four steps of visual thinking, the six ways of seeing and the SQVID– a clumsy acronym for a full brain visual work out designed to focus ideas.
By Hand, Maki Yoshimura
Inspired by the recent “healing boom” in Japan and the simple, modern designs in Europe, promotions, advertisements and/or graphic tools of trendy shops are using a homemade feeling in graphic design. Handmade collages can evoke a feeling of warmth, and well-worn materials will bring to mind a feeling of nostalgia or coziness. Featuring many examples.
Designing Design, Kenya Hara
Designing Design impresses upon the reader the importance of emptiness in both the visual and philosophical traditions of Japan, and its application to design, made visible by means of numerous examples from the author’s own work.
79 Short Essays on Design, Michael Bierut
Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design brings together the best of designer Michael Bierut’s critical writing serious or humorous, flattering or biting, but always on the mark.
Otl Aicher, Markus Rathgeb
This book is the first comprehensive and authoritative account of Aicher’s life and work, with extensive illustrations from private archives, museums, and his estate.
Relaxing Graphics, Akiko Taki
Advertising that conveys a relaxed and natural image is more important than ever in this time of ecological awareness. This book is an excellent reference not only for designers but also for marketing specialists and those who are involved in the visual arts and use visual strategies to approach the market demands.
The Findability Formula, Heather F. Lutze
The Findability Formula will help readers understand how prospects and customers search for products and services on the Internet, and will show them, step-by-step, how to optimize their findability. The book will be a non-technical guide to effectively building and implementing, from the ground up, an Internet search marketing program that gets results.
How to Think Like a Great Designer, Debbie Millman
In a series of illuminating and entertaining conversations, twenty-one of today’s most influential and revered designers discuss, celebrate, and analyze their craft. Adeptly interviewed by brand consultant and talk show host Debbie Millman, these designers reveal their early influences, day-to-day rituals, enthusiasms, aspirations, and failures.
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8 Responses 50 Must-Read Design Books to Inspire
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I feel “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug should be on this list. It gives a great, humoristic insight in usability.
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opens new tab -> opens amazon shopping cart -> begins to fill said shopping cart
thanks for this great list
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I agree with you Dennis. “Don’t make me think” by Steve Heller gives the reader a really good in depht in web standards. One of my personal favourites!
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StephenFloyd says:
‘How to be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul’ is a life-changer.
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I’m going to look into some of these books that I haven’t heard of before. Thanks for sharing!
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Agreed, StephenFloyd; How to be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul is a must-read for any designer, in my opinion.
Overall, a great list. I’ll be picking up some of these titles that I wasn’t aware of.
Thanks so much for putting this together! Great selection!