This is a collection of WDO’s favourite design books. It’s a go-to list of inspiring reads that address a wide range of topics from human-centred design and the collaborative process to value proposition and sustainability.
Your favourite publication is missing? Send us an email at web@wdo.org with the name of the publication, the author and the year it was published.
Happy Reading!
Author:
Charlotte Fiell and Clementine Fiell
Year published:
2019
ISBN:
9781786275318
A history of women working in the design industry (including, industrial, fashion, graphic, interactive and architecture), with profiles over 100 pioneering women designers (256 pp.)
Author:
Ezio Manzini
Year published:
2015
ISBN:
9780262028608
Reimagines design’s role in building a sustainable and resilient society, including community-supported agriculture in China, digital medical care platforms in Canada, collaborative housing in Milan (256 pp).
Author:
Donald A. Norman
Year published:
2013
ISBN:
9780465050659
This human-centred design guide explores why some products satisfy while others frustrate. It argues that usability and cognitive psychology are as important as aesthetics (368 pp.)
Author:
John Maeda
Year published:
2006
ISBN:
978-0262134729
Offers ten laws for balancing simplicity and complexity in business, technology, and design―guidelines for needing less and actually getting more (128 pp).
Author:
Tim Brown
Year published:
2019
ISBN:
978-0062856623
Explains the collaborative process of design thinking and reveals how the techniques and strategies of human-centred design belong at every level of business (304 pp).
Author:
Roberto Verganti
Year published:
2017
ISBN:
9780262035361
Shares why innovation driven by meaning can create value in our current world and why this notion makes sense for business today(264 pp).
Author:
William McDonough and Michael Braungart
Year published:
2002
ISBN:
978-0224087865
Reframes design as a regenerative force that spurs innovation and provides enduring benefits for society from safe materials, water and energy in circular economies without waste (193 pp).
Author:
Afdhel Aziz and Bobby Jones
Year published:
2016
ISBN:
9781682450468
Presents a new business model that addresses environmental, civic, and economic issues in a way that grows brand and business, while giving back to society (304 pp).
Author:
Bill Moggridge
Year published:
2006
ISBN:
978-0262134743
Interviews 40 designers who have shaped interactive design, tracing the different ways people use everyday things in the digital era, from games to work tools (792 pp).
Author:
Charlotte Fiell and Peter M. Fiell
Year published:
2007
ISBN:
978-3822852675
Explores contemporary design and a more sustainable approach to product design, from lighting and furniture to consumer electronic equipment, transportation, product architecture, and environmental design (560 pp).
Author:
Sophie Lovell
Year published:
2011
ISBN:
9780714849188
Comprehensive monograph on the highly influential product designer Dieter Rams who, as head of design at Braun from 1961 to 1995, created some of the most iconic utility objects of the twentieth century (400 pp).
Author:
Klaus Klemp and Jorrit Maan
Year published:
2017
ISBN:
978-3791383668
Comprehensive overview of Braun designer Dieter Ram’s forty-year career designing iconic consumer products that enhance our daily lives (416 pp).
Author:
Eames Demetrios
Year published:
2012
ISBN:
978-1934429747
Celebrates the iconic work of husband-and-wife designers Charles and Ray Eames with details of their life and work, from their refined designs to to their innovative experiments (including the renowned Eames lounge chair and classic pieces still in production by Herman Miller (408 pp).
Author:
Alice Rawsthorn
Year published:
2018
ISBN:
9783037645215
Explores the most dynamic developments in contemporary design, assessing design’s impact on our lives now and in the future, from book-making to social design, craft revival to design’s gender politics (192 pp).
Author:
Jasper Morrison
Year published:
2015
ISBN:
978-3-03778-463-1
A collection of the products and projects that accompany our lives and shape our environment–a continuation of Morrison’s 2002 Everything but the Walls (312 pp).
Author:
Tom Kelley and Jonathan Littman
Year published:
2001
ISBN:
978-0385499842
Shares the inspiring stories behind IDEOs design innovations over the past 20 years, with strategies for tackling a design challenge and ensuring continuous innovation (320 pp).
Author:
Charles Montgomery
Year published:
2014
ISBN:
978-0374534882
Explores the urban world’s potential for promoting health and happiness, with examples from some of the world’s most exciting and dysfunctional cities (358 pp).
Author:
Alexander Osterwalder,Yves Pigneur, Patricia Papadakos, Gregory Bernarda, Alan Smith
Year published:
2014
ISBN:
978-1118968055
Explains the processes and tools needed to design and test value propositions, taking the guesswork out of creating products and services that perfectly match customers’ needs and desires (320 pp).
Author:
Keith Granet
Year published:
2011
ISBN:
978-1616890186
Provides the necessary tools to create and run a thriving design business, from billing and human resources to branding and project management to marketing and licensing (208 pp).
Author:
Charlotte and Peter Fiell
Year published:
2019
ISBN:
978-3836541060
Profiles the work of contemporary designers from furniture to graphics who have shaped and re-created the modern world with a dizzying variety of materials (768 pp).
Author:
Robert Sommer
Year published:
2008
ISBN:
978-0136575771
Classic text on user-centred design; studies how people relate to the designed space around them and how the design of that space can affect their behavior, addressing topics such as privacy, spatial invasion, small-group ecology and the role of design in airports, stations, hospitals and schools (256 pp).
Author:
Charlotte Fiell
Year published:
2016
ISBN:
978-1580934701
Overview of the styles, movements, theories, materials, processes, technologies, pioneers, and companies that have shaped every significant era of design; and contextualizing design with respect to wider social, cultural, and political concerns (512 pp).
Author:
Paul Kunkel
Year published:
1997
ISBN:
978-1888001259
Examines the rise of the Industrial Design team at Apple, from their Silicon Valley garage to a billion-dollar corporation (288 pp).
Author:
Jerry Hirshberg
Year published:
1999
ISBN:
9780887309601
Jerry Hirshberg, founder and president of Nissan Design International (NDI), reveals the story of NDI’s genesis and his eleven interlocking strategies for designing an organization around creativity (288 pp).
Author:
Victor Papanek
Year published:
2005
ISBN:
978-0897331531
Overview of Papanek’s work and his understanding of design as a tool for political change and social good, providing a blueprint for sensible, responsible design (416 pp).
Author:
Emily Pilloton
Year published:
2009
ISBN:
978-1933045955
Challenges designers to be changemakers instead of “stuff creators,” designing need-based products that empower individuals, communities and economies around the world (304 pp).
Author:
Michael Michalko
Year published:
2006
ISBN:
9781580087735
Reveals innovative, creative-thinking techniques for approaching everyday problems in unconventional ways, with fun, thought-provoking exercises (416 pp).
Author:
Kimberly Elam
Year published:
2011
ISBN:
978-1616890360
A mathematical explanation for how art works, with twentieth-century examples of design, architecture, and illustration, revealing underlying geometric structures in their compositions (144 pp).
Author:
Carma Gorman
Year published:
2003
ISBN:
9781581153101
An anthology on the history of industrial design, with essays tracing the the most crucial movements, issues, and accomplishments of industrial design from 1850 until today (256 pp).
Author:
Alex Milton and Paul Rodgers
Year published:
2011
ISBN:
978-1856697514
Introduction to the field of product design, from concept design to manufacture, prototyping to marketing as well as influential design movements and new and emerging forms of practice (240 pp).
Author:
Alex Steffen
Year published:
2008
ISBN:
978-0810970854
Packed with the information and tools needed to help build a better more sustainable future, including climate foresight, sharing systems, biomimicry and green chemistry, adaptive re-use and transparent governments (600 pp).
Author:
John Kolko
Year published:
2014
ISBN:
978-1625274793
Set of steps for identifying lucrative opportunities, designing for innovation, and producing products that have deep, meaningful emotional engagement (224 pp).
Author:
Dev Patnaik
Year published:
2009
ISBN:
9780137142347
Tells the story of how some of the world’s best organizations prosper when they tap into empathy, stop worrying about their own problems, start caring about the world around them and connect with other people (251 pp).
Author:
Quarterly MIT Journal
Year published:
1984 – present
ISSN:
0747-9360
Quarterly journal examines design history, theory, and criticism, provoking inquiry into the cultural and intellectual issues surrounding design (112 pp per issue).
Author:
Amelie Klein and Alison J. Clarke
Year published:
2018
ISBN:
978-3945852262
Overview of the work of designer, author, and activist Victor J. Papanek, demonstrating that his interpretation of design as a tool for social transformation continues to shape debate on social design, critical design, and design thinking (399 pp).
Author:
William J. Mitchell, Chris E. Borroni-Bird and Lawrence D. Burns
Year published:
2010
ISBN:
9780262013826
Provides a long-overdue vision for a new automobile era, where urban mobility is more convenient and sustainable, making cities more livable, and bringing the automobile industry out of crisis (240 pp).
Author:
Sasha Costanza-Chock
Year published:
2020
ISBN:
9780262043458
Documents community-led design practices that challenge rather than reproduce inequality, going beyond design for good, user-centered design to connecting design to larger struggles for collective liberation and ecological survival (360 pp).
Author:
Bon Ku and Ellen Lupton
Year published:
2020
ISBN:
9780262539135
Applying the principles of human-centered design to real-world health care challenges, from drug packaging to early detection of breast cancer (228 pp).
Author:
Kat Holmes
Year published:
2018
ISBN:
9780262038881
Through stories of pioneers of inclusive design, shows how inclusion can be a source of innovation and growth, especially for digital technologies as well as an opportunity for more people to contribute to society in meaningful ways (176 pp).
Author:
Batya Friedman and David G. Hendry
Year published:
2019
ISBN:
9780262039536
Describes how both moral and technical imagination can be brought to bear on the design of technology; using a design process that engages human values at every stage (256 pp).
Author:
Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby
Year published:
2013
ISBN:
978-0262019842
A refreshing alternative to market-driven design, this book proposes design as a tool to create not only things but ideas, to imagine/achieve desirable futures (224 pp.)
Author:
Anne Watson
Year published:
2001
ISBN:
978-1863170949
20th century design collection brings alive the swinging sixties as source of inspiration, including original bean bag, Marilyn lips sofa and Expo talking chair (80 pp.)
Author:
John Thackara
Year published:
2006
ISBN:
9780262701150
Using real-world examples, shows that ethics and responsibility can inform design decisions without impeding technical innovation, relying less on stuff and more on people and purpose (332 pp.)
Author:
Pelle Ehn, Elisabet M. Nilsson and Richard Topgaard
Year published:
2014
ISBN:
9780262537483
Describes experiments in innovation, design, and democracy that go beyond entrepreneurship and crowdsourcing in the service of corporations to include multiple futures imagined and made locally by often-marginalized publics (392 pp).
Author:
Rasmus Koch and Gitte Lindeborg Holst
Year published:
2005
ISBN:
978-8-790775-11-7
Documents the project work of seven design schools to improve life (local and global problems) through Industrial Design, Interactive Media Design and Visual Communication (568 pp.)
Author:
Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne
Year published:
2018
ISBN:
978-1621536406)
What does it mean to be a designer in today’s corporate-driven, overbranded global consumer culture? Citizen Designer, Second Edition, attempts to answer this question with more than seventy debate-stirring essays and interviews espousing viewpoints ranging from the cultural and the political to the professional and the social. This new edition contains a collection of definitions and brief case studies on topics that today’s citizen designers must consider, including new essays on social innovation, individual advocacy, group strategies, and living as an ethical designer. Edited by two prominent advocates of socially responsible design, this innovative reference responds to the tough questions today’s designers continue to ask themselves, such as: How can a designer affect social or political change? Can design become more than just a service to clients? At what point does a designer have to take responsibility for the client’s actions? When should a designer take a stand?
Author:
William Myers (Editor) and Paola Antonelli (Foreword)
Year published:
2012
ISBN:
9780870708442
For centuries, designers and artists have looked to nature for inspiration and materials, but only recently have they developed the ability to alter and incorporate living organisms or tissues into their work. This startling development, at the intersection of biology and design has created new aesthetic possibilities and helps address a growing urgency to build and manufacture ecologically. Bio Design surveys recent design and art projects that harness living materials and processes, presenting bio-integrated approaches to achieving sustainability, innovations enabled by biotechnology, and provocative experiments that deliberately illustrate the dangers and opportunities in manipulating life for human ends. As the first publication to focus on this new phenomenon and closely examine how it fits into the history of architecture, art and industrial design, this volume surveys this shift and contextualizes it through comparisons to previous historic transitions in art and design practices, clarifying its implications for the future. A reference for students and teachers of art, architecture, industrial design and engineering, Bio Design will also introduce the subject to a broad audience.
Author:
Tom Kelley and David Kelley
Year published:
2013
ISBN:
978-0385349369
Too often, companies and individuals assume that creativity and innovation are the domain of the “creative types.” But two of the leading experts in innovation, design, and creativity on the planet show us that each and every one of us is creative. In an incredibly entertaining and inspiring narrative that draws on countless stories from their work at IDEO, the Stanford d.school, and with many of the world’s top companies, David and Tom Kelley identify the principles and strategies that will allow us to tap into our creative potential in our work lives, and in our personal lives, and allow us to innovate in terms of how we approach and solve problems. It is a book that will help each of us be more productive and successful in our lives and in our careers.
Author:
Carlo Vezzoli, Fabrizio Ceschin, Lilac Osanjo, Mugendi K. M’Rithaa, Richie Moalosi, Venny Nakazibwe and Jan Carel Diehl
Year published:
2018
ASIN:
B07D52KFGB
This open access book addresses the issue of diffusing sustainable energy access inlow- and middle-income contexts.Access to energy is one of the greatest challenges for many people living in low-income and developing contexts, as around 1.4 billion people lack access to electricity.Distributed Renewable Energy systems (DRE) are considered a promising approachto address this challenge and provide energy access to all. However, even if promising,the implementation of DRE systems is not always straightforward.The book analyses, discusses and classifies the promising Sustainable Product-ServiceSystem (S.PSS) business models to deliver Distributed Renewable Energy systems in aneffective, efficient and sustainable way. Its message is supported with cases studies andexamples, discussing the economic, environmental and socioethical benefits as wellas its limitations and barriers to its implementation
Author:
Marko Brajovic
Year published:
2016
ISBN:
978-8592822002
This book does not intend to exhaust conceptual or scientific paradigms or to address specific sustainability issues. It aspires to introduce experimental tools for creative innovation inspired by nature. A mechanical paradigm of our actual society is still mirrored by an architecture based on a pyramidal hierarchy. In the upcoming post-industrial era, social structure is evolving towards a more organic system. I believe that a synergetic and non-centralized society is already emerging and that a new architecture will manifest that evolution.
Author:
Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu, Simone Ahuja and Kevin Roberts
Year published:
2018
ISBN:
978-1-118-24974-1
Jugaad Innovation goes farther than conventional business books that chart consumer growth in Brazil, Russia, India, and China. It explains how emerging economies are pioneering the art of ‘frugal engineering,’ then provides practical tips on how Western companies—from tech startups to multinational industrial corporations—can likewise do more with less. A provocative and entertaining read for 21st century business leaders.
Author:
Chris Anderson
Year published:
2012
ISBN:
978-0307720955
Wired magazine editor and bestselling author Chris Anderson takes you to the front lines of a new industrial revolution as today’s entrepreneurs, using open source design and 3-D printing, bring manufacturing to the desktop. In an age of custom-fabricated, do-it-yourself product design and creation, the collective potential of a million garage tinkerers and enthusiasts is about to be unleashed, driving a resurgence of American manufacturing. A generation of “Makers” using the Web’s innovation model will help drive the next big wave in the global economy, as the new technologies of digital design and rapid prototyping gives everyone the power to invent — creating “the long tail of things”.
Author:
Klaus Klemp
Year published:
2011
ISBN:
978-3899553970
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.
Author:
Simon Jimenez, A E Pohlmeyer, Pieter Desmet, Delft University of Technology. Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering.
Year published:
2015
ISBN:
978-9461864253
he Positive Design Reference Guide focuses on the why, what and how of human experience – both in general, and in relation to design for well-being. The guide provides you with a quick entry point into the variety of theories that we believe can be relevant for well-being-driven design. It comprises 29 models, theories and frameworks, separated into two sections. The first section presents a collection of theories drawn from (positive) psychology, and the second section presents a collection of theories and frameworks drawn from (positive) design research. Each theory is introduced with a short summary and a list of key publications that offer more extensive explanations. You are likely to be familiar with some of the theories, but will perhaps also discover some new ones.
Author:
Steven Eppinger and Karl Ulrich
Year published:
2015
ASIN:
B00ZYY672W
Treating such contemporary design and development issues as identifying customer needs, design for manufacturing, prototyping, and industrial design, Product Design and Development by Ulrich and Eppinger presents in a clear and detailed way a set of product development techniques aimed at bringing together the marketing, design, and manufacturing functions of the enterprise. The integrative methods in the book facilitate problem solving and decision making among people with different disciplinary perspectives, reflecting the current industry toward designing and developing products in cross-functional teams.
Author:
Ross Lovegrove
Year published:
2004
ISBN:
978-0714843674
This book is the first monograph on the product designer Ross Lovegrove. Written by the designer himself, with a forward by Paola Antonelli, it presents a complete overview of the designer’s career, featuring realized and unrealized project. While the main texts explains Ross Lovegrove’s philosophy and way of working, the products descriptions reveal the main feature and characteristic of every project. This book will present the work of Ross Lovegrove, one of the most interesting and fascinating individuals working in contemporary design. His work includes a wide range of products from furniture to high-tech products, from water bottles to airplane seats and explores the possibility of realizing sculptural and organic shapes through modern technology and material.
Author:
Libby Sellers
Year published:
2018
ASIN:
B07B9WHT9S
From architects and product designers to textile artists and digital innovators, Women Design profiles a selection of the most dynamic female designers from the modern era, showcasing their finest work and celebrating their enduring influence. Design throughout history has been profoundly shaped and enhanced by the creativity of women; as practitioners, commentators, educators and commissioners. But in a narrative that eagerly promotes their male counterparts, their contributions are all too often overlooked. Through 21 engaging profiles, Women Design rediscovers and revels in the work of pioneers such as Eileen Gray, Lora Lamm and Lella Vignelli, while shining a spotlight on modern-day trailblazers including Kazuyo Sejima, Hella Jongerius and Neri Oxman. Richly illustrated with archival imagery, this is a rare glimpse into the working worlds of some of the most influential forces in contemporary design.
Authors:
Maria José Ballcells, Santi Barjau, Isabel Campi, Álvaro Castro
Year published:
2021
ISBN:
978-8417769291
Every chair tells its own story, and all of them fit into this book—even the stories in which design is not overtly the topic at hand. Chairs and artificial intelligence; famous chairs on which Freud, Pessoa or Proust sat; chairs as historical, political and societal symbols; chairs for thin or corpulent people; rocking, creative, royal chairs: all these facets of chairs and more are packed into this volume.
Authors:
Robert Curdale
Year published:
2012
ISBN:
978-0988236202
Each of the 200 methods has a condensed one page step-by-step instructions for easy reading. Included are templates, descriptions of each method, instructions on when,where and why to use each method, resources needed and references. The two volumes in this series outline the design methodologies presented in a series of successful international workshops by Rob Curedale based on the methods of the world’s most innovative organizations. The author Robert Curedale focuses the experiences of decades of tacit knowledge from managing design for some of the world’s leading design brands and design consultancies and teaching at influential design schools and universities in Asia, Australia, Europe, Detroit, Los Angeles and Silicon Valley.
Authors:
Lidewij Edelkoort & Philip
Year published:
202o
ISBN:
978-9462263918
A Labour of Love, a 448-page publication by design curators and authors Lidewij Edelkoort and Philip Fimmano. The book’s title refers to craftsmanship as an alternative form of pride and fulfilment. It comes at a unique time in history when principles are evolving and a more mindful, altruistic approach is needed in design and manufacturing. Divided into 12 themes that reflect current materials and techniques, this bold book introduces the new makers in contemporary design, previewing a future of responsible production, circular thinking, ethical practice and organic aesthetics.
Author:
Rebecca Proctor
Year published:
1970
ISBN:
9781780674735
Beginning with a chapter on sustainable materials, the book goes on to cover furniture, lighting, home accessories, and personal accessories. Web addresses of designers and retailers make each product easy to source. The Sustainable Design Book is an unbeatable resource for those aspiring to best practice within the field of sustainable design, as well as students of contemporary product design. Consumers looking for beautiful but environmentally conscious products and accessories will also find this an essential guide.
Author:
Katie Treggiden
Year published:
2020
ISBN:
9493039382
Wasted. When trash becomes treasure celebrates 30 optimistic and enterprising designers, makers and manufacturers who use waste as their primary resource, offering a rare glimpse into the embryonic world they inhabit. Accompanying these profiles, five in-depth and thematic essays will explore the societal, cultural and environmental implications of their work.
Author:
IDEO.org
Year published:
2015
ISBN:
978-0991406319
The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design reveals IDEO’s process with the key mindsets that underpin how and why we think about design for the social sector, 57 clear-to-use design methods for new and experienced practitioners, and from-the-field case studies of human-centered design in action. The Field Guide has everything you need to understand the people you’re designing for, to have more effective brainstorms, to prototype your ideas, and to ultimately arrive at more creative solutions.
Author:
Bruce Mau
Year published:
2020
ISBN:
978-1838660505
Bruce Mau has long applied the power of design to transforming the world. Developed over the past three decades, this remarkable book is organized by 24 values that are at the core of Mau’s philosophy. MC24 features essays, observations, project documentation, and design work by Mau and other high-profile architects, designers, artists, scientists, environmentalists, and thinkers of our time. Practical, playful, and critical, it equips readers with a tool kit and empowers them to make an impact and engender change on all scales.
Author:
What Design Can Do
Year published:
2020
ISBN:
N/A
With the aim to encourage all designers to do the same, in this book What Design Can Do presents thirty-one creative activists who fight for positive change.
Author:
Arman Emami
Year published:
2014
ISBN:
9783721209150
The book comprises a comprehensive view of relevant matters relating to industrial design. Development steps from idea to mass production are described gradually and supported by illustrated examples of good practices. A working compendium not only for design students and young designers, but also a guide book for creative lateral thinkers, product and marketing managers and all those who are interested in intelligent design. Complex processes are displayed in an entertaining and easily understandable way.
Author:
Gabriel Patrocínio, José Mauro Nunes
Year published:
2015
ISBN:
978-85-212-1869-2
The book has contributions such as Victor Margolin, Gui Bonsiepe, Alpay Er, and Mugendi M’Rithaa, among many others. Authors offer their different perspectives coming from United States, Brazil, Colombia, United Kingdom, Turkey, Kenya, India and China. M’Rithaa, former President of WDO saluted the book as “the most important contribution on this field in the last ten years” (cited in the final remarks of his interview in the chapter Design in Africa: I participate, therefore I am). In Brazil the book was awarded twice – initially at the Objeto:Brasil International Design Award in May 2016, and again at the MCB (Museum of the Brazilian Home) 2016 Design Awards. The jury of this later has acclaimed the book as “a theoretical and academic milestone, with potential to change the current practice and understanding of Design.” After the successful launching in Brazil and Portugal in 2015 and 2016, the book was selected in 2017 to the exhibition Brasil: Hoje at MUDE, Lisbon’s Museum of Fashion and Design. The curator, Frederico Duarte, highlighted in the catalogue: “The first and indispensable book on design and development in the Portuguese language.” In 2018 the book was selected in Spain to be part of BID, the Ibero-American Design Biennial, in Madrid. A first e-book edition was launched in Portuguese (2018) and then in English (2019).
Author:
Nigel Whiteley
Year published:
1997
ISBN:
9780948462658
Design for Society is not an anti-design book; rather, it is an anti-consumerist-design book, in that it reveals what most people would agree are the socially and ecologically unsound values and unsatisfactory implications on which the system of consumerist design is constructed. In so doing, it prepares the ground for a more responsible and just type of design. (less)
Author:
Alastair Fuad-Luke
Year published:
2013
ISBN:
9781136568473
This book will provide a rigorous exploration of design activism that will re-vitalise the design debate and provide a solid platform for students, teachers, design professionals and other disciplines interested in transformative (design) activism. Design Activism provides a comprehensive study of contemporary and emergent design activism.
Author:
Tom Bieling
Year published:
2019
ISBN:
9788869772412
This is a book about how the worlds of design and activism (could) inspire each other. As Design and its conceptual, functional, aesthetic, speculative and interventional concepts inevitably affect our lives, it often actively interferes in common defi nitions, understandings and opinion making, which offers opportunities for ideological engagement (in a good or in a bad sense).
Author:
Julie Dirksen
Year published:
2011
ISBN:
9780321768438
In Design For How People Learn, you’ll discover how to use the key principles behind learning, memory, and attention to create materials that enable your audience to both gain and retain the knowledge and skills you’re sharing. Using accessible visual metaphors and concrete methods and examples, Design For How People Learn will teach you how to leverage the fundamental concepts of instructional design both to improve your own learning and to engage your audience.
Author:
Cammy Bean
Year published:
2014
ISBN:
9781562869144
You’ll learn all about the CBT Lady and how to avoid her instructional design mistakes. Along the way, you’ll hear from a few other accidental instructional designers, get ideas for your own projects, and find resources and references to take your own practice to the next level. The Accidental Instructional Designer is perfect for the learning professional or instructional designer who is just getting started with e-learning—or the more experienced practitioner looking for new ideas. In addition to sharing proven techniques and strategies, this book:
Author:
Rob Fleming
Year published:
2013
ISBN:
9780415537667
Sustainability is a powerful force that is fundamentally reshaping humanity’s relationship to the natural world and is ushering in the Age of Integration. The move from well-intentioned environmental friendliness to the higher bar of integral sustainability and regenerative design demands a new type of design professional, one that is deeply collaborative, ethically grounded, empathically connected and technologically empowered.
Author:
Beth Tauke
Year published:
2015
ASIN:
B014KS6PGK
Diversity and Design explores how design – whether of products, buildings, landscapes, cities, media, or systems – affects diverse members of society. Fifteen case studies in television, marketing, product design, architecture, film, video games, and more, illustrate the profound, though often hidden, consequences design decisions and processes have on the total human experience. The book not only investigates how gender, race, class, age, disability, and other factors influence the ways designers think, but also emphasizes the importance of understanding increasingly diverse cultures and, thus, averting design that leads to discrimination, isolation, and segregation.
Author:
Matt Wallaert
Year published:
2019
ISBN:
9780525534426
Start at the End offers a new framework for design, grounded in behavioral science. Technology executive and behavioral scientist Matt Wallaert argues that the purpose of everything is behavior change. By starting with outcomes instead of processes, the most effective companies understand what people want to do and why they aren’t already doing it, then build products and services to bridge the gap.
Authors:
Susan M. Weinschenk
Year published:
2011
ISBN:
9780321767530
We design to elicit responses from people. We want them to buy something, read more, or take action of some kind. Designing without understanding what makes people act the way they do is like exploring a new city without a map: results will be haphazard, confusing, and inefficient. This book combines real science and research with practical examples to deliver a guide every designer needs. With it you’ll be able to design more intuitive and engaging work for print, websites, applications, and products that matches the way people think, work, and play.
Authors:
Leidy Klotz
Year published:
2021
ISBN:
9781250249869
Subtract will change how you change your world. In these pages you’ll meet subtracting exemplars: design geniuses, Nobel Prize-winners, rock-stars, and everyday heroes, who have subtracted to dismantle racism, advance knowledge, heal the planet, and even tell better jokes. These and more guiding lights show how we can revolutionize not just our day-to-day lives, but our collective legacy. A paradigm shift of a book, Subtract shows us how to find more of the options we’ve been missing—and empowers us to pursue them.
Author:
Jane Penty
Year published:
2019
ISBN:
9781138301986
As a guide and reference text, Product Design and Sustainability provides design students, practitioners and educators with the breadth and depth needed to integrate the most appropriate sustainable strategies into their practice. It establishes the principles that underpin sustainability and introduces a diverse range of social, economic and environmental design responses and tools available to designers. The numerous real-world examples illustrate how these strategies play out in different product sectors and reinforce the view that sustainability is the most positive opportunity and creative challenge facing designers today.
Authors:
Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant
Year published:
2019
ISBN:
9780374279752
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.
Authors:
Kenya Hara
Year published:
2007
ISBN:
9783037781050
Representing a new generation of designers in Japan, Kenya Hara (born 1958) pays tribute to his mentors, using long overlooked Japanese icons and images in much of his work. In Designing Design, he 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 his own work: Hara for instance designed the opening and closing ceremony programs for the Nagano Winter Olympic Games 1998. In 2001, he enrolled as a board member for the Japanese label MUJI and has considerably moulded the identity of this successful corporation as communication and design advisor ever since. Kenya Hara, alongside Naoto Fukasawa one of the leading design personalities in Japan, has also called attention to himself with exhibitions such as Re-Design: The Daily Products of the 21st Century.
Authors:
Regine Gilbert
Year published:
2019
ISBN:
9781484250150
What is inclusive design? It is simple. It means that your product has been created with the intention of being accessible to as many different users as possible. For a long time, the concept of accessibility has been limited in terms of only defining physical spaces. However, change is afoot: personal technology now plays a part in the everyday lives of most of us, and thus it is a responsibility for designers of apps, web pages, and more public-facing tech products to make them accessible to all. Our digital era brings progressive ideas and paradigm shifts – but they are only truly progressive if everybody can participate.
Authors:
Sung Jang, Martin Thaler, Matthew Frederick
Year published:
2020
ISBN:
978-0451496737
Products are in every area of our lives, but just what product designers do and how they think is a mystery to most. Product design is not art, engineering, or craft, even as it calls for skills and understandings in each of these areas—along with psychology, history, cultural anthropology, physics, ergonomics, materials technology, marketing, and manufacturing. This accessible guide provides an entry point into this vast field through 101 brief.
Authors:
Carlo Vezzoli, Brenda Garcia, Cindy Kohtala
Year published:
2021
ISBN:
978-3-030-66299-8
This open access book introduces design for Sustainable Product-Service Systems (S.PSS) and for Sustainable Distributed Economies (S.DE). These are introduced as technical and operative tools for the development of a new generation of designers, responsible and capable of designing environmentally, socially and economically sustainable solutions, accessible to all.
Author:
Ayse Birsel
Year published:
2022
ISBN:
9780762481156
This book is for everyone who is interested in defining their long life, using design thinking tools. It’s an interactive book with exercises that will help you think creatively by asking you to visualize your life. It is full of insights learned from wise people who have lived the longest. It is organized into the four themes of Love, Purpose, Well-Being, and Friendship, and contains insights that will help you love better, find purpose, practice well-being, and make friends.
Author:
Kevin G. Bethune
Year published:
2022
ISBN:
978-0262046503
Design offers so much more than an aesthetically pleasing logo or banner, a beautification add-on after the heavy lifting. In Reimagining Design, Kevin Bethune shows how design provides a unique angle on problem-solving—how it can be leveraged strategically to cultivate innovation and anchor multidisciplinary teamwork. As he does so, he describes his journey as a Black professional through corporate America, revealing the power of transformative design, multidisciplinary leaps, and diversity. Bethune, who began as an engineer at Westinghouse, moved on to Nike (where he designed Air Jordans), and now works as a sought-after consultant on design and innovation, shows how design can transform both individual lives and organizations.
Authors:
William Lidwell, Jill Butler, Kritina Holden
Year published:
2003
ISBN:
9781592530076
Universal Principles of Design is the first cross-disciplinary reference of design. Richly illustrated and easy to navigate, this book pairs clear explanations of the design concepts featured with visual examples of those concepts applied in practice. From the 80/20 rule to chunking, from baby-face bias to Ockham’s razor, and from self-similarity to storytelling, 100 design concepts are defined and illustrated for readers to expand their knowledge.
Author:
Nir Eyal
Year published:
2015
ISBN:
9780241184837
Hooked is based on Eyal’s years of research, consulting, and practical experience. He wrote the book he wished had been available to him as a start-up founder – not abstract theory, but a how-to guide for building better products. Hooked is written for product managers, designers, marketers, start-up founders, and anyone who seeks to understand how products influence our behaviour.
Author:
Amy Azzarito
Year published:
2020
ISBN:
978-1452178721
The Elements of a Home reveals the fascinating stories behind more than 60 everyday household objects and furnishings. With tales from the kitchen, the bedroom, and every room in between, these pages expose how napkins got their start as lumps of dough in ancient Greece, why forks were once seen as immoral tools of the devil, and how Plato devised one of the earliest alarm clocks using rocks and water-plus so much more.
Author:
DK Publishing
Year published:
2013
ISBN:
978-0241298817
Great Designs is an illustrated guide to the history of design, featuring more than 100 of the most groundbreaking and important design classics ever created – from the 1860s to the present. Discover the story of design and its evolution from the industrial revolution to the modern-day – from William Morris wallpaper and the Swiss Army Knife to 21st-century icons of design such as the Apple iPad and Philippe Starck’s Master’s Chair.
Author:
Anniina Koivu
Year published:
2019
ISBN:
978-3037786048
Big-Game is a design studio based in Lausanne, Switzerland, founded in 2004 by Augustin Scott de Martinville, Grégoire Jeanmonod and Elric Petit. Based on a series of interviews with the founders, this book looks at 15 years of the group’s industrial design work on everyday objects, by way of anecdotes about the inception of their most successful work. Illustrated with 200 diagrams and photographs made for this publication, the book examines projects including wine bottles designed for supermarkets, a set of cutlery for an airline, a collaboration with Japanese potters and a piece of Ikea furniture.
Author:
Conny Bakker
Year published:
2019
ISBN:
978-9063695224
Products that Last starts where most books on product development end. This new edition (first self-published by the TU Delft in 2014) contains new examples and insights from recent publications. From the perspective of designers and entrepreneurs, once a product has been designed, produced and sold, it disappears beyond the newness horizon. They are little aware of the opportunities that exist in the next product universe, where money is made from products in use, as well as from a product’s afterlife. These opportunities clearly exist, otherwise they would not be providing an income for so many people. However, to be recognized as segments of a circle of continuous value creation, they need reframing.
Author:
Soon Yu
Year published:
2018
ISBN:
978-1682615409
Iconic Advantage® is a different approach that allows companies to leverage what they already have to create lasting differentiation and deeper relationships with their customers. It generates disproportionate levels of profit and protects you against market fluctuations. Many of the world’s most successful brands have been using it for years.
Author:
Wolfgang Joensson
Year published:
2018
ISBN:
978-1510730397
Iconix is a comprehensive collection of iconic product design objects, chronologically organized from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to the present. Each spread of this richly illustrated book showcases the author’s representation of the chosen design, expressing its essence and capturing its spirit. In the introductory text, he shares his concept of the term iconicity to help the reader understand what makes these products stand out and why they are considered icons today.
Author:
Richard Morris
Year published:
2016
ISBN:
978-1472578242
This book provides an integrated and cohesive view of the product design process, covering materials, manufacturing, idea generation, computer-aided design, engineering functions, product types, and market research. This updated edition explores recent developments such as additive manufacture and crowd funding, and includes more consumer and lifestyle orientated products for a more product-based focus, supported by a range of new innovative examples and case studies from internationally-renown designers and studios.
Author:
Marjanne Van Helvert
Year published:
2017
ISBN:
978-9492095190
Author:
Penny Sparke
Year published:
2018
ISBN:
978-0-8478-6240-5
Destined to become a new classic in the design genre, this major work summarizes an enormous topic—the creation of everyday objects for mass production and consumption from 1900 to the present—and shows how these products have become both symbols of the modern age and harbingers of our future. It covers the work of the heroes of modern and post-modern design, from the early pioneers—Dreyfuss, Bel Geddes, and Eames—to the leaders in the field today, including Starck, Newson, and Ive.
Author:
Ken Segall
Year published:
2016
ISBN:
9781591847502
Apple insider and New York Times bestselling author Ken Segall gives you the tools to Apple’s success – and shows you how to use them. It’s all about simplicity. Whether you’re in a multinational corporation or a lean startup, this guide will teach you how to crush complexity and focus on what matters; how to perform better, faster and more efficiently. Combining his insight from Apple with examples from companies across industries all over the world – including Ben & Jerry’s, Whole Foods, Intel and HyundaiCard – Segall provides a simple roadmap for any company to find success.
Author:
Charlotte & Peter Fiell
Year published:
2016
ISBN:
9783836522168
Tracing the evolution of industrial design from the Industrial Revolution to the present day, the book bursts with synergies of form and function that transform our daily experience. From cameras to kitchenware, Lego to Lamborghini, we meet the individual designers, the global businesses, and above all the genius products, that become integrated into even the smallest details of our lives. Alongside star designers like Marc Newson and Philippe Starck, and major global brands like Braun, Samsung, and Apple, lesser-known and newcomer entries such as Brompton Bicycles and Enercon wind turbines attest to product design’s restless pace, as well as to today’s most pressing challenges and priorities to which it must turn its creative invention.
Authors:
Paul Hekkert, Matthijs Dijk, van
Year published:
2016
ISBN:
978-9063693718
Author:
SendPoints
Year published:
2017
ISBN:
9789887757283
Smart Product Design looks at the latest innovations in smart home, health and wellbeing, sports and fitness, business, travel and more. Featuring almost 100 products with details and concept sketches as well as interviews with some of todays leading designers on their inspiration, concept design and philosophy, and how they balance aesthetics with functionality.
Author:
Annie Leonard
Year published:
2010
ISBN:
9781439125663
The Story of Stuff expands on the celebrated documentary exploring the threat of overconsumption on the environment, economy, and our health. Leonard examines the “stuff” we use everyday, offering a galvanizing critique and steps for a changed planet.
Author:
Gjoko Muratovski
Year published:
2022
ISBN:
978-1529708158
Design is everywhere. It influences how we live, what we wear, how we communicate, what we buy, and how we behave. To design for the real world and define strategies rather than just implement them, we need to learn how to understand and solve complex, intricate, and often unexpected problems. Research for Designers is the guide to this new, evidence-based creative process for anyone doing research in Design Studies or looking to develop their design research skills.
Authors:
Mariana Amatullo, Bryan Boyer, Jennifer May, Andrew Shea
Year published:
2021
ISBN:
978-0367898427
The United Nations, Australia Post, and governments in the UK, Finland, Taiwan, France, Brazil, and Israel are just a few of the organizations and groups utilizing design to drive social change. Grounded by a global survey in sectors as diverse as public health, urban planning, economic development, education, humanitarian response, cultural heritage, and civil rights, Design for Social Innovation captures these stories and more through 45 richly illustrated case studies from six continents.
Design for Social Innovation is a must-have for professionals, organizations, and educators in design, philanthropy, social innovation, and entrepreneurship. This book marks the first attempt to define the contours of a global overview that showcases the cultural, economic, and organizational levers propelling design for social innovation forward today.
Authors:
Eric Quint, Gerda Gemser and Giulia Calabretta
Year published:
2022
ISBN:
978-1503613966
Design leadership at scale requires leaders who design the design function, establish a thriving environment for the creative team, and shape the design organization to drive progress, advance innovation, and enhance meaningful customer experiences.
To examine the foundations of successful design leadership, the authors performed extensive in-depth interviews with design leaders working for Fortune 500 organizations across industries. Based on these insights, Design Leadership Ignited delineates a pathway to design excellence, which includes establishing a forward-looking strategy and an adequate organizational structure for the design function, empowering the design team, and scaling the impact of design across the entire organization. This book takes the position that a core challenge in the journey towards design excellence is the need to recognize and balance the often-contradictory objectives and activities that design leaders encounter. Combining their practitioner experience and research, the authors provide a framework to embrace the complexity of design leadership that will elevate design at scale.
Author:
Don Norman
Year published:
2023
ISBN:
9780262047951
The world is a mess. Our dire predicament, from collapsing social structures to the climate crisis, has been millennia in the making and can be traced back to the erroneous belief that the earth’s resources are infinite. The key to change, says Don Norman, is human behavior, covered in the book’s three major themes: meaning, sustainability, and humanity-centeredness. Emphasize quality of life, not monetary rewards; restructure how we live to better protect the environment; and focus on all of humanity. Design for a Better World presents an eye-opening diagnosis of where we’ve gone wrong and a clear prescription for making things better.
Norman proposes a new way of thinking, one that recognizes our place in a complex global system where even simple behaviors affect the entire world. He identifies the economic metrics that contribute to the harmful effects of commerce and manufacturing and proposes a recalibration of what we consider important in life. His experience as both a scientist and business executive gives him the perspective to show how to make these changes while maintaining a thriving economy. Let the change begin with this book before it’s too late.
Authors:
Maria Giudice & Christopher Ireland
Year published:
2023
ISBN:
978-1959029-14-4
Today’s radically complex problems require people to lead with design. Changemakers is an essential playbook for designers and nondesigners who want to drive change at work, at home, and in their communities. Groundbreaking designers Maria Giudice and Christopher Ireland—armed with insights from some of today’s top minds in business, tech, and social justice—offer a pragmatic, people-centered approach to change.
Author:
Matthew Wizinsky
Year published:
2022
ISBN:
9780262543569
The designed things, experiences, and symbols that we use to perceive, understand, and perform our everyday lives are much more than just props. They directly shape how we live. In Design after Capitalism, Matthew Wizinsky argues that the world of industrial capitalism that gave birth to modern design has been dramatically transformed. (352 pp)
Author:
Cappelli Identity Design
Year published:
2022
ISBN:
885724611
This book was born out of a passion for design and for humanity and it tells the personal story of Emanuele Cappelli, Designer and Professor who, through research begun in his studio in 2010, presents the Dynamic brand method as an approach to contemporary integrated communication. A method born and raised thanks to being alive and curious, experimental, sometimes losers and sometimes winners. The Dynamic brand mission is to live design in its cultural and shared meaning, in transformation to preserve its values. (256 pp)
Author:
Klaus Klemp
Year published:
2023
ISBN:
9781838663896
With profiles on key members of the creative and leadership teams that reinforce Braun’s design legacy and the importance of the people behind the process, Braun: Designed to Keep unpacks the brand’s core values – such as simplicity, usefulness, and longevity – that changed the way household products are perceived, designed, and used. (424 pp)
Author:
Jarrett Fuller
Year published:
2023
ISBN:
9781961856097
The history of ID, then, is synonymous with the history of design. The larger impact of our fourth and current era is yet to be determined, but this book acts as a blueprint for where design might go next. Design is a catalyst. We cannot speculate, create, and implement on our own. For too long, designers have lived with the misguided belief that only we can do what we do — the false idea that, somehow, designers are unique. In this current phase, ID is powering a new generation of design leaders willing to release the hubris and openly embrace collaboration. In the spirit of collaboration and dialogue, this book assembles six conversations with ID faculty about the issues facing contemporary design and how ID is thinking through them as a community.
Authors:
Antoine Picon and Carlo Ratti
Year published:
2023
ISBN:
9780300247510
What have smart technologies taught us about cities? What lessons can we learn from today’s urbanites to make better places to live? Antoine Picon and Carlo Ratti argue that the answers are in the maps we make. For centuries, we have relied on maps to navigate the enormity of the city. Now, as the physical world combines with the digital world, we need a new generation of maps to navigate the city of tomorrow. Pervasive sensors allow anyone to visualize cities in entirely new ways—ebbs and flows of pollution, traffic, and internet connectivity.
This book explores how the growth of digital mapping, spurred by sensing technologies, is affecting cities and daily lives. It examines how new cartographic possibilities aid urban planners, technicians, politicians, and administrators; how digitally mapped cities could reveal ways to make cities smarter and more efficient; how monitoring urbanites has political and social repercussions; and how the proliferation of open-source maps and collaborative platforms can aid activists and vulnerable populations. With its beautiful, accessible presentation of cutting-edge research, this book makes it easy for readers to understand the stakes of the new information age—and appreciate the timeless power of the city.
Author:
Ellen Lupton
Year published:
2017
ISBN:
194230319X
978-1942303190
Good design, like good storytelling, brings ideas to life. The latest book from award-winning writer Ellen Lupton is a playbook for creative thinking, showing designers how to use storytelling techniques to create satisfying graphics, products, services and experiences. Whether crafting a digital app or a data-rich publication, designers invite people to enter a scene and explore what’s there. An intriguing logo, page layout or retail space uses line, shape and form to lead users on dynamic journeys.
Design Is Storytelling explores the psychology of visual perception from a narrative point of view. Presenting dozens of tools and concepts in a lively, visual manner, this book will help any designer amplify the narrative power of their work. Use this book to stir emotions, build empathy, articulate values and convey action; to construct narrative arcs and create paths through space; integrate form and language; evaluate a project’s storytelling power; and to write and deliver strong narratives.
Author:
Katie Treggiden
Year published:
2023
ISBN:
9493039897
978-9493039896
With a foreword by The Repair Shop’s Jay Blades, this new book by craft and circularity advocate Katie Treggiden celebrates 25 artists, curators, menders and re-makers who have rejected the allure of the fast, disposable and easy in favour of the patina of use, the stories of age and the longevity of care and repair. Accompanying these profiles, six in-depth essays explore the societal, cultural and environmental roles of mending in a throwaway world.
Author:
Megan Groth
Year published:
2024
ISBN:
Coming soon.
Megan began the project by reconnecting with a high school classmate (who happened to be the founder of Raygun and a brilliant designer) and crowdsourcing place suggestions from as many people as possible via email, online forms and forums, text messages and casual conversations. One collaboration led to another and another and a year later, ‘Places We Love: San Diego Tijuana’ was released.
Author:
Hicham Lahlou and Mugendi M’Rithaa
Year published:
2019
ISBN:
978-9954695326
“African Generation, the Power of Design” invites us to explore the continent in search of 50 designers who stimulate our senses with their creative force. African design is the plural expression of the many cultures that characterise this continent, the expression of its youth, its creativity, extraordinary resources, and incredible future potential. African designers bear witness through their work to the history of their respective countries, and express a combination of African and Western culture. Inspired by everyday objects, they transform them for alternative use. They often work in collaboration with local artisans in the production of concepts. Design thus becomes an act of solidarity, connecting creation, industry, and artisanry. The texts by two co-authors retrace the history of design in Africa, and evoke the emergence of artists and the particularities of the continent. The authors offer their vision of this extraordinary dynamic. Africa is charting its path, and this book will follow that path into the field of design.
Author:
Lesley-Ann Noel and Stanford d.school
Year published:
2023
ISBN:
978-1984858146
Discover design strategies for using your own unique social identities and experiences as inspiration to challenge the status quo and create the kind of lasting change that leads to greater equity and social justice, from Stanford University’s d.school.
Editors:
Anne H. Berry, Kareem Collie, Penina Acayo Laker, Lesley-Ann Noel, Jennifer Rittner, Kelly Walters
Year published:
2022
ISBN:
978-1621537854
The Black Experience in Design spotlights teaching practices, research, stories, and conversations from a Black/African diasporic lens.
Author:
Irene Guerrieri
Year published:
2024
ISBN:
978-8835160458
How do you design for children? This book attempts to answer this question through the lenses of Cas Holman, Rosan Bosch and Rasu Watanabe, based on the concept of a newer, freer and more autonomous education. An approach to the topic in global terms, which does not neglect other iconic historical figures, both in the planning and pedagogical fields. Accompanied by engaging images, this book is intended for designers, educators and anyone dealing with the imaginary world of children through toys and spaces.
Author:
Gjoko Muratovski
Year published:
2024
ISBN:
978-1529669985
To make meaningful contributions and to drive innovation, designers first need to learn to ask the right questions so that they can identify what the real problems are. They also need to learn how to conduct research to resolve these problems. Research for Designers is a guide to this new, evidence-based creative process. This seminal, bestselling book by Gjoko Muratovski is unique in the way it bridges academia and industry, as well as research and practice. The book also expands the notion of what design is, and what it can be in the 21st century.
