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.
Happy Reading!
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.
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 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.)
