Design & Philosophy

Design by Nature

In Design by Nature: Using Universal Forms and Principles in Design, author Maggie Macnab takes you on an intimate and eclectic journey examining the unending versatility of nature, showing how to uncover nature’s ingenuity and use it to create beautiful and compelling designed communications.

Breaking In

BREAKING IN™

BREAKING IN™ Product Designhelps you build the portfolio you need to get the job you want. With advice from over 100 product design luminaries, BREAKING IN™ gives you an unfair advantage over the rest. 

Get specific advice from the exact people you want to work for. 

Learn what Creative Directors are looking for in your portfolio. 

Avoid the common traps that most portfolios fall into. 

Problems of Design

We all know the designs of George Nelson, but this book reveals an amazing depth of understanding. Nelson ranges far and wide on why design is so important in elements much larger than a piece of furniture. Nothing less than society and cities is fair game for his take on the world. Nelson asks why things are the way that they are and examines urban centers to see what works and what fails. If all you expected was a set of pretty pictures of his chairs, then you should pick one of the many other books that cover his designs.

Karim Rashid: I Want to Change the World

Karim Rashid is the best known and most prolific young designer practicing in America today. On the brink of household-name celebrity, he has fast become a superstar among design aficionados by revolutionizing the visual standards of minimalist design with his fresh, colorful, sinuous, and sensual objects. His work is in the collections of museums worldwide, including The Musemu of Modern Art, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The Montreal Museum of Decorative Arts.

NONOBJECT

The "objective" world is one of facts, data, and actuality. The world of the "nonobject" is about perception, experience, and possibility. In this highly original and visually extravant book, Branko Lukic (an award-winning designer) and Barry Katz (an authority on the history and philosophy of design) imagine what would happen if design started not from the object but from the space between people and the objects they use. The "nonobject," they explain, is the designer's personal experiment to explore our relation to the observable world.

Make Design Matter

"This little red book presents a pocket guide to meaningful design. Seven stepping stones that inspire you to cross the stream of change, and get you to the other side, firm and dry …" —Brent Richards, creative chef and architect

I Miss My Pencil

What if doorbells used smell instead of sound? What if watches told time more slowly on weekends? Designers at the ground-breaking firm IDEO the most innovative design company in the world push themselves to ask seemingly outrageous questions like these daily as they work to construct the products that shape our lives. Following 12 design experiments conceived by designers at IDEO, I Miss My Pencil takes a voyeuristic look at what designers do daily, might get to do once, and sometimes only hope to do.

Where Stuff Comes From: How Toasters, Toilets, Cars, Computers, and Many Other Things Come to be as they Are

Molotch takes us on a fascinating exploration into the worlds of technology, design, corporate and popular culture. We now see how corporations, designers, retailers, advertisers, and other middle-men influence what a thing can be and how it is made. We see the way goods link into ordinary life as well as vast systems of consumption, economic and political operation. The book is a meditation into the meaning of the stuff in our lives and what that stuff says about us.

 

Toothpicks & Logos: Design in Everyday Life

Design touches virtually every aspect of our lives, imbuing the most humdrum of objects with meaning. In Toothpicks and Logos, John Heskett illuminates a subject as vast and complex as human life itself, ranging from the earliest found implements in our history--the stick, the shell, the cupped hand--to modern advertising logos, software interfaces, and even the lowly toothpick.

Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams

"In the more than 40 years that he spent working at Braun, Dieter Rams established himself as one of the most influential designers of the twentieth century. His elegantly clear visual language not only defined product design for decades, but also our fundamental understanding of what design is and what it can and should do. 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.

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