Design is learned with the hands, but it is shaped by a surprisingly short shelf of books. Ask working designers what changed how they see and the same titles come up again and again, written by a cognitive scientist, a painter, an art critic, a typographer and a handful of the 20th century's great practitioners. None of them are trend reports. All of them are still in use, decades after publication, because they explain principles rather than styles. These eight belong on every designer's shelf, and on the shelf of anyone who wants to understand why good things look and work the way they do.
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The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
Originally published in 1988 as The Psychology of Everyday Things, Don Norman's best seller argues that when people struggle with a door, a stove or a remote control, the fault lies with the design, not the user. The cognitive scientist uses case studies to show the psychology behind good and bad design and proposes principles for making objects communicate how they work. The revised and expanded edition from Basic Books arrived in 2013. Start here, whatever kind of design you do.
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Interaction of Color by Josef Albers
Albers' masterwork of art education first appeared from Yale University Press in 1963 as a limited silkscreen edition with 150 color plates. A paperback followed in 1971 and the book has never gone out of print. Conceived as a handbook for artists, teachers and students, it demonstrates through exercises how colors change depending on their neighbors, and it will permanently alter how you see a palette. The 50th anniversary edition adds an expanded selection of color studies.
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Ways of Seeing by John Berger
Based on the 1972 BBC Two series John Berger created with producer Mike Dibb, Ways of Seeing was a response to Kenneth Clark's traditionalist Civilisation. Berger questions the hidden ideologies in images, from oil painting to advertising, and shows how art reflects the social and political systems that produced it. It is short, provocative and still radical. Penguin keeps it in print, and no designer who makes images for a living should skip it.
The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
The Canadian typographer and poet Robert Bringhurst first published this history and guide in 1992, and has revised it repeatedly since, most recently in the 2012 version 4.0. Hermann Zapf wished to see it become "the Typographers' Bible," and Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones have called it the finest book ever written about typography. Its title nods to Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, and it is just as useful a reference for type as that book is for writing. If you enjoyed our story on the Sastre typeface, this is the book that explains why such work matters.
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Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef Müller-Brockmann
The Swiss designer Josef Müller-Brockmann was a pioneer of the International Typographic Style, and this manual is its operating system. It lays out the rules for grids from 8 to 32 fields, covers three dimensional grids, and gives exact directions for applying them, with examples. Designers working on screens use it as much as print designers. It is dry, rigorous and indispensable, and the current edition runs 176 pages.
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Thoughts on Design by Paul Rand
Paul Rand designed logos for IBM, UPS, ABC, Westinghouse and NeXT, and taught graphic design at Yale for decades. His slim 1947 essay argues that all design should integrate form and function, and it remains one of the seminal texts of the field. The Chronicle Books facsimile edition preserves the text and imagery as Rand revised them for a 1970 printing and adds a foreword by Michael Bierut. You can read it in an evening and think about it for years.
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Designing Design by Kenya Hara
Kenya Hara has been art director of Muji since 2001, and his books Designing Design and White are recognized as important works of design theory. In Designing Design, published in English by Lars Müller Publishers in 2007, he explains the importance of emptiness in Japanese visual and philosophical traditions and shows how it applies to design, using examples from his own work, including the programs for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics. The publisher lists its paperback edition as out of print, so grab a copy when you see one.
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Less but Better by Dieter Rams
Few product designs have the staying power of Dieter Rams' work for Braun, and Less but Better is his own account of the thinking behind it, including the ten principles of good design that remain a foundation of design education. The new, revised edition from Gestalten is available in English and German editions. It is not a complete catalog of his work, and it does not try to be. It is a manifesto, with the products as evidence, as our look at the Braun SK4 shows.
How to read them
Do not read these in a row. Keep Norman and Rand by the desk, work through Albers with paper and paint, and treat Bringhurst and Müller-Brockmann as references to return to on every project. Read Berger and Hara when you need to remember why the work matters. And keep notes as you go. Designers have been doing it in paper planners like the Hobonichi Techo for years.
Good design starts with learning to see. These books teach you how.
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