The most recommended design books

I'm a Distinguished Professor in the Michael Graves College, Kean University. I’ve written over twenty books about advertising, graphic design, branding, personal branding, creativity, and drawing. On May 17, 2022, Routledge will publish my new book, Strategic Creativity: A Business Field Guide to Advertising, Branding, and Design. I’ve won numerous awards for my design, writing, and research, including awards from the National Society of Arts and Letters and the National League of Pen Women. In 2015, I received the Human Rights Educator award, 2016 Kean Presidential Excellence award for research, 2013 Teacher of the Year, and the Carnegie Foundation lists me among the great teachers of our time.

I have been designing user interfaces since graduate school at Stanford, where I studied psychology and computer science. Over the five decades since then, I have designed many digital products and services, learning a lot about how to make them usable and useful. Two decades ago, I turned more towards sharing my knowledge and experience through writing (articles and books) and teaching (professionals and students). I’ve taught at Stanford University, Mills College, the University of Canterbury (New Zealand), the University of San Francisco, and at professional conferences and companies. Google invited me twice to speak in their Authors @ Google series, and ACM and SIGCHI have given me several awards.

I love gardening and learning about unusual plants but I find that many gardening books don’t provide a lot of useful advice. I grow over 3,000 different types of plants and have a background in chemistry and biochemisty. I teach gardening to new gardeners and garden design to more experienced gardeners. My students want to learn practical things like solving pest problems and growing plants with more flowers. I am always on the lookout for books that provide them with hands-on practical advice they can use right away. 

I know small spaces from first-hand experience. As a writer based in New York City, I have lived in a series of impossibly small spaces, including a 6’ x 8’ bedroom in an apartment with no living room and a teeny-tiny studio that was made livable by installing a Murphy bed. Today I live in less than 700 square feet with my husband and son. When I set out to write my own book, I wanted to inspire readers to make the most of their own small homes and discover the freedom that living small provides. I have an extensive personal library of books about small space design, but these five are my all-time favorites.

I moved into content design from a career in brand and marketing, at a time when the discipline was emerging and not many people really knew what it was. Much of my time since has been spent educating people and organisations and sharing knowledge to help them make better content decisions. Throughout this time, I’ve learnt most of what I know through the experience of working with the design teams, but so many books have also helped me along the way and made my work so much better. I love content design – having the power to improve people's experiences with brands through words is so rewarding, and these books will inspire others to do the same.

I have been designing and building furniture professionally since before 1976. From the beginning I’ve had an avid interest in what might be called “appropriate technologies”— when to use a hand tool or power tool — that is, for a specific use, which one gives the best results for the least time and effort? If you read the journals of 18th Century woodworkers you’ll find they were unbelievably fast —using only hand tools. I believe that by the 1970s much of that knowledge and many of the tools themselves had been lost. I set out to rediscover them.

I've always had a creative curiosity that involves making, designing, and finding creative solutions to problems, this led me to using digital tools and lecturing in interactive media. As technology, society, and design have developed so to has my knowledge and experience in these fields enabling me to understand and develop the unique skills that are required to create successful solutions in the digital design process. I do this through creating and designing interventions in the physical space to ask questions and raise awareness of our use of technology and the impact on our awareness of time and space and the world around us.

I am a graphic designer, writer, and brand consultant. I work with clients of all sizes, from multinationals to companies of one. Since opening my business in 2005 I’ve created logos and visual identities for brands in more than 30 countries. I run two design blogs Logo Design Love and Identity Designed. They resulted in publishing deals to write their accompanying books, and their pages now get millions of views each year.

When my kids were toddlers, there was a Burger King in the neighborhood with an indoor playground. It was glorious. A random guy walked up to me while we were there. “How do you do it, you know, the whole Dad thing” he asked. "Well… you don’t necessarily need to do a whole lot. Mostly just show up. Stick around." Never mentioned that by this time, I’d written and/or illustrated at least a couple dozen children’s books. I asked my nine-year-old daughter how she’d describe me as a Dad. “Most people think you’re creative, but I think you’re pretty average.” That’s good enough for me.

I have been designing user interfaces since graduate school at Stanford, where I studied psychology and computer science. Over the five decades since then, I have designed many digital products and services, learning a lot about how to make them usable and useful. Two decades ago, I turned more towards sharing my knowledge and experience through writing (articles and books) and teaching (professionals and students). I’ve taught at Stanford University, Mills College, the University of Canterbury (New Zealand), the University of San Francisco, and at professional conferences and companies. Google invited me twice to speak in their Authors @ Google series, and ACM and SIGCHI have given me several awards.