The Designer's Review of Books

The recent monograph, Abbott Miller: Design and Content, provides a wealth of evidence for seeing Miller as one of today’s exemplary designers. In my view, this is not for any set of particular...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2015/06/abbott-miller-design-and-content/

We rarely do editorial posts here, but Steve Kroeter’s site, Designers & Books is obviously close to our hearts. They have just launched a Kickstarter campaign of a type we would love to see mo...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2015/05/kickstarter-for-the-reprint-of-ladislav-sutnars-visual-design-in-action/

Are designers too wedded to a realist vision of today, and of tomorrow’s prospects? Are they complacent about design’s contributions to society? The answer to both is a resounding yes accordi...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2015/03/speculative-everything/

With its obsession with creating the new and improving the old, design is naturally a field that is in constant flux. In the past decade, design has been grappling with its identity somewhat.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2015/01/design-transitions-author-interview/

Review by Andy Polaine I grew up with video and computer games. When I was a young child, I remember my father coming home from the pub telling me about the fantastic game he had played there.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2014/12/push-start-the-art-of-video-games/

Review by Paul A. Ranogajec London Transport’s logo–known as the roundel, circle and bar, or bulls-eye–easily counts as one of the most successful graphic designs of all time.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2014/12/a-logo-for-london/

Review by Rebecca Kohn In the preface to The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge, author Manuel Lima says that he “could never find a wide-ranging book dedicated to the tree as one...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2014/09/the-book-of-trees/

Review by Paul A. Ranogajec Everything that may be conjured in your mind by the phrase “Finnish design” is likely to be represented one way or another in Out of the Blue, a collection of biog...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2014/07/out-of-the-blue/

As a design educator, I find that there is a constant uphill battle to get students an ever increasing amount of information in a continually shrinking amount of time.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2014/06/type-on-screen-5-questions-with-the-author/

Review by Sophia Angelis Philip Grushkin, the long-forgotten but latterly-celebrated book jacket designer, was born to Jewish-Russian immigrants in Brooklyn, New York, in 1921. Trained at the Coo...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2014/03/philip-grushkin-a-designers-archive/

When fellow Designers Review of Books author Christina Beard contacted me about her new book I was of course very interested to see what one of our own had come up with.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2014/01/critiqued-5-questions-with-the-author/

Thoughtfully designed, and encased in a conceptual cover that exhibits the interwoven intricacies of human involvement and existence, _Confessions of a Generalist _is an all-encompassing tale of ...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2013/11/confessions-of-a-generalist/

As the creator of the site Design Is History, I have a particular interest in the history of graphic design. It was with that interest in mind that I jumped at the chance to interview John Cliffo...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2013/11/graphic-icons-5-questions-with-the-author/

The smell of Cow Gum rubber cement and the fascination of stacked Letraset trays form a large part of my childhood memories of afternoons spent at my father’s graphic design and advertising age...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2013/10/ken-garland-structure-and-substance-review-and-interview/

In order to deal with the ever-growing pile of design books on my desk, I have become more choosy about what to review. Some design books are simply gorgeous design objects, others contain insigh...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2013/09/the-vintage-classic-style-guide/

Reviewed by Carolina de Bartolo In my 2010 review of Josef Albers’s Interaction of Color, I summarized this most excellent volume as “an eternal gift to the world of design.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2013/08/a-way-to-learn-to-see-the-new-interaction-of-color-ipad-app/

As part of a DROB series of interviews with authors, Jenny Venn interviews Noah Scalin and Michelle Taute about co-authoring the useful and inspiring book The Design Activists Handbook and about ...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2013/08/an-interview-with-noah-scalin-and-michelle-taute-on-the-design-activists-handbook/

Design Anthropology: object culture in the 21st century, edited by Alison J. Clarke Publisher: Springer, Vienna, 2011. Review by Maria Blyzinsky 'This book describes a seismic shift in the way ex...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2013/05/design-anthropology/

As a graphic designer who can barely draw, I have always envied those who can incorporate hand drawing to make their designs look unique. When I saw Draw Your Own Fonts: 30 Alphabets to Scribble,...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2013/04/draw-your-own-fonts-30-alphabets-to-scribble-sketch-and-make-your-own/

Photographed and Reviewed by Carolina de Bartolo How many type reference books do you need in your library? If you love looking at letters like I do, I’d say the more the merrier.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2013/03/looking-at-type-a-pictorial-review-of-four-type-reference-books/

Lester Brown, an American environmental analyst and founder of the Worldwatch Institute said: The communications industry is the only agency possessing the capacity to convey the knowledge necess...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2013/03/cause-and-effect-visualizing-sustainability/

Identified as a “place to start” by renowned designer and social entrepreneur, William Drenttel, Designing for Social Change by Andrew Shea, is an insightful guidebook and designer’s co-pi...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2013/02/an-interview-with-andrew-shea-on-designing-for-social-change/

For those interested in graphic design theory, there are two compelling books on the market with nearly identical titles: Graphic Design Theory: Readings From the Field, by Miami University profe...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2013/01/comparison-review-graphic-design-theory/

(Click to enlarge) Have you ever wanted to learn interface design in a single day? Well, you won’t be able to, at least not thoroughly.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2013/01/design-axioms/

Hear. See. Think. Draw. This is the approach to visual note taking that author Mike Rohde, illustrator of the wildly popular book Rework, outlines in The Sketchnote Handbook.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2013/01/the-sketchnote-handbook/

The holidays are a time for family and that includes children, of all ages. With that in mind I thought it would be great to take time out and review Little Big Books, a great new collection of i...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/12/little-big-books/

Here at the Designers Review of Books we all have lengthy Amazon wish lists. While the holidays are a time of giving, they are also a good excuse to pick out one or two of the top books on our li...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/12/holiday-wish-list/

Designers, typographers, illustrators and letterers the world over will already be familiar with the work of Louise Fili. Her book covers, restaurant identities, food packaging labels and letteri...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/11/elegantissima-the-design-and-typography-of-louise-fili/

Gestalten recently released the sixth book in the infamous Los Logos series. This is actually the first of the series that I have had the pleasure of owning, and it definitely does not disappoint...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/11/los-logos-6/

If you are wondering what generative design is, or curious about the potential impact it may have on your practice, grab this book and read the appendix first.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/10/generative-design-visualize-program-and-create-with-processing/

What do hieroglyphs, washing machines, clothes, tweeting and satellites all have in common? At one point or another they have made use of icons to communicate one thing or another.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/10/the-icon-handbook/

Brackets, when writing, are usually used to contain extra information that may support one subject or another. The publication Bracket takes a look at some very serious issues that are often negl...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/08/bracket/

I have read a fair amount about avant garde design, as any self-respecting designer should, but I’ve never come across a text as thorough or well produced as The Avant Garde Applied (1890-1950)...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/08/avant-garde-applied/

The second book in the Kat Ran Essays in Philatelics series, _ Eric Gill: Notes on Postage Stamps_, provides interesting insight into the history of Gill’s not-so-successful career as a stamp d...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/08/eric-gill-notes-on-postage-stamps/

Shaping Text by Jan Middendorp boldly and concisely describes itself right on its front cover. This book will show you how shaping text can help you grab, hold, direct and manipulate the reader�...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/08/shaping-text/

There’s a horrible cardboard car on a rubber band wrapped around this lovely book. Ewww. What’s that doing there? Never mind, I’ll chuck that and just get on with admiring an exquisitely de...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/07/a-smart-guide-to-utopia/

If you’re a fan of jazz music or design in any shape or form it is worth your time to take a look at Jazz Covers, a recent release from Taschen.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/06/jazz-covers-from-the-1940s-to-1990s/

(Click to enlarge) In the world of graphic design there comes a point when your skills are really put to the test, and that’s when your work comes rolling off the press completing the transitio...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/06/the-print-handbook/

(Click to enlarge) Sleepwalkers was a multimedia art experience created by Doug Aitken and presented at the MOMA in 2007. The exhibition was comprised of a series of 8 moving images that were bro...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/06/sleepwalkers/

As part of a new series of interviews with authors, Andy Polaine interviews David Sherwin about the background to the writing of his successful and extremely useful book, Creative Workshop and th...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/06/an-interview-with-david-sherwin-on-creative-workshop-and-success-by-design/

As a designer, I’m always thinking about how spaces function and how they affect the way we interact with each other. When I visit design studios, I curiously observe the space and I’m typica...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/05/make-space-how-to-set-the-stage-for-creative-collaboration/

Mobile the user; not mobile, the device. Mobile is more than just being wireless. Mobility transcends freedom from wires; it suggests an entirely different user experience.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/05/mobile-web-design-by-cameron-moll/

I have been delaying reviewing User Design’s – aka Thomas Bohm’s – series of self-published illustrated books, The journey of larks, Life and Punctuation..?. Partly this has been a lack o...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/04/the-journey-of-larks-life-and-punctuation/

You are not doing design, you are selling design, which is a valuable service. If you don’t want to charge for your services, you can pick up Design Is a Hobby on aisle three of Michael’s bet...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/04/design-is-a-job-by-mike-monteiro/

Newly minted Editor, Dominic Flask, surveys his kingdom. Or visits a gallery. Regular readers will know that they haven’t had all that much to regularly read recently.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/04/the-designers-review-of-books-has-a-new-editor-dominic-flask/

Organic is the second release from the London-based Kapitza studio, run by sisters Nicole and Petra Kapitza. The book is 224 pages filled with colorful patterns inspired by the Kapitzas’ love o...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/03/organic-from-kapitza/

Review by Veronica Grow Like most typo cognoscenti, Stephen Banham is fondly known for being somewhat fanatical and nerdy on the subject of type and letters.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/03/characters-cultural-stories-revealed-through-typography/

If you are a fan of minimalism, modernism or brutalism you will find Function, Restraint, and Subversion in Typography especially intriguing. The book, by J. Namdev Hardisty, surveys contemporary...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/02/function-restraint-and-subversion-in-typography/

Photo: Marc Wathieu on Flickr. Over the past year or so I’ve been getting a pretty high spam to real comment ratio on The Designer’s Review of Books, some of which are attempts to hack the bl...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/01/turning-off-comments/

This isn’t your typical sketchbook. Robin Landa, Professor of Design at Kean University in New Jersey, collaborated with some of the nation’s top creative experts to bring readers a brainstor...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2012/01/take-a-line-for-a-walk-a-creativity-journal/

A nice little book from Magpie Studios honoring the postmen and women – in the UK we say “posties” – who are working so hard at this time of year (we hope):

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/12/magpie-studios-christmas-book-honours-the-postie/

“Designers are the mediators of our daily experience. The easier my compost bucket is to use, the more appealing my reusable grocery bag, the more likely I am to participate in environmentally ...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/12/just-design-socially-conscious-design-for-critical-causes/

How often do you read a design text that impacts your life dramatically? As someone relatively new to the field of Interaction Design, John Kolko’s Thoughts on Interaction Design, Second Editio...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/12/thoughts-on-interaction-design-second-edition/

This is going to be a short review because there have been so many reviews and commentaries about the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson (Amazon: US|UK|DE) that it seems there is almost noth...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/12/steve-jobs-by-walter-isaacson/

I don’t often plug products and services on The Designer’s Review of Books, but this one is too good to miss and from my publisher, the excellent Rosenfeld Media who publish “short, practic...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/12/40-off-rosenfeld-media-books-until-friday-16th-dec/

Who can resist a book that provides a paper doll of Saul Bass? Jam-packed, whirlwind, and charming are the three best words to describe_ A History of Graphic Design for Rainy Days_ from Gestalten...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/11/a-history-of-graphic-design-for-rainy-days/

“I often get questions like this from students, and whenever I do, I get the sense that they are fishing for a recipe to become a successful designer.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/10/how-to-think-like-a-great-graphic-designer/

Do you wonder what’s next? Your next job, the next big opportunity for your business, the next technological development that could change everything for you?

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/10/creative-personal-branding/

If every typography book were written like Just My Type: A Book About Fonts (Amazon: US|UK|DE), more people would care about the subject. British author and journalist Simon Garfield’s tone is ...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/09/just-my-type-more-than-a-book-about-fonts/

Double review of Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams and Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible Review by Carolina de Bartolo

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/09/dieter-rams-double-review-less-and-more-as-little-design-as-possible/

I had better start by owning up to not having read Designers Don’t Read by Howe - I had seen lots of press for it but never got round to picking up a copy.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/08/designers-dont-have-influences-by-austin-howe/

A small part of the book White is about color: “it is ‘all colors’ and ‘no colors’ at the same time. This identity as a color that can ‘escape color’ makes white very special.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/06/white/

I Heart Design. No, really I do. I design every day, spend my spare time obsessing about typography, and could never imagine doing anything else. Design holds a near and dear spot in my heart.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/06/i-heart-design/

As a design educator I am always looking for new ways to teach the unavoidable “Introduction to Graphic Design” course. I have read and used many textbooks over the years, each with their own...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/05/the-elements-of-graphic-design-second-edition/

Explorations in Typography: Mastering the Art of Fine Typesetting by Carolina de Bartolo is a marvelous book that explains some of the most commonly used typesetting devices.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/05/explorations-in-typography/

I’m not the first one to say this, and I definitely won’t be the last, but the statement is worth repeating. Thinking With Type is a book that should be in the collection of every designer, w...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/04/thinking-with-type/

I would think that most designers with an eye on the lo-fi will be familiar with the aesthetic of toy cameras. As an arty type with an interest in lo-fi technology and photography I have a couple...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/04/toy-cameras-creative-photos-high-end-results-from-40-plastic-cameras/

Women Of Design: Influence And Inspiration From The Original Trailblazers To The New Groundbreakers is one of four books that have been written by the husband and wife team of Bryony Gomez-Palaci...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/04/women-of-design/

While graphic design does not have as long of a history as some of the other visual mediums, say sculpture or painting, it has certainly come a long way in establishing itself through the work, w...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/03/bibliographic/

Karen Cheng’s Designing Type is the answer to the needs of a multitude of type designers from all over the world. It is probably the first book ever to analyse, discuss and explain process of d...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/02/designing-type/

What the public eye sees most often is the finished design work – beautifully printed posters, books, websites, packaging, and signage. But little is known or said about the studios that labor ...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/02/studio-culture-the-secret-life-of-the-graphic-design-studio/

Are you a designer because you’re a timid photographer? That seems unlikely. But if you are a designer, you probably carry a camera with you much of the time and have a flourishing Flickr acc...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/02/the-graphic-eye/

(Click to enlarge) My initial reaction to the book Euro Deco: Graphic Design Between the Wars was disappointment. But it wasn’t because of the book itself, it was because of my own ignorance.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/02/euro-deco-graphic-design-between-the-wars/

Having only recently been exposed to the work of Alvin Lustig I was very excited to learn of the publication of the monograph Born Modern: The Life and Design of Alvin Lustig chronicling his life...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/01/born-modern-the-life-and-design-of-alvin-lustig/

I came across this slim book (which is more an extended essay) while looking into texts on aesthetics. I was particularly interested in books about the differences in perception.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2011/01/junichiro-tanizaki-in-praise-of-shadows/

We, Me, Them & It by John Simmons can be summed up by an endorsement on its front cover: “For weeks, rested with many others, then something intrigued me about the title.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2010/12/we-me-them-it/

In order to understand what Emigre 70: The Look Back Issue is, you need to know what it is not. This is not a “new” issue of Emigre with interviews, letters, theories and experimentations tha...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2010/11/emigre-70-the-look-back-issue/

Review by Peter Polaine When you pick up Thoughts of a Hangman: Wooducts by Bill Hamper aka Billy Childish book you could be forgiven for thinking that you had come across some new German Express...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2010/10/thoughts-of-a-hangman-wooducts-by-bill-hamper-aka-billy-childish/

Review by Carolina de Bartolo I’ve long thought of Josef Albers’s Interaction of Color as the one and only book you’ll ever need to understand how to use color as a designer.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2010/10/interaction-of-color-by-josef-albers/

James Victore has never been one to mince words or images in his goal to communicate, and this book is no different. He starts by telling us that this book is not about graphic design, it is abou...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2010/10/victore-or-who-died-and-made-you-boss/

Or to give it it’s full title: Detail In Typography, Letters, Letter spacing, words, word spacing, lines, line spacing, columns. (Amazon UK US) Detail in Typography… is one of the more recent...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2010/09/jost-hochuli-detail-in-typography/

“Long term success requires both creative ability and business acumen.” In one succinct sentence, Shel Perkins gets to the point. Author of Talent is Not Enough: Business Secrets for Designer...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2010/08/talent-is-not-enough-business-secrets-for-designers-2/

Graphic Design: A User’s Manual is a book I wish I had when I started out as a designer. In the follow-up to his previous work, How to be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul, Adrian Sha...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2010/06/graphic-design-a-users-manual/

Sketchbooks: The Hidden Art of Designers, Illustrators and CreativesReview by Jennifer New Repository, Incubator, Laboratory, Sketchbook I had to chuckle when I read DRoB Editor Andy Polaine’s ...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2010/05/sketchbooks-the-hidden-art-of-designers-illustrators-creatives/

Transforming (Tranformator) – “The process of analysing, selecting, ordering, and then making visual some information, data, ideas, implications…” I have been waiting for the publication ...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2010/05/the-transformer-principles-of-making-isotype-charts-by-marie-neurath-and-robin-kinross/

I could use some help. When I started the Designer’s Review of Books, I had a bit of time on my hands and managed to keep a steady flow of weekly reviews.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2010/05/seeking-contributors-for-the-drob/

Review by David Sherwin “Would you like a paper or plastic bag for your groceries?” Seems like a simple question, doesn’t it? Paper should be a better choice, because it will biodegrade.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2010/03/design-is-the-problem/

Prepare for this review to become rather meta. Gestalten’s Fully Booked: Cover Art and Design for Booksis a design book about book design also containing six essays, three apiece by Katherine G...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2010/01/fully-booked-cover-art-design-for-books/

I wanted to read Austin Howe’s Designers Don’t Readjust to be contrary. I read a great deal, as you might imagine writing these reviews. Indeed, one of the main reasons for starting The Desig...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2010/01/designers-dont-read/

Review by Virginia Sasser We know that sustainability is an urgent design issue, despite the fact that some of us are tired of mainstream “greenness” blanketing our consumer landscape with tr...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/11/green-graphic-design/

Review by David Sherwin The further I’ve progressed in my career as designer, the harder it’s become to share with others exactly what I do.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/11/glimmer/

My thanks to An Event Apart San Francisco for sponsoring The Designer’s Review of Books again through October. The list of speakers is long, but Dave Shea‘s They’re Letting Designers Code N...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/11/sponsor-an-event-apart-san-francisco/

Review by Patrick Holt Because the design industry is populated not only by the well-educated, but also by the self-taught and the self-tutored-after-a-mediocre-education (I fall into the latter)...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/11/meggs-history-of-graphic-design/

I have been wanting to write the review of Daniel Eatock’s book, Imprint, (Amazon: US| CA| UK| DE) for some time. It has lain on my desk for weeks and I have delved into it over an over, but th...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/09/daniel-eatock-imprint/

Review by Daniel Gray Within minutes of picking up Roy R. Behren’s Camoupedia (Amazon link), I was regurgitating fascinating bits of camouflage-related trivia at anyone who would listen, like s...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/09/camoupedia/

I did a bit of moonlighting for Core77’s Hack2Work event, which is a collection of essential tips and tricks for the design professional. My contribution is a fairly arbitrary selection of 19 B...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/09/19-books-for-core77s-hack2work/

Review by Andrew Shea We all want to know what our ancestors were like 50, 100 or even 200 years ago. Rafael Goldchain’s new book, I Am My Family: Photographic Memories and Fictions (Amazon: US...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/09/i-am-my-family/

My thanks to An Event Apart – Chicago for sponsoring The Designer’s Review of Books this month, especially with Design Disasters being the major post of the month.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/08/sponsor-an-event-apart-chigago/

Disasters. We’ve all had them. The wonderful Fail Blog is a daily source of distraction and cautionary tales of idiocy. The #fail Twitter tag turns up a treasure trove of frustrations, usually ...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/08/design-disasters/

Review by David Little Theresa Neil’s and Bill Scott’s Designing Web Interfaces (Amazon: US|CA|UK|DE) catalogues and describes seventy five design patterns – solutions to common problems �...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/07/designing-web-interfaces/

Okay, I admit it. I expected Parenthesis, the twice-yearly journal of the Fine Book Association to be somewhat boring. I imagined dusty discussions of the nerdy joys of owning crumbling first edi...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/07/parenthesis-issue-16/

Review by Matthew Sanders Donna Spencer’s debut Card Sorting: Designing Usable Categories (Amazon US) distills several years experience applying card sorting techniques to web projects into a h...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/06/card-sorting-designing-usable-categories/

[Naïve - Modernism and Folklore in Contemporary Graphic Design (Amazon: US|CA|UK|DE) is a recent release from Gestalten, edited by Robert Klanten and Hendrik Hellige. It explores the “extraord...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/06/naive-modernism-and-folklore-in-contemporary-graphic-design/

Review by David Sherwin “If you wanna innovate, you gotta design. – Marty Neumeier From the airy confines of interior design to the tailored minutae of the type designer, the varied disciplin...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/06/the-designful-company/

If you liked Victor & Susie, the short, small and sweet story created entirely from typography, check out the new one from the folks at Brighten the Corners.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/06/stanley-marvin/

Hollywood Boulevard is filled with people dressed us famous characters all trying to make a buck from having their photos taken with tourists. Some consider them part of the local colour, some pa...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/06/imposters/

(Guest review by Becky Quintal) ‘You only have to see his notes to feel the emotion of the speaker. It is evident that this kind of discourse, even if expressed only in the intimacy of his note...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/05/the-rhetoric-of-modernism-le-corbusier-as-a-lecturer/

(Guest Review by Shannon Smith) Mark Boulton just saved me a ton of money on design school. His new book, A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web, is meant to help Web designers who haven’t ...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/05/a-practical-guide-to-designing-for-the-web/

Guest review by Phillip Hunter “Design is a silent salesman… contributing not just increased efficiency… but also assurance and confidence.” So asserts American Industrial Designer Henry ...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/05/designing-for-people/

(Guest review by Daniel Gray) As commercial art produced to sell another form of commercial art, film posters can often be crass, repetitive, disposable. They’re just adverts to convince you to...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/05/art-of-the-modern-movie-poster-translating-hollywood/

What makes a good ad? What makes an award-winning creative idea? These days its easy to get distracted by fancy art direction and technological novelties, but when you strip all that away, does t...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/04/the-advertising-concept-book/

I am cheating here because UPPERCASE is a magazine and not a book, but rules are made to be broken. How could a web site that bills tags itself with “books for the creative mind” turn down a ...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/04/uppercase-magazine/

(Guest review by Steve ‘Doc’ Baty) For people who approached information architecture via Rosenfeld & Morville’s “Polar Bear” book Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, there...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/04/information-architecture-blueprints-for-the-web/

(Guest review by Shannon Smith) If you are a fan of FreelanceSwitch the freelancing blog started by Collis and Cyan Ta’eed, their spin-off How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer is written in the same...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/04/how-to-be-a-rockstar-freelancer/

The car sums up the contradictions of industrialised age more than any other design object. Simultaneously a symbol of desire, design and engineering brilliance and of over-consumption of resourc...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/04/cars-freedom-style-sex-power-motion-colour-everything/

What would Paul Rand have been like as a teacher? He was renowned for his stinging critiques ornery manner, yet in Paul Rand: Conversations with Students (Amazon: US|CA|UK|DE) Philip Burton choos...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/03/paul-rand-conversations-with-students/

Thank you to An Event Apart Seattle who have sponsored The Designer’s Review of Books throughout March. If you enjoyed the review of Luke Wroblewski’s Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks y...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/03/thank-you-an-event-apart/

(Guest Review by David Sherwin) Underwhelmed. We’ve all had this reaction when encountering a product or service that just didn’t cut it. Take, for example, the alarm clock next to my bed.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/03/subject-to-change/

“Creativity is to discover a question that has never been asked. If one brings up an idiosyncratic question, the answer he gives will necessarily be unique as well.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/03/designing-design/

[Given that it is a book about classification, Designing Universal Knowledge: The World as Flatland - Report 1 (Amazon: US|CA|UK|DE) by Gerlinde Schuller is oddly difficult to classify.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/03/designing-universal-knowledge-the-world-as-flatland-report-1/

Guest review by Colin Ford Clients blow. Designers the world over know this to be the unfortunate truth. Clients come to you for your artistic vision and then try to drag your design back into me...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/03/the-design-entrepreneur-turning-graphic-design-into-goods-that-sell/

Eggs. Everyone likes them different and each of us eats them in a certain way, just like blogs. Okay, so you don’t fry blogs, but humour me with the metaphor for a moment.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/03/how-do-you-like-it/

In an age of Twitter, texting, e-mail and barcodes, the humble postage stamp is in danger of dying out. Yet the stamp has been a tiny canvas for artists and designers to disseminate their work to...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/02/designing-the-mentoring-stamp/

Since this site is now in archive mode, there are no DRoB stores. Sorry.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/canadian-store/

It’s clear from my Mint server logs that The Designer’s Review of Books has a few visitors from Canada. So I have a question for you – would you like me to set up a Canadian Amazon Store, w...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/02/designers-review-of-books-canadian-store/

(Click to enlarge) Guest review by Andrew Shea. Tauba Auerbach manages to distill the content of her latest book, 50/50, into one brief summary: 100 Pages 100 Patterns, 50% Black 50% White.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/02/tauba-auerbach-5050/

I have been doing some moonlighting over at Eye magazine’s blog for their The Form of the Book series. The Form of the Book is about what books look like – how they are designed, produced and...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/02/kenya-hara-preview/

Brighten the Corners sent me a copy of their very cute book, Victor & Susie. It is a short story book about a girl, Susie, who meets a snail called Victor that has a hole in his shell and isn’t...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/02/victor-susie/

Sitepoint, the Melbourne-based publisher on all things web, currently has a Five for One PDF book offer in order to help victims of the terrible Australian bushfires.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/02/buy-books-help-australian-bushfire-victims/

“Remember the small, cheeky, hand-scribbled notes that were reproduced on a photo or poster design? Those with the simple message: “I was here!” Indicating that someone actually worked with...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/02/tangible-high-touch-visuals/

Dan Saffer has a knack for writing the right book at the right time. His first book, Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devicespulled together various disparate app...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/02/designing-gestural-interfaces/

(Click to enlarge) If you are the kind of person who walks into stationery shop and pauses to inhale the smell of fresh paper or spends hours trying to find the ultimate sketching pens, then you ...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/02/sizes-may-vary-a-workbook-for-graphic-design/

(Click to enlarge) An Eye for Colorby the fantastically-named Olga Gutierrez de la Roza is the second in our Three Books on Colour series following on from Kelvin: Colour Today, which we reviewed...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/01/three-books-on-colour-part-two-an-eye-for-color/

I hate forms. Germany is full of bureaucrats that love them, but their forms are amongst some of the most poorly designed I have ever encountered.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/01/web-form-design/

The subtitle of Dan Roam’s best-selling book, The Back of the Napkinis “Solving problems and selling ideas with pictures” – a reasonable description of what designers do for a living.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/01/the-back-of-the-napkin/

I have been off the gridall last week in the Australian bush (see above) and then in the air for the excruciatingly long flight back to Germany, so I felt a little editorial news was in order.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/01/back-on-the-grid/

Guest review by Tobias Grime This Rimy River: Vaughn Oliver and Graphic Works 1988-94is probably the most worn out and dog-eared design book I have.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/01/this-rimy-river-vaughn-oliver/

Before we begin, I should admit that I think Jessica Hagy is pretty cool and her blog Indexed is not only a regular read, but also one of the things on my far-too-long a list of “things I wish ...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/01/indexed/

Guest Review by David Sherwin A is for Aleph. B is for Beit. G is for Gimel… When I was a child, Hebrew was beaten into me by a series of well-meaning teachers.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2009/01/shapes-for-sounds/

The For The Love of Vinyl competition has a winner. What a difficult choice! They were all good suggestions and I was impressed by Colin and Gregory’s analysis of the several covers they chose.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2008/12/winner-of-for-the-love-of-vinyl-competition/

Apart from announcing the winner of the For The Love of Vinyl competition, we will be taking a some time off over the holiday season.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2008/12/coming-up-in-2009/

Before motion graphics there was broadcast graphic design and before that title design for film. It is a vibrant area of design that has remained strangely undocumented.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2008/12/uncredited-graphic-design-opening-titles-in-movies/

Guest Review by Max Gadney Architecture is a discipline that draws together principles typical of many design disciplines – clients, briefs, research, materials, form and function.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2008/12/101-things-i-learned-in-architecture-school/

The holidays are nearly here and the DRB will be, well, catching up with some holiday reading. As Christmas is also the time of goodwill and generosity we are giving away a copy of the superb boo...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2008/12/win-a-copy-of-for-the-love-of-vinyl/

Books on colour must be the new black. We were sent two in a row recently – Kelvin: Colour Todayand An Eye for Color. We decided to do a series over the next month or two and include Victoria F...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2008/12/three-books-on-colour-part-one-kelvin-colour-today/

For the Love of Vinyl: The Album Art of Hipgnosisby Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell is quite simply the most engaging and entertaining design book I have read all year.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2008/12/for-the-love-of-vinyl-the-album-art-of-hipgnosis/

A quick note to say that Coroflot’s 8th Annual Design Salary Survey closes December 10th and they need as much data as they can get, especially for Design Management.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2008/12/coroflot-8th-design-salary-survey/

Reviewed by Rob Tannen. Although Universal Principles of Designwas published in 2003, I am embarrassed to admit that I only learned about it several years later via Amazon’s related books featu...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2008/12/universal-principles-of-design/

Hugh Dubberly from Dubberly Design Studios is writing a book called How Do You Design?, which examines design processes that they have collected over the years.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2008/12/how-do-you-design/

When I was a child I visited a Rembrandt exhibition with my father and remember being more fascinated by his sketches than the final paintings. Seeing the creative process in the quick lines of a...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2008/12/process-50-product-designs-from-concept-to-manufacture/

If you are thinking of designing and printing your own uber cool Christmas wrapping paper, look no further.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2008/11/geometric-from-kapitza/

Reviewed by Will Evans – the first of several guest reviews to come on the DRB. See the end of the review for Will’s bio.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2008/11/the-user-is-always-right/

Most of the book reviews on the DRB so far have been very positive. The simple reason is that it’s more pleasant to seek out and review books that I think I’m going to like than to wade throu...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2008/11/share-your-design-book-disappointments/

If there is one resource we’re not short of these days it is data. We’re swimming in the stuff and generating it all the time. Making visual sense of all that data requires a fine balance bet...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2008/11/data-flow/

Thanks to everyone who has e-mailed or commented with positive feedback about the launch of The Designers Review of Books. By far the most common question has been, “I don’t mean to be picky,...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2008/11/apostrophe/

The Little Know-It-Allfrom Gestalten is either a desk reference or a toilet book, depending on your reading preferences. With the tag-line of “Common Sense for Designers” it’s a book full o...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2008/11/the-little-know-it-all/

Three years ago I interviewed Jon Burgerman after I stumbled across his web site and was immediately sucked into his bizarre world of characters. Like quite a few illustrators and animators I kno...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2008/11/jon-burgerman-pens-are-my-friends/

Since this site is now in archive mode, there are no DRoB stores. Sorry.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/de-store/

Since this site is now in archive mode, there are no DRoB stores. Sorry.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/uk-store/

The Designer’s Review of Books is on permanent hiatus and no longer accepting any books for review. Thank you to all of those authors, publishers and reviewers who have contributed in the past.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/contact/

Welcome to The Designer’s Review of Books - a selection of books for the creative mind. For sometime I have been looking for a site that only reviewed books on design and related areas rather t...

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/2008/11/welcome-to-the-designers-review-books/

Since this site is now in archive mode, there are no DRoB stores. Sorry.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/store/

Closed The Designer’s Review of Books is on permanent hiatus and no longer accepting any books for review. My day job simply takes up too much time.

https://designersreviewofbooks.com/about/