Zoë Ryan
Books Every Product Designer Should Read
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Nature—its forms, structures, and organizing principles—has been a constant source of inspiration for designers bent on transforming and rethinking our built environment. The level of experimentation around this theme has intensified in recent years as more ambitious modeling software, digital tools, and greater collaborations with scientists and biologists have afforded a greater range of possibilities in the exploration of the relationship of human beings with the environment. This book, along with Nature Design—although very different—explores how designers and other innovators are striving to create work that relies on direct contact with our natural surroundings.
Fuad-Luke’s book is rich with examples of inventive approaches to design that emphasize collective rather than individual efforts, with networks of people and industry coming together to share their knowledge, skills, and resources as a method for generating more innovative and thoughtful solutions to numerous problems.
Design guru John Thackara makes clear the need for objects and buildings that are not only concerned with delivering a result but also, and more important, take into consideration the process of use.
Seminal texts such as George Nelson’s 1957 article “Good Design: What Is It For?” as well as more recent writings from critics such as Rick Poynor and Hal Foster make for interesting insights into the contentious relationship between art and design.
Victor Papanek’s belief that designers should not purely mine the realm of design discourse for inspiration, but should create work that responds to the contemporary sociological, psychological, or ecological environment seems more relevant than ever in today’s challenging times.
This book illustrates the power of design to change lives and emphasizes the crucial work of organizations such as Architecture for Humanity.
Gives a great overview of how digital technologies are changing the nature and intent of our built environment, blurring distinctions between the real and virtual, and challenging architects and designers to rethink how information is represented and displayed.
Any discussion today of private and public spaces must include not only the design of buildings, objects, and the physical landscape but also the increased influence of data flows that run through them. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in new forms of mapping and data visualization.
Jonathan Chapman makes an articulate case for the need for objects and buildings with strong narratives that can help forge bonds with users through their inherent storytelling qualities.
Honoré believes that by rethinking the fluidity and pace of subject-object relationships, and following a more intuitive approach, people will have much richer, more significant experiences. His ideas are inherent in the Slow Food movement, as well as Slow Design, which emphasize sustainable approaches to contemporary production and consumption and a more mindful approach to daily life.
A clear analysis of how technology has transformed how we interact with and understand the world through a network of thoughts and ideas.
Deyan Sudjic eloquently sums up the importance of design: “Design in all its manifestations is the DNA of an industrial society or of a post-industrial society, if that’s what we now have. It’s the code we need to explore if we are to stand a chance of understanding the nature of the modern world.”
A mainstay of discussions concerning the built landscape.
A fantastic compendium of texts on the city, including American historian Lewis Mumford’s 1938 essay “The Culture of Cities,” in which he includes this memorable description of city life. “By the diversity of its time-structures, the city in part escapes the tyranny of a single present, and the monotony of a future that consists in repeating only a single beat heard in the past. Through its complex orchestration of time and space, no less than through the social division of labor, life in the city takes on the character of a symphony: specialized human aptitudes, specialized instruments, give rise to sonorous results which, neither in volume nor in quality, could be achieved by any single piece.”
This book inspired my interest in temporary and permanent interventions in public space as a forum for activating the city, bringing people together, prompting discovery, and helping to promote understanding and tolerance.
A fascinating book that explores our understanding of time and of our place within history, the present, and even the future.
A manifesto calling for an appreciation of the well-designed objects we use every day that often go overlooked or get taken for granted, written by two designers committed to producing work based on early modernist principles and founded on conceptual rigor and the employment of innovative technology and an honest use of materials.
An ambitious anthropological study of twelve cities in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe that looks at issues of race, class, gender, and politics as understood within an urban context.
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Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister
Now is Better
By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023
Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
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Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People
By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022
Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.
Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Milton Glaser: POP
By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023
This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.
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Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022
Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)
By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023
This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.
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