From the category archives:

3D

Designing Design

Thumbnail image for Designing Design

“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.” – Kenya Hara, Designing Design.
This philosophy is the thread that runs through the entire text of Kenya Hara’s deep and thoughtful book, Designing Design (Amazon: US|CA|UK|DE). The [...]

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The Design Entrepreneur: Turning Graphic Design into Goods that Sell

The Design Entrepreneur

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 mediocrity by insisting that 12-point Times New Roman be used for all body copy, or that their second cousin thinks chartreuse would [...]

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Tangible: High Touch Visuals

Tangible

“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 the photo and that these are their thoughts.” – from the Preface to Tangible: High Touch Visuals.
In such a digitally dominant world, Gestalten’s new book, Tangible: [...]

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Designing Gestural Interfaces

Designing Gestural Interfaces Cover

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 Devices pulled together various disparate approaches and aspects to interaction design into one volume.
“In general, the response has been positive and it is being used by universities and others to [...]

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Sizes May Vary: A Workbook for Graphic Design

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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 will enjoy opening up Mark Boyce’s book, Sizes May Vary: A Workbook for Graphic Design, published by Laurence King.
Similar, in [...]

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101 Things I Learned in Architecture School

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. Added to this mix is permanence, history and scale, which has made architecture arguably one of the most intellectualised design disciplines.
101 Things I Learned in Architecture School by Matthew Frederick [...]

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Universal Principles of Design

Reviewed by Rob Tannen.
Although Universal Principles of Design was published in 2003, I am embarrassed to admit that I only learned about it several years later via Amazon’s related books feature. Embarrassed, because it is simply the best book I have read on general design and usability principles in terms of both its content and [...]

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Process: 50 Product Designs from Concept to Manufacture

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 pen and ink sketch somehow made the finished article more personal. Process: 50 Product Designs from Concept to Manufacture by [...]

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Data Flow

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 between complexity and simplicity. Data Flow: Visualising Information in Graphic Design is an absolutely beautiful collection of some of [...]

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