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 brainstorm session in the form of a journal. Contributors include Rick Valicenti of 3st, Pentagram’s Michael Bierut, and design critic Jessica Helfand, among other well-known artists and designers. “Consider this journal your creativity coach or personal exploratory zone sans pressure,” Landa writes in the introduction. Seattle’s Modern Dog Co. designed the book.

Take a Line for a Walk (available from Amazon: US|UK|DE ) is divided into 103 prompts — mostly blank pages with short directives — and nine longer projects. Landa’s intent: to give readers “a space to play in new ways.” The idea is that readers will use the prompts and projects to expand their ability to think creatively. Landa writes:

“The more you conceive and sketch, the more your thinking evolves.”

Prompts invite readers to free associate visually or verbally directly in the journal. Some prompts are conceptual, such as the one found on page 14, a contribution by Steven Doloff, Professor of Humanities & Media Studies at Pratt:

“You’re an inventor. Your invention is the size of a toaster.
What can it do?”

Other prompts ask the reader to explore form making. Jessalyn Lambert, who recently graduated from Kean University with her BFA, gives clear instructions on page 91: “Place a bunch of dots randomly on the paper. Then connect them. What do you see?”

Some prompts are seemingly introspective, yet they relate to the professional experience of the contributing designer. “Describe yourself using only six carefully chosen words,” suggests veteran brand identity designer Bart Crosby on page 58, “Then create a single symbol or illustration that represents the combination of all those words.”

Landa includes a series of projects to complement the prompts. Projects are more involved exercises that demand additional time and materials. Project II, for example, is a contribution by new media artist and Florida State University Professor Gail Rubini: “Collect 10 objects and attach/glue them together in an interesting way.”

Project III comes from Pentagram Partner Michael Bierut. He contributed to the book by offering an assignment he gives his graphic design students at Yale University:

“Do a design operation that you are capable of repeating every day for 100 days…The medium is open.”

You don’t have to be a designer or an artist to enjoy Take a Line for a Walk. Anyone in need of a creative jumpstart may find its pages stimulating. The best part? All you need is a pencil to start playing. No prior experience required.

Publisher Information

Take a Line For a Walk was published by Wadsworth Cengage Learning in July 2011.

You can support The Designer’s Review of Books by buying Take a Line For a Walk from Amazon (US|UK|DE ) or The Designer’s Review of Books Amazon store.

About the Reviewer

Aggie Toppins is an adjunct faculty member and an MFA candidate in graphic design at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She is passionate about making work that helps people share their stories. Aggie lives in Baltimore with her husband Jason and their basset hound Jolly.

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“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 sound practices. Designers carry a heavy responsibility, but at the same time they can offer our future the greatest gift.”

So says Gavin Newsom, current Lt. Governor of California and former Mayor of San Francisco, setting the tone for Just Design, Socially Conscious Design for Critical Causes (Amazon: US|UK|DE). The book is written by Christopher Simmons, a designer, educator, and founder of MINE, a San Francisco design studio. It is emphatically optimistic and offers a comprehensive compendium of inspiring work, relevant to any designer interested in social design. Simmons presents the current state of social design through a curated collection of projects and interviews by leaders in the field.

The breadth of work is impressive and it clearly showcases the spirit of socially conscious work. The interviews and essays highlight designers and educators who are passionate, smart, and committed to their responsibility.

Just Design observes current themes in social design by presenting the book in seven parts: Supporting, Seeking, Organizing, Teaching, Reacting, Celebrating. Supporting presents projects designed by individuals who collaborate with established organizations. Teaching, features leading educators who are creating new programs in this area, as well as projects from social design classes. In essence, each chapter theme functions as a framework to curate projects.

But the book falls short of giving readers tools or pragmatic advice to incorporate into their own practice. And much of the book celebrates pro bono work created by firms who may have the extra resources to use or educational institutions that build social design projects into their curriculum. A solution to this could be a series of How To’s for readers to explore, for example, 5 steps on how to engage with the community you’re working with. Furthermore, the book could attempt to define a set of Best Practices for the area of Social Design to follow and build on as it evolves.

The most encouraging interviews describe realistic ways to do socially conscious work. Randy J. Hunt of Citizen Scholar in Brooklyn, describes how he balances his own studio while working full time as the Interaction Design Director at Etsy.com:

“These roles, in addition to the studio’s client work, self-initiated work, writing, consulting, and other design-related activities add up to a complete and sustaining experience, both professionally and personally.”

He reinforces the importance of working with people you like, “It tends to be that the people I enjoy being around share a similar sense of responsibility when it comes to their work and how it should enter the world.” The interviews and essays offer a multitude of perspectives that allow the reader to form their own ideas of what socially conscious design means to them and where they fit in.

But process is missing.

Social design tends to focus on the user or the audience and the design with the most impact typically looks to the user to help develop a solution. Process is paramount and Just Design overlooks this. With such a diverse range of work, the process behind each project could begin to show us insights as to what approaches works best in particular situations.

Aaris Sherin, author and professor at St. John’s University, offers salient advice to young designers who are interested in social design. She argues that making information clearer to an audience is one of the most overlooked areas of values-based design work. She goes on to offer a list of ideas for becoming a rock-star designer for good. The first idea simply being: Ask yourself, “What are my strengths?” Once identified, look for opportunities based on those attributes.

Overall, the case studies present a diverse range of work from the Polling Place Photo Project by Winterhouse Studio, to smaller collaborations like Freedom of the Press, a self-initiated newsprint publication, by Brian Ponto and Lindsay Ballant. Social design continues to broaden its scope by encompassing anything from community engaged projects to information design. But some of the projects are undecidedly socially conscious. For example, Ox-Bow school of art artists’ residency brochure or California College of Arts’ Architecture Lecture Series posters are not overtly ‘doing good’. As a reader, you can decide for yourself where to draw the line, or if there should even be a distinction. The title, Just Design, alludes to this, as Simmons states, “Whether for greater good or greater profit, it’s all just design.”

Just Design, Socially Conscious Design for Critical Causes is published by HOW Books. You can support the Designer’s Review of Books by ordering from Amazon (US|UK|DE). If you found this review helpful, you can support The Designer’s Review of Books by purchasing from our Amazon store.

About the reviewer

Christina Beard is a graphic designer, writer, and sailing enthusiast. She is currently exploring the role of digital media in wayfinding and defining strategies to create better experiences at Two Twelve. Follow me on twitter @christinabeard.

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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 Edition has allowed me to understand so much about the way I think, and the approach I’ve taken towards designing over the years. It’s content has shed light on many thoughts and ideas I’ve contemplated at one point or another, regarding design and its role in many aspects of human life. Although I have only really been exposed in interaction design for three years – there’s no institution in Jamaica that formally teaches interaction design – Kolko’s book made me realize I have been thinking like one for longer.

Now in its second edition, Kolko’s best-selling title builds upon its engaging material aimed to educate designers, help designers educate business owners, and legitimize Interaction Design for businesses, through contemplation and contribution to the theory of Interaction Design. Instead of focusing on the nature of design as related to the creation of two-, three-, or four-dimensional forms; or the nature of design as related to user interface design on a screen, this text primarily explores the semantic connections that live between technology and form that are brought to life when someone uses a product. It re-frames these connections as interactions – interactions that, in aggregate, make up behaviour.

In Thoughts on Interaction Design, the primary aims of the author are to better explain what Interaction Design is, and why it is important; to provide Interaction Designers with the vocabulary that is necessary to intellectualize their work and communicate it to others; and finally, to highlight the potential for Interaction Design to exist outside of the confines of business and to assure fellow Interaction Designers that their work is instrumental in shaping and refining culture- and is as instrumental as other intellectually robust fields, like medicine, policy, or law.

As Kolko says:

“We need to possess a great intellectual capacity for complicated problem solving, for dynamic inquiry relating to technology, and for substantial empathy of the human experience. This intellectual insight is ideal for solving the different societal problems plaguing humanity and for humanizing technology, and the creation of pretty interfaces is perhaps the most blatant (and unfortunately prevalent) misuse of this critical resource.”

The reader should not expect to find descriptions of specific methods that may be immediately applicable to his or her work, or ways to code interactive simulations. Kolko argues that other texts have covered these topics well enough and has chosen to focus mainly on describing Interaction Design through consideration and reflection on the more theoretical and conceptual aspects of the discipline.

The book consists of 128 pages, separated into two main parts: “Process and Method,” and “Culture and Responsibility.” These sections are broken down into different topics, each topic being represented by a specific chapter, amounting to a total of seven chapters – but begins with an overview which seeks to explain the role of technology, define Interaction Design as a professional discipline, as well as to shed some light on its role in the shaping of  behaviour.

“Interaction Design is the creation of a dialogue between a person and a product, system, or service. This dialogue is both physical and emotional in nature and is manifested in the interplay between form, function, and technology as experienced over time.

A simpler way of thinking about Interaction Designers is that they are shapers of behaviour. Interaction Designers, whether practising as Usability Engineers, Visual Interface Designers, or Information Architects, all attempt to understand and alter the things people do, the way they feel, and the things they think.”

Chapter one, entitled “Thinking About People” positions Interaction Design as a creative process that focuses on people, and delineates the discrete steps that are usually taken when developing a cohesive Interaction Design. The process of design is explored through its different stages: Defining the design problem or opportunity; Discovering hidden wants, needs, and desires; Contextual Inquiry in the context of work; Focus groups and competitive analysis; Synthesis, creation and refinement; and Thoughtful reflection. In this chapter, Kolko also explains the role of intuition as well as the role of  Design in considering the whole.

Chapter two, entitled “Managing Complexity” focuses on methods that can be used by a designer to gain deeper understanding of the abstract and semantic connections between ideas. This chapter focuses on: Structuring data in order to make useful information; the definition of Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom; Designing with the fourth dimension (time) in mind; Affinity Diagrams, Concept Maps, Process Flow Diagrams, Ecosystem Diagrams as well as Journey Maps.

Chapter three, “Persuasion and Communication” explores issues relating to persuasion both within and outside of an organization; the role that designed artifacts play in identifying an underlying culture; as well as the ethics of persuasion.

Chapter four speaks to “Experience and Authenticity” while exploring the shift of viewing a product from an artifact to that of an experience; the challenges of experience, pragmatic challenges, owning the experience, authenticity, and temporal aesthetics in experiences.

Chapter five, entitled “Poetry, Spirit, and Soul” talks about honest interactions, investigating mindfulness, as well as attention to detail.

Chapter six, “Judgement and Shifting Negative Behaviour” explores topics such as: Usability and Influence, Discursive Design, What we choose to design, and Shifting negative behaviour through design.

Chapter seven, entitled “Wicked Problems” is the chapter that I found most intriguing, as here, Kolko explains that we as designers can successfully work on complicated, multifaceted problems related to social, political, or economic stability with the same set of tools used to solve more simplistic problems of form, style, or brand.

In this chapter, as well as all throughout the text, Kolko solidifies his arguments by referencing quotes and examples by thought leaders, practitioners and other authors, such as Richard Buchanan, who have been instrumental in advancing the discourse of wicked problems and design thinking. This, for example, is Richard Buchanan’s definition of wicked problems:

“Design problems are ‘indeterminate’ and ‘wicked’ because design has no special subject matter of its own apart from what a designer conceives it to be. The subject matter of design is potentially universal in scope, because design thinking may be applied to any area of human experience.”

Expanding on Buchanan, Kolko describes wicked problems as a form of large scale social or cultural problem that is difficult to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements. He cites the problems of poverty and education as wicked problems, and argues that these large scale problems can be mitigated through the process of design.

Other themes explored in this chapter include the related discipline of Service Design as well as Designing for Impact or Social Innovation.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the field Interaction Design, both for novices as well as seasoned practitioners. It contains many fascinating insights that will inspire any Interaction Designer, as well as better enable them to efficiently communicate and defend their role and importance. I will leave you with one such insight expressed by Jon Kolko himself:

“It is now time to extract design from the confines of business and allow it to grow on its own. Positioned as social entrepreneurship, social innovation, or the new design, designers are fundamental in structuring a world worth living in. Human behaviour is innately poetic; it is natural and thus resonates poetic in the same way as does a flower, or a bird, or a tree. It is through our own design of objects, services, and systems that we may have disturbed the poetry. A focus on technology or aesthetics alone creates a world of ideas that often seems discretely disconnected  from humanity. Through the combination of technology, aesthetics, and humanity, we will find a world of Interaction Design.

And Interaction Design, as the study of dialogue between people and things, will bring harmony to technological advancement.”

Thoughts on Interaction Design, Second Edition is published by Morgan Kaufmann and is available from Amazon (US|CA|UK|DE).

About the Reviewer
Roger Davis is a User Experience Designer from Kingston, Jamaica. He tweets at @layerphase

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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 nothing left to say. The question this review sets out to answer is, “why should designers read Steve Jobs’s biography?”

On a personal level, reading through the history of the development of Jobs’s main two successful companies, Apple and Pixar, was fascinating and at times moving, because I’ve worked on so many of the Macs mentioned. I first saw an Apple Lisa (or it may have been an XL) at an architect’s house and was fascinated, especially having whiled away my youth on a BBC Micro and a ZX Spectrum. At college I wrote my first essays on a Macintosh Classic, did my first exercise in Photoshop 2.0 on a Macintosh LC II, my first interactive work after HyperCard using Macromind Director 3.0 on those same LC II’s and, later, my first video and audio work on a Quadra 700. The first Mac I ever owned was a Quadra 650 – the machine that got me through my BA.

I’ve long been excited about the development of 3D animation from very early days and remember being enthralled by the possibilities in a 1984 book that I was given, Computergraphia, that captured some of those early computer graphics years. When I started seeing Pixar’s short films, I knew animation was going to change radically in the years to come. I also realized how crucial good storytelling was to the process – there were a lot of tragically computer science directed “films” (better called demos) floating around in those days.

So much for taking you on a trip down my technology memory lane. Should you care? I think, as designers, most readers will have had similar experiences and, at the very least, it is a nostalgia trip. In some ways reading it also honors Jobs and the things he created that made our current professions possible.

A few months ago I wrote a piece for Core77 that argued that, unlike the hard sciences, design has failed to develop a coherent voice in public discourse. When Steve Jobs died, I realized that he was pretty much it – the one person in widespread public discourse about design who made the case for its value. Whatever you or others may think about his personality, the “reality distortion field”, or Apple’s products in general, there is no debating that an awful lot of non-design people knew of his name, his views and his work. Some of that comes across in the biography, but none of this is really going to make you better and designing things, although it might make you a little more thoughtful as you consider the tips given to him by his father:

“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

The parts of the book that seem to have been less commented on, but that I found more usable in a practical way, were the stories about the interpersonal relationships that made or broke the critical deals that Jobs made. Some of them multi-million dollar ones, such as the deal between Pixar and Disney.

I suspect many designers have somewhat of an aversion to, if not a phobia of, the corporate world and the kind of Big Deal Making that sometimes goes on and that equally seems averse to designers and everything they stand for. While I am sure that Jobs’s approach was pretty unusual, most of the other parties to those deals were more classically corporate folk. For a designer, this book is worth reading just for an insight into how people build and lose companies and client relationships and for understanding how personalities play 90% of the role in working life.

Despite the prevalence of talk about design and Jobs’s deep love and understanding for it, some of the more interesting parts of the book are not about design at all.

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“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.”  Steff Geissbuhler

Critically prefaced via email correspondence by designer Steff Geissbuhler, How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer by Debbie Millman, claims not to provide a recipe on how to think like the extraordinary designers interviewed in this book but rather proves to be

“a glimpse into the minds of these revered masters, in order to understand the way they think and why.”

Containing an interview line-up that is no doubt a who’s who list of contemporary graphic design, How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer contains an abundant supply of bravery, audacity, candor, humor, and yes, even inspiration from notables like: Michael Bierut, Neville Brody, Seymor Chwast, Chip Kidd, Milton Glaser, Jessica Hefland, Paula Scher, James Victore, and Massimo Vignelli.

At the beginning of all twenty interviews, Millman provides readers with a brief introduction to each designer’s work (although regrettably there are no visuals for reference), their place in the canon, and a glimpse of their personality, making the book accessible to budding graphic design students, the mid-career designer, and seasoned veterans alike.

In each interview, Millman strikingly inquires about topics one would hope to ask given the opportunity to be in the same room as these design idols. Quintessential questions presented to creatives act as ice-breakers: What was your first creative memory? What did you want to be when you grew up? Do you have any particular creative process? As these mundane questions dissipate, readers are left with what feels like an intimate one on one conversation. By the end of each interview readers learn not only about the interviewees’ passions, concerns, and thoughts on design but also about their personal infatuations, obsessions, oddities, and manifestos.

[I wanted to be] “ A Catholic Priest.” Stefan Sagmeister

“What actually drove me to the therapist was that I had a very unhealthy obsession with laundry.” Michael Bierut

“I have very few “interests.” I have not been to the movies in 12 years. I listen to music at home, but I don’t go to concerts.” Milton Glaser

“Oh my God, how much time do you have? I live in almost constant terror. Here’s a tiny portion of the list: cancer, vaginas, giant cockroaches, Kathy Lee Gifford’s latest Christmas album, burning to death, tornados, gristle, children, choking on a small toy, root rot, Deborah Sussman’s eyelash extensions, Republicans, and Sucralose. And the idea that Pat Robertson is not dead yet.” Chip Kidd

“Love is a cake that comes in layers.” Massimo Vignelli

After just a few interviews a reader can easily find parallels between themselves and these notables, realizing that although they may hold an enduring seat in the canon, they are at the very least humans too – who feel love, pain, passion, and frustration. Millman creates a strong internal dialogue for her audience by questioning a designer’s social responsibility, the difference between design and art, and the dilemma of personal expression vs. commercial endeavor in the industry. One begins to connect their own personal design manifestos with the beliefs of these “great ones” sending an appreciable sense of encouragement, empowerment, and inspiration to every reader.

In addition to constructing strong cognitive connections with viewers the book makes tactile bonds as well. The sleek cover reflects a battered and empty pin board as if all of the ideas, quotes, reflections, and inspiration have been removed and placed neatly between the covers. A perfect size for transport the book is an effortless addition to any designer’s library, providing a jolt of influence with each turn of the page.

A strong balance of logic and lyricism, How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer is the perfect read after a most horrid client meeting, while battling a formidable creative dilemma, or following an exhausting day of design. In a filling 224 pages, Millman and her eminent cast provide readers with a robust reminder of how and why we fell in love with this arduous yet delectable profession.

How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer is published by Allworth Press and can be purchased from Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE).

About the Reviewer
Jenny Venn is a designer and professor who packed up everything and headed west determined to change the world through education and activism. Find her work at studiojenvenn, her thoughts at @jenvenn, and her calling at uwyo.

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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? Our economy is changing so rapidly, it’s unlikely any of us can count on long-term stability in our work. Developing and preparing for the next step is crucial.

Creative Personal Branding, based on author Jürgen Salenbacher’s workshops and lectures, applies the principles of branding to the individual. Companies and people are not as different as you might think. He describes brands as much more than a product’s physical characteristics: they must have an intangible quality, similar to a personality, and they must have the intelligence to guide a consumer’s decision-making process. Businesses must change and adapt to remain successful, so it makes sense that people should follow suit. He urges us to see change as an opportunity, not as a threat.

In the past twenty years, the development of the internet has greatly altered the way we work, consume, and communicate. As a result, competition is much more global. To keep up and thrive, Salenbacher encourages us to keep changing and progressing. As Charles Darwin said:

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

Six steps, each titled with a direct call to action (“Reframe! Create! Differentiate!”),  lead readers to a deeper understanding of themselves, their strengths, and the world around them. He instructs us to reflect and identify our worth. Our self-image often differs from how others see us, especially when it comes to our strengths and talents. Personality is key. We all have something unique to offer, and we should capitalize on that, rather than try to be like everyone else. Also, preparation is significant, and he writes that we should have a plan A and a plan B. Many of his points are common sense, but we probably all need to read this one once in a while:

“It is not a plan to increase your working hours. It is not sustainable to start working sixteen hours a day. It is not healthy, physically or mentally. You will not increase your performance. Time is against you: the curve will go down, faster and lower than you ever thought possible.”

Assignments throughout keep it engaging. These range from reflecting on changes in your industry, to writing a mission statement, to developing your own logo. As a graphic designer, I like that he sees the logo assignment as a beginning step, and suggests that a professional designer then be hired.

Barcelona-based Salenbacher has an MBA and has worked in branding, design and marketing throughout Europe for companies like Levi’s, Mattell, and Louis Vuitton, as well as for personalities like Muhammad Ali. He lectures, coaches, and runs workshops.

The book’s strong, clear design will appeal to those in creative fields. The typography is clean and considered. Chapter openers are accompanied by striking, abstract drawings. Bold, full-page pull quotes appear throughout the book, emphasizing key points and making the book easy to skim.

The writing is clear and accessible. Business books can often make my eyes glaze over, but Salenbacher puts everything in terms that those working in creative fields can grasp. There are too many exclamation points for my taste (“Grow!”). And, a pet peeve of mine appears frequently: the word “orientate.” From what I understand, though, this is more accepted in British English (so, I guess the “real” English) than it is in the U.S. version, so maybe I just need to get over that. I tend to be a little skeptical when it comes to business or self-help books. But, I teach a portfolio class to design students, and I see how people can struggle to find their way. Much of what Salenbacher writes is what I try to teach my students. With the big changes in the way we work now, we must regularly evaluate where we are, where we’d like to be, and the steps we need to take to get there. This book is a practical tool that can help to position us for new opportunities.

Creative Personal Branding is published by CPB-lab and you can purchase it from Amazon (US).

About the Reviewer

John Clifford is Creative Director at Think Studio, an award-winning graphic design firm in NYC focusing on brand identity, web sites, collateral, packaging, and books.

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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

“To design is to think.” —Dieter Rams, Industrial Designer (b. 1932–, Weisbaden, Germany)

What can I tell you about Dieter Rams that you don’t already know? Since one of his many famed mottoes regarding good design is “less but better,” if I was to tell you too much or to tell you something about him you already know, my words might embody the very weakness in design that Rams warns us against.

“I was lucky that I began at the right moment and that I stopped also at the right moment.” —Dieter Rams

For example, I’d probably already be saying more than necessary if I told you that: 1) Rams is one of the most influential industrial designers of the late 20th century who; 2) developed products that were and are used daily by millions of people; and 3) was the lead designer at Braun for nearly 40 years ¹ where he designed everything from coffee makers and juicers to alarm clocks, calculators, speakers and record players. I’d also likely be telling you something you already know if I mentioned that his credo “10 Principles for Good Design” is an exemplary manifesto.

“Very good design, however, does not evolve only by ticking those ten boxes. From a good ordinary design there should always be the possibility for an outstanding, self-explanatory design to arise. It very seldom happens.” —Dieter Rams

(Image: Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams, Gestalten)

However, I might be explaining things better if I was to offer a few lesser-known details such as: 1) he was the first to design a clear plexiglass cover on a record player ², a design feature that was widely copied by competitors and thus became the norm; and 2) his 1960s designs for Braun’s audio equipment heavily influenced Apple’s long-time lead designer, Jonathan Ive; and 3) in 1959 he designed the first portable record player, the precursor to the Walkman and then, of course, the iPod; and 4) his Universal Shelving System for Vitsoe+Zapf, an interchangeable modular storage unit conceived and designed in the 1960s, is still in production today.

When a designer originates things we take for granted as having always been that way, when he makes things that are in continuous use for decades and when his influence can be seen and felt for generations afterward, it is clear that individual is practicing the profession at its highest level. No matter what kind of design you engage in ³, Rams offers you guidance, through his designs themselves and through his philosophy of design.

Suffice it to say Rams is sublime.

So it pleases me that a couple impressive tomes of his work have recently been published. The first of these is Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams edited by Klaus Kemp and Keiko Ueki-Polet and published by Gestalten (Amazon: US|DE|UK). This is the catalog for the exhibition “Less and More,” a retrospective of Rams’s work that originated at the Suntory Museum, Osaka, Japan in 2008 and has travelled to Tokyo, London, Frankfurt and is currently at the San Francisco MOMA. Filling the catalog’s 808 pages are countless closeup full-color photos and essays in both German and English. The majority of the photos are printed on a matte-coated stock and the text-only pages are printed on a creamy uncoated wafer-thin bible paper. The book is as thick and flexible as a phone book, but its page size is smaller and more square. It is covered in white vinyl and, thankfully, it is housed in a chipboard slipcase that allows it to stand up properly on a shelf. Rams has said he was always interested in the mixture of materials and this particular artifact seems to have taken a cue from that notion.

Just a few months ago, Phaidon published a 400-page monograph Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible (Amazon: US|UK|DE) by Sophie Lovell with a foreword by Jonathan Ive. As an artifact, it is a more traditional book than the Gestalten title, slightly larger, casebound in white with a thermographically-printed textured dust jacket reminiscent of the dotted mesh Rams so skillfully employed on his product designs. Inside it is also is printed on two kinds of paper stock, an uncoated cream sheet for the text-only pages and a matte-coated sheet of similar heft for the innumerable full-color photos.

These books are picture books, as they should be. However, both have substantial textual matter, some of which is rather similar in content. Both offer much historical context, recounting the history of Braun and the cultural forces, events and personalities surrounding its founding. They both also offer a biography of Rams himself, detailing the influence of his grandfather’s woodworking, his education as an architect, his pre-Braun employment as an interior designer.

(Image: Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams, Gestalten)

From Gestalten’s Less and More:

“For 40 years Dieter Rams led the Braun design team, always seeking out the ultimate unification, the harmonization between interior and exterior. The Braun design process is the process of pursuing an ideal relationship, a resonance between the internal and the external. … If one is won over by the design of Rams and Braun, it is clear that it is not due to an aura emanating from the material. Its strength lies in the design itself.”

(Image: Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible, Phaidon)

From Phaidon’s As Little Design as Possible:

“Through his grandfather, Rams developed a lifelong love of honest, simple handmade wooden furniture. ‘My grandfather had no machines. He rejected them. He preferred working alone. … He took great care in selecting the wood he used and shaped and planed it by hand. … Needless to say, back then I did not register this consciously, but I adopted it and even today have not given it up. I was always concerned that things should be plain, straightforward. For as long as I can remember that was what I wanted.’”

Both books also stress the collaborative relationship of designer and engineer that Rams so fully embraced.

(Image: Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams, Gestalten)

“Dieter Rams always clearly distanced himself from the status of an artist and the attendant mindset, preferring to present himself as a ‘design engineer.’ No doubt strategic considerations prompted this, namely the desire to establish that his status was on a par with the technical engineers at Braun and maintain it over a long period of time. In doing so, he actually enabled the birth of a design culture in an otherwise technology-focused company.”

– from Less and More

(Image: Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible, Phaidon)

“Although the media often tends to conflate ‘Braun design’ with ‘Dieter Rams design,’ Rams himself always points out that the appliances created during his time there were the result of teamwork. When authorship is assigned to a particular product it is important to bear this collaborative design approach in mind. … Rams would be the first to say that what constitutes his ‘work’ as an industrial designer is inseparable from the systems and networks through which it was produced.”

– from As Little Design as Possible

The Gestalten title contains a number of essays by various authors, including ones by Sophie Lovell, Klaus Kemp and Friedrich Friedl as well as some brief words from Rams himself:

“We wanted to make products whose appearance did not immediately command attention but instead became more appealing through use and an enduring aesthetic.”

The Phaidon title has a foreword by Jonathan Ive and ends with an interesting Klaus Kemp essay on Rams’s Legacy:

“Allowing emotional and visual stimuli and the allure of novelty to override any system of ethical values demonstrates, for him, extreme irresponsibility towards the future of the environment and design, not to mention the user. ‘In my experience, things which are designed to be different simply to be different are seldom better,’ he said … in 1993, ‘but that which is better is almost always different.’”

(Image: Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible, Phaidon)

If you are something of a minimalist like me, you might prefer the sturdy and simple production values of the Phaidon title over the unusualness and unconventionality of the Gestalten one. On the other hand, if you are like me in that you often find solace in Dieter Rams’s work and his aphoristic musings on design, you might just like to have them both!

“Be brave, despite everything!” —Dieter Rams

Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams edited by Klaus Klemp and Keiko Ueki-Polet is published by Gestalten. ISBN: 9783899552775.

As Little Design As Possible: The Work of Dieter Rams by Sophie Lovell is published by Phaidon. ISBN: 9780714849188

About the Reviewer

Carolina de Bartolo is a graphic designer and a professor of typography and design history as well as the author of Explorations in Typography: Mastering the Art of Fine Typesetting (A Visual Textbook for Intermediate to Advanced Typography), which we reviewed back in May.

Footnotes

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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. So I have come to his second book without reading the first, but Designers Don’t Have Influences (Amazon US|CA|UK|DE) is stand-alone and can be picked up without any prior knowledge of Howe or his writing.

Designers Don’t Have Influences is a collection of short essays on people that have influenced Howe throughout his successful career in advertising. Rather than write about people working directly in his field Howe writes about all sorts of people from various disciplines. He writes in the forward:

“My basic premise is that we can often learn more from people in other disciplines than we can from our own”

This really resonated with me. As a designer my own influences are often from beyond my profession and can be divorced from their context. Howe’s introduction had already got me excited about reading on.

“Disclaimer: this book is not an exhaustive compendium of every notable author or artist or inventor or entrepreneur. It’s really more of a random collection of individuals who have impacted me in some way – people I think most designers would probably appreciate knowing a little more about.”

There are no work samples in the book – Howe explains that Designers Don’t Have Influences follows in the “spirit and tradition of Norman Potter’s little gem, What is a designer: Things, Places, Messages” (a book I would also recommend, Potter is a great influence on me). Howe also explains that he wanted to dismiss the idea that designers don’t read – hence the title of his first book.

Each chapter in Designers Don’t Have Influences is a self contained essay. At the start of each chapter is the estimated time it will take to read it – I loved this element (one he uses in Designers Don’t Read), as I could pick up the book in my lunch time, waiting for a tube, sitting on Brighton beach, and flick to a chapter which I knew I would be able to read in the time I had. I felt I was carrying round a bunch of observations and ideas I could dip into rather than a book I would have to read from page one onwards. Each chapter has a little nugget of Howe thinking, seemingly designed to make you think a little, question a little and maybe re-evaluate your position and approach to your design work.

Some of the chapters are simply Howe’s observations of the experiences of working with others in and around his industry – the chapter on Bill Cahan gives a great insight into the processes of an innovative and successful design agency and those that run it. Many of Howe’s other subjects will be familiar to designers, the ubiquitous Ayn Rand gets a chapter, as do the Saatchis, Julian Schnabel, Josef Müller-Brockman and Damien Hirst, but it is the people I had never heard of that interested me the most – a great example is the chapter on François Allaire, a Canadian Hockey goalie coach. As a Yorkshireman who grew up with only a passing interest in football (my trips to Elland Road were on the whim of friends, I was never a committed football fan), there was no way I was going to have heard of a Canadian Hockey coach. Within this chapter Howe explains how Allaire re-invented goalie coaching from the ground up, and coached some of the most successful goalies in Hockey history. Howe writes about how Allaire can be an influence to someone working in the field of design:

“First of all he teaches us that it can be done, wherever and whenever it is actually attempted. That by questioning the conventions of how something has been done for years, we can find new ways of approaching it, simply by being aware, observant, ambitious.”

At the back of the book, once the essays are over, there’s a collection of doodle style portraits of the chapters subjects (along side a quote), credited to Aaron James. – my favourite is the starey scary disembodied Damien Hirst, but Maurice Saatchi’s portrait is worth a mention. I also liked the book design and typography credited to Fredrik Averin – a seemingly modernist design subverted with bold lines striking through the words, a treatment carried through from the cover to the chapters headings.

Maurice Saatchi

The best accolade I can give this book is that I already have bought his first book on the back of this one – and I will be keeping an eye on out for further publications and writing by Howe.

About the Reviewer

Owen Priestley is the Senior Art Director at digital agency Kerb and is a contributor to the arts, culture and politics blog www.20three.com.
Follow Owen on Twitter – http://twitter.com/owen20three

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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. If white is not simply a color, mightn’t we be able to understand it as functioning like a design or expressive concept?”

As a well-known graphic designer and art director at Muji, author Kenya Hara uses a variety of colors all the time. He does not even especially love white. As he has progressed in his career, though, he has slowly moved away from bright, vivid colors and gravitated to subtler, more natural hues. Inspiration was found in items like sand, handmade paper, seeds, rust, milk, cardboard, clouds, and weathered books. Of those, white has had the most profound impact for him.

The Japanese character for white is part of the compound character for emptiness. The connection between those words is a strong one throughout this slim volume.

“The mechanism of communication is activated when we look at an empty vessel, not as a negative state, but in terms of its capability to be filled with something.”

Paper is compared to the principle of itoshiroshi (shiro is Japanese for white), described as an intense purity full of potential. Hara has a strong conviction that simply holding a sheet of paper is like standing before a blank canvas, in that it will trigger the imagination of creative people.

Photography, painting, poetry, architecture and even tea ceremonies serve as solid examples of Hara’s concepts. For instance, he writes that Hasegawa Tohaku’s spare, foggy “Pine Trees” painting provokes our senses with its strong brush strokes and deliberate lack of detail. And, the effective use of white space between the trees actually suggests many more trees beyond what we can see.

“In other words, an unpainted space should not be seen as an information-free area: the foundation of Japanese aesthetics lies in that empty space and a host of meanings have been built upon it. An important level of communication thus exists within the dimension we call ‘white.’”

That empty space in communication is an interesting point. He writes about the power of non-verbal communication—a nod, or eye contact—that can convey so much. He acknowledges that Japanese communication, often leaving much unsaid (like subjects of sentences), can be difficult to understand when compared to the more direct western system. But, he views people reaching a consensus in silence to be a highly refined level of communication. And he reminds us that listening is a crucial part of effective communication.

The book’s design is clean and quiet: almost all text, with black serif type on white paper. Four images, including a 4-page gatefold of the “Pine Trees” painting, are placed together at the back of the book.  It would be more effective if the visuals were placed near the text where they are mentioned. A white ribbon marker adds a nice touch.

There is a calm, almost soothing rhythm to the text that feels appropriate. I think there is an over-reliance on quotation marks and on the phrase “in short,” but overall the writing is simple and clear.

Reading this has encouraged me to take a step back and look at white and emptiness in a more thoughtful manner. Perhaps my own design work can benefit from an occasional knowing nod rather than a shout. I am also more aware of the different nuances and levels of white that exist. While I have always been a big fan of white space, I now understand white to be much more than a color.

Designers of all kinds should find something of value in this book. Though it may seem as if Hara, also author of the much heftier Designing Design, is advocating a minimalist style, it runs deeper than that:

“The roots of expressions like … ‘less is more’ are subtly different than those that underlie emptiness. Emptiness does not merely imply simplicity of form, logical sophistication and the like. Rather, emptiness provides a space within which our imaginations can run free, vastly enriching our powers of perception and our mutual comprehension. Emptiness is this potential.”

White is published by Lars Müller Publishers and you can purchase it from Amazon (US|CA|UK|DE).

About the Reviewer
John Clifford is Creative Director at Think Studio, an award-winning graphic design firm in NYC focusing on brand identity, web sites, collateral, packaging, and books.

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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. But this isn’t about me. It’s about a book. I Heart Design by Steven Heller is a collection of, as it boldly proclaims on the cover, “80 remarkable graphic designs”. Each piece of graphic design was selected by a different person, at the request of the author, as something that was unique and influential in their own lives and careers.

(Click to enlarge)

The pieces of design were selected by a range of different people and different professions including various designers, illustrators and critics. All of the names are notable, some random excerpts include James Victore, Kelly William Purcell, Rudy Vanderlans, Ivan Chermayeff, George Tscherny, Gail Anderson, Jessica Helfand, and a few selected by Steven Heller himself. Each selected work includes the thoughts of the person whom selected it and, as would be expected with such a range of personalities, the descriptions vary in length from a few paragraphs to a few pages.

(Click to enlarge)

The different writing styles of each author and the different lengths of the descriptions make for a nice change in pace as you turn the pages of the book. Some include personal stories about the influence of the piece on the person writing about it while others include details about the specific piece and the designer. The following excerpt is from Reto Caduff’s selection, a poster for Pontresina, designed by Herbert Matter.

With this work, Matter secured himself a place in the graphic design pantheon early on. A few years later, he interviewed with Alexey Brodovitch for a job at Harper’s Bazaar in New York. His Pontresina poster hung on the wall behind Brodovitch’s desk.

(Click to enlarge)

I enjoyed the personality that each person brought to the book and the intimacy of some of their stories about the first time they saw the piece they selected and how it affected them. Several designers selected works of their own which I found quite self-indulgent and narcissistic, but design is a very vain profession and it would be ignorant to think otherwise. All of the content was edited by Steven Heller and the book was designed by Rick Landers.

(Click to enlarge)

The design of the book is well considered. While the content allows for a nice inconsistent pacing between the many different pieces the longer winded articles are spaced nicely between some of the shorter ones so that the pages keep turning. The page layouts take the same key and while they often share similar structures there is a nice inconsistency to the visual flow that keeps the reader interested. My only complaint with the design was that I did not enjoy the justification of every block of text in the book.

(Click to enlarge)

Included with each selection is a small piece of information about the person selecting it, which is always nice for the inquisitive reader. While many of the selected designs were familiar faces and old favorites there were quite a few that were new to me and I would encourage all designers to pick up a copy of the book as it will likely expose you to some influential pieces of design that you have never seen before.

I Heart Design is published by Rockport and you can purchase it from Amazon (US|CA|UK|DE).

About the Reviewer
Dominic Flask is a designer by nature, a teacher by application and a thoughtful companion by friendship. You can find his work here, his thoughts here, and his passion on Design is History.

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