1. Design of The Times: Using Key Movements and Styles for Contemporary Design by Lakshmi Bhaskaran
Inspiration resource for graphic designers.
Designs of the Times is an essential, one-stop reference and inspiration resource for graphic designers, students and design writers. In addition to providing a grounding in each historical movement/style, each section shows contemporary uses of the style in multi-disciplinary design, enabling the reader to see how each style has evolved and can be applied.
Reference and research material are a must for any designer/design studio. Designs of the Times provides all the essential information needed to tackle any design brief with confidence and ease. The key traits of each style are also summarized at the end of each section, serving as an essential “quick reference” guide. Added to this, the book’s index system allows for multiple level entry, while cross-referencing ensures that this mighty tome is accessible and user-friendly.
2. The Art of Innovation : Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm by Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman.
IDEO, the world’s leading design firm, is the brain trust that’s behind some of the more brilliant innovations of the past 20 years–from the Apple mouse, the Polaroid i-Zone instant camera, and the Palm V to the “fat” toothbrush for kids and a self-sealing water bottle for dirt bikers. Not surprisingly, companies all over the world have long wondered what they could learn from IDEO, to come up with better ideas for their own products, services, and operations. In this terrific book from IDEO general manager Tom Kelley (brother of founder David Kelley), IDEO finally delivers–but thankfully not in the step-by-step, flow-chart-filled “process speak” of most how-you-can-do-what-we-do business books. Sure, there are some good bulleted lists to be found here–such as the secrets of successful brainstorming, the qualities of “hot teams,” and, toward the end, 10 key ingredients for “How to Create Great Products and Services,” including “One Click Is Better Than Two” (the simpler, the better) and “Goof Proof” (no bugs).
But The Art of Innovation really teaches indirectly (not to mention enlightens and entertains) by telling great stories–mainly, of how the best ideas for creating or improving products or processes come not from laboriously organized focus groups, but from keen observations of how regular people work and play on a daily basis. On nearly every page, we learn the backstories of some now-well-established consumer goods, from recent inventions like the Palm Pilot and the in-car beverage holder to things we nearly take for granted–like Ivory soap (created when a P&G worker went to lunch without turning off his soap mixer, and returned to discover his batch overwhipped into 99.44 percent buoyancy) and Kleenex, which transcended its original purpose as a cosmetics remover when people started using the soft paper to wipe and blow their noses. Best of all, Kelley opens wide the doors to IDEO’s vibrant, sometimes wacky office environment, and takes us on a vivid tour of how staffers tackle a design challenge: they start not with their ideas of what a new product should offer, but with the existing gaps of need, convenience, and pleasure with which people live on a daily basis, and that IDEO should fill. (Hence, a one-piece children’s fishing rod that spares fathers the embarrassment of not knowing how to teach their kids to fish, or Crest toothpaste tubes that don’t “gunk up” at the mouth.)
Granted, some of their ideas–like the crucial process of “prototyping,” or incorporating dummy drafts of the actual product into the planning, to work out bugs as you go–lend themselves more easily to the making of actual things than to the more common organizational challenge of streamlining services or operations. But, if this big book of bright ideas doesn’t get you thinking of how to build a better mousetrap for everything from your whole business process to your personal filing system, you probably deserve to be stuck with the mousetrap you already have. –Timothy Murphy
3. Hackers & Painters: Big ideas from the computer age, Paul Graham. Also available on line here. ONLINE
“The computer world is like an intellectual Wild West, in which you can shoot anyone you wish with your ideas, if you’re willing to risk the consequences. ” –from Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age, by Paul Graham We are living in the computer age, in a world increasingly designed and engineered by computer programmers and software designers, by people who call themselves hackers. Who are these people, what motivates them, and why should you care? Consider these facts: Everything around us is turning into computers. Your typewriter is gone, replaced by a computer. Your phone has turned into a computer. So has your camera. Soon your TV will. Your car was not only designed on computers, but has more processing power in it than a room-sized mainframe did in 1970. Letters, encyclopedias, newspapers, and even your local store are being replaced by the Internet. Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age, by Paul Graham, explains this world and the motivations of the people who occupy it. In clear, thoughtful prose that draws on illuminating historical examples, Graham takes readers on an unflinching exploration into what he calls “an intellectual Wild West.” The ideas discussed in this book will have a powerful and lasting impact on how we think, how we work, how we develop technology, and how we live. Topics include the importance of beauty in software design, how to make wealth, heresy and free speech, the programming language renaissance, the open-source movement, digital design, Internet startups, and more. And here’s a taste of what you’ll find in Hackers & Painters: “In most fields the great work is done early on. The paintings made between 1430 and 1500 are still unsurpassed. Shakespeare appeared just as professional theater was being born, and pushed the medium so far that every playwright since has had to live in his shadow. Albrecht Durer did the same thing with engraving, and Jane Austen with the novel. Over and over we see the same pattern. A new medium appears, and people are so excited about it that they explore most of its possibilities in the first couple generations. Hacking seems to be in this phase now. Painting was not, in Leonardo’s time, as cool as his work helped make it. How cool hacking turns out to be will depend on what we can do with this new medium.” Andy Hertzfeld, co-creator of the Macintosh computer, says about Hackers & Painters: “Paul Graham is a hacker, painter and a terrific writer. His lucid, humorous prose is brimming with contrarian insight and practical wisdom on writing great code at the intersection of art, science and commerce.” Paul Graham, designer of the new Arc language, was the creator of Yahoo Store, the first web-based application. In addition to his PhD in Computer Science from Harvard, Graham also studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence.
Paul Graham, designer of the new Arc language, was the creator of Yahoo Store, the first web-based application. His technique for spam filtering inspired most current filters. He has a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard and studied painting at RISD and the Accademia in Florence.
4. Creativity in Product Innovation by Jacob Goldenberg and David Mazursky.
Creativity in Product Innovation describes a remarkable new technique for improving the creativity process in product design. Certain “regularities” in product development are identifiable, objectively verifiable and consistent for almost any kind of product. These regularities are described by the authors as Creativity Templates. This book describes the theory and implementation of these templates, showing how they can be used to enhance the creative process and thus enable people to be more productive and focused. Representing the culmination of years of research on the topic of creativity in marketing, the Creativity Templates approach has been recognized as a breakthrough in such journals as Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, and Technological Forecasting and Social Change.
Required (Assigned) Readings
5. Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice (Version 5.2) as recommended by the ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Task Force on Software Engineering Ethics and Professional Practices and jointly approved by the ACM and the IEEE-CS as the standard for teaching and practicing software engineering. ONLINE
Computers have a central and growing role in commerce, industry, government, medicine, education, entertainment and society at large. Software engineers are those who contribute by direct participation or by teaching, to the analysis, specification, design, development, certification, maintenance and testing of software systems. Because of their roles in developing software systems, software engineers have significant opportunities to do good or cause harm, to enable others to do good or cause harm, or to influence others to do good or cause harm. To ensure, as much as possible, that their efforts will be used for good, software engineers must commit themselves to making software engineering a beneficial and respected profession. In accordance with that commitment, software engineers shall adhere to the following Code of Ethics and Professional Practice.
6. Ethics as Design, Caroline Whitbeck. ONLINE Requires Login/Password: see note at the top of the page for login instructions.
Doing justice to moral problems means that they should be tackled from the perspective of the person facing the problem. As well as evaluating the proposed courses of action, the design of these courses of action should be analyzed. Taking a design approach to moral problems should lead to the realizations that there is no unique correct solution, that the correct answer to the same problem can differ for different people, and that there are wrong answers. Solutions to moral problems should achieve the desired level of performance, conform to given criteria, be reasonably secure against accidents and miscarriages, and be consistent with background constraints. In addressing moral problems with a design approach, the uncertainties should be faced first, the development of possible solutions should be separated from the definition of the problem, several solutions should be pursued simultaneously, and the dynamic nature of the problem must be acknowledged.
7. If it ain’t broke, don’t break it Thomas Magliozzi. ONLINE
My 1963 Dodge Dart convertible has three heater controls. They’re big round knobs. They’re easy to find, and I can tell them apart even in the dark. Nearly 30 years of technological progress brought us the 1990 Buick, which uses 14 buttons to accomplish essentially the same functions. The 14 buttons are all exactly the same size and shape, and they’re all perfectly flat, so as to be indistinguishable by touch. It seems to me that any control in a car that requires that I look at it is inherently wrong.
Supplemental and Other References
8. Creating Breakthrough Products: Innovation from Product Planning to Program Approval by Jonathan Cagan and Craig Vogel.
Most products fail. Some succeed. A few redefine their markets-or even create entirely new markets. This book is about what it takes to create those breakthrough products and services. Drawing upon nearly a decade of advanced research, Jonathan Cagan and Craig M. Vogel identify the key factors associated with successful innovation—and offer a revolutionary approach to building tomorrow’s great products.
– Gain real insight into emerging trends-in both consumer and industrial markets
-> – Identify Product Opportunity Gaps that can lead to entirely new markets
-> – Navigate the “Fuzzy Front End” of the product development process, when products and markets aren’t yet defined
-> – Make appropriate use of both qualitative and quantitative tools
-> – Connect strategic planning and brand management to product development
-> – Build diverse product teams that work together smoothly
-> – Identify Product Opportunity Gaps that can lead to entirely new markets
-> – Navigate the “Fuzzy Front End” of the product development process, when products and markets aren’t yet defined
-> – Make appropriate use of both qualitative and quantitative tools
-> – Connect strategic planning and brand management to product development
-> – Build diverse product teams that work together smoothly
-> Creating Breakthrough Products transforms innovation from serendipity to science, giving you tools for creating products that change the rules of the game and achieve significant competitive advantage.
9. The Six Thinking Hats, Edward de Bono.
Edward de Bono does not suffer from a small ego. The first sentence of the preface to his book is: “The Six Thinking Hats method may well be the most important change in human thinking for the past twenty-three hundred years.” Digest this and two more pages of obnoxious self-advertisement that follows. Then put the book down. After an hour continue to read the rest of the book. It is worth while.
Essentially, “Six Thinking Hats” is about improving communication and decision-making in groups. De Bono’s style is accessible, succinct, well-structured and easy to follow. It is not with a certain justification that he claims that “his work is in use equally in board-rooms of some of the world’s largest corporations and with four-year-olds in school.” Well, where is the difference, anyway?
What de Bono wants to achieve is to structure thinking and make it more effective. “Thinking often proceeds as drift and waffle and reaction to what turns up from moment to moment. […] Suggestions, judgements, criticism, information and plain emotions are all mixed together in a sort of thinking stew,” he writes. The six “thinking hats” are different ways of looking at an issue that has to be decided: under the white hat one presents the facts, under the red hat one says how one feels about the issue, under the black hat one looks at the negative effects of the decision, under the yellow hat one looks at the positive effects of the decision, under the green hat one thinks of alternatives, and under the blue hat one clarifies which kind of thinking is going on. Overall, thinking becomes clearer when the different parts that go into it are brought into the open.
The idea of the “hat” has the advantage that it allows people to play with a new perspective. People who argue by criticism, for example, can remain mostly critical. But by putting on the red hat they can voice their emotions, or by putting on the yellow hat they can think about positive effects. Western thinking tends strongly to focus on “black hat thinking,” says de Bono: “At a Western-style meeting the participants sit there with their points of view and in many cases the conclusion they wish to see agreed upon. The meeting then consists of arguing through these different points of view to see which survives the criticism and which attracts the most adherents.” De Bono wants to get away from this judgmental, confrontational style towards a more open, positive, creative and playful way of discussing.
De Bono’s model tries to make discussions more rational. It acknowledges the importance of emotions in decision-making, and tries to separate them from the facts and from the positive or negative implications of the decision: “once the emotions are made visible, then a thinker is more free of them”. But making the discussion more transparent and structured is not enough. De Bono’s model needs a “facilitator”, a person who puts a “blue hat” on, someone who organizes the discussion and leads it.
In the world of business, discussions are very often about power. The “six thinking hats” model requires a very enlightened, open-minded “powerful” person to work, or very assertive, courageous “less powerful” persons.
What are the problems with power? A person in power can abuse his “blue hat” position, for example. Or the culture of the company can be built on “black hat” critical thinking, where “yellow hat” positive thinkers tend to become scapegoats when things go wrong. “Red hat” revelations of the emotions behind one’s point of view or “green hat” creative ideas are not forthcoming when power games are being played. People in power can abuse any of the six thinking hats. Here the book could profit from some ideas about how to deal with the abuse of power in communication. But having said that, I want to stress that it was stimulating to read this book, and I found it very interesting to analyse my own thinking under the “hat” categories of de Bono.
10. Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, E.F.Schumacher, 25th anniversary edition, with commentaries.
Small is Beautiful is the perfect antidote to the economics of globalization. As relevant today as when it was first published, this is a landmark set of essays on humanistic economics. This 25th anniversary edition brings Schumacher’s ideas into focus for the end-of-the-century by adding commentaries by contemporary thinkers who have been influenced by Schumacher. They analyze the impact of his philosophy on current political and economic thought. Small is Beautiful is the classic of common-sense economics upon which many recent trends in our society are founded. This is economics from the heart rather than from just the bottom line.
11. Design for the Real World: Human ecology and social change, Victor Papanek.
I first heard a lecture by Victor Papanek about 20 years ago, shortly before this revised edition was released. He was a very impressive speaker, drawing from a seemingly bottomless well of ecological design ideas. His work has taken him far and wide and in the process allowed him to revamp many of his views on environmental design. This book is an extensively updated version of his seminal book on the subject. It has become a bit dated in the 20 years since its release, especially in regard to computer software design. But, most of the material he covers is still relavent to the present, as we have only begun to scratch the surface of sound ecological ideas.
Having read the more recent books on ecological design by Sim Van Der Ryn and William McDonough, I was surprised to see that neither mentioned Papanek, who prefigured many of the ideas they present in their current books. Papanek long ago advocated the lease/use principle, which makes much more sense in a rapidly changing technological world than does the buy/own principle that continues to dominate our social thinking. Papanek notes the many cultural and psychological blocks we have created for ourselves when it comes to ecological design, but also illustrates how we can overcome these blocks with methods such as bisociation, first proposed by Arthur Koestler. But, what really makes this book stand out are the great number of illustrations that Papanek uses to demonstrate his ideas. This is one of the most practical books written on environmental design.
While Papanek was an industrial designer, his ideas are equally germaine to the field of architecture and biology. He advocated a multi-disciplinary approach, feeling that our universities had become too compartimentalized and were stifling creativity, which needs cross-pollination in order to thrive. The book is as inpiring as his lectures. Papanek challenges the reader to explore new avenues, not continue to follow the status quo, which only results in creative dead-ends.
12. Design and Environment: A Global Guide to Designing Greener Goods, Helen Lewis and John Gertsakis.
There is a huge scarcity of good, practical resources for designers and students interested in minimising the environmental impacts of products. Design + Environment has been specifically written to address this paucity.
The book first provides background information to help the reader understand how and why design for environment (DfE) has become so critical to design, with reference to some of the most influential writers, designers and companies in the field. Next, Design + Environment provides a step-by-step approach on how to approach DfE: to design a product that meets requirements for quality, cost, manufacturability and consumer appeal, while at the same time minimising environmental impacts. The first step in the process is to undertake an assessment of environmental impacts, using life-cycle assessment (LCA) or one of the many simpler tools available to help the designer. From then on, DfE becomes an integral part of the normal design process, including the development of concepts, design of prototypes, final design and development of marketing strategies.
Environmental assessment tools and strategies to reduce environmental impacts, such as the selection of appropriate materials, are then discussed. Next, some of the links between environmental problems, such as global warming, ozone depletion, water and air pollution and the everyday products we consume are considered. In order to design products with minimal environmental impact, we need to have a basic understanding of these impacts and the interactions between them.
The four subsequent chapters provide more detailed strategies and case studies for particular product groups: packaging, textiles, furniture, and electrical and electronic products. Guidelines are provided for each of the critical stages of a product’s life, from the selection of raw materials through to strategies for recovery and recycling.
Finally, Design + Environment takes a look at some of the emerging trends in DfE that are offering us the opportunity to make a more significant reduction in environmental impacts. Both the development of more sustainable materials and technologies and the growing interest in leasing rather than selling products are examined.
Design + Environment is organised as a workbook rather than an academic text. It should be read once, and then used as a key reference source. This clear and informative book will prove to be invaluable to practising designers, to course directors and their students in need of a core teaching and reference text and to all those interested in learning about the tools and trends influencing green product design.
The authors have all been involved in an innovative demonstration programme called ‘EcoReDesign‘, which was developed by the Centre for Design at RMIT University with funding from the Australian government. The Centre successfully collaborated with Australian companies to improve the environmental performance of their products by following DfE principles.
13. Invention by Design: How Engineers Get from Thought to Thing, Henry Petroski.
Invention, Petroski has steadfastly maintained, comes from a failure of design. The paperclip that can only be used in one direction, that becomes easily tangled in a box, or that tears the paper has led inventors to a cycle of improvements and patents. That’s the story of the case studies here, many of which Petroski has used in other books?the paperclip, zipper and aluminum can appeared in The Evolution of Useful Things, the pencil in The Pencil; and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in Engineers of Dreams. But Petroski still manages to add something new. When talking about the Bay Bridge, for example, he goes into great depth here about the impact of factors far removed from statics, dynamics and hydraulics. He looks at the importance of John Roebling’s personal charisma and the impact of the 1879 failure of the Firth of Tay bridge on the subsequent construction of bridges. In the same way, his sections on “Facsimile and Networks” and “Airplanes and Computers” offer very interesting insights into the economics of implementing large-scale projects (fax machines became popular in part because of Federal Express’s promotion of its new ZapMail, which turned into a $300 million bath for the company). Those who don’t know Petroski’s work will find this an enjoyable introduction. Those who do, will appreciate the additional gloss.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
14. Bringing Design to Software, Terry Winograd, ed. ONLINE
In this landmark book, Terry Winograd shows how to improve the practice of software design, by applying lessons from other areas of design to the creation of software. The goal is to create software that works—really works—in being appropriate and effective for people who live in the world that the software creates.
The book contains essays contributed by prominent software and design professionals, interviews with experts, and profiles of successful projects and products. These elements are woven together to illuminate what design is, to identify the common core of practices in every design field, and to show how software builders can apply these common practices to produce software that is more effective, more appropriate, and more satisfying for users.
The initial chapters view software from the user’s perspective, featuring the insights of a experienced software designers and developers, including Mitch Kapor, David Liddle, John Rheinfrank, Peter Denning, and John Seely Brown. Subsequent chapters turn to the designer and the design process, with contributions from designers and design experts, including David Kelley, Donald Schön, and Donald Norman. Profiles discussing Mosaic, Quicken, Macintosh Interface Guidelines, Microsoft Bob, and other successful applications and projects are included to highlight key points in the chapters.
This book is for the broad community of people who conceive, develop, market, evaluate, and use software. It is foremost, of course, for the software designer, and particularly for the reflective designer—someone who is driven by practical concerns, but who is also able to step back for a moment and reflect on what works, what doesn’t work, and why. At the same time, it reveals new directions and new possibilities for programmers who build software, and for product managers who bring software to market. Software users will also find the book valuable in expanding their understanding of what good software design encompasses, which will help them in evaluating, integrating, and productively using computer applications.
15. An Eames Primer, Eames Demetrios.
An extensive and useful examination of how the Office of Charles and Ray Eames, creators of many celebrated modern designs, operated during the mid-20th century. Chapter on Constraints is particularly interesting.
Charles and Ray Eames were heroes to my generation of designers and I’m thrilled to say have once again become heroes to the present generation. The work of their office in all its variety is amazing and inspirational and demonstrates a real fascination with the detail of life. It is intensely human, charming, and kind. Their grandson, Eames Demetrios (I wish my mother had called me Eames), has documented his grandparents’ life in great detail. It makes enthralling reading for any student of 20th-century creativity.”–Terence Conran
“From 1942 the Office of Charles and Ray Eames grew like L.A. itself to a focal center in the widest world of design. This is the fascinating personal account of Charles and Ray and of scores of their talented associates who made it an atelier of our times, creating a charmed house of steel, a dozen museums, a hundred films, and myriad seats that welcome you in airports everywhere. Eames Demetrios sketches how the pair came together and shares experiences from his own childhood on to searching interviews with many articulate insiders, both light-hearted and profound.”–Philip and Phylis Morrison
“The Eameses are handsome, they are a couple, they look sexy, smart, and happy. It’s almost enough to understand their miracle. They don’t create beauty and intelligence, they just transmit what they are. It’s easy, coherent. There is a serenity. When they drive a motorcycle, it’s to experience balance and the minimum. Every picture gives a clue. They offer us the elegance of their happy rigorness.”–Philippe Starck
16. Design Outlaws on the Ecological Frontier Chris Zelov and Phil Cousineau, eds. Book is based on a DVD, “Ecological Design: Inventing the Future.”
This book is one of the only works that addresses the topic of Ecological Design in an in-depth manner. Moreover, it focuses on the progenitors of this movement – the design outlaws that had the courage to forge entirely new and radical paths in art, design, science and technology. Powerful stuff – important message – innovative and engaging subject matter.
17. A Roadmap for Natural Capitalism, Amory B. Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins, and Paul Hawken, Harvard Business Review, May-June 1999, pages 145-158. ONLINE Requires Login/Password: see note at the top of the page for login instructions.
Business strategies build around the radically more productive use of natural resources can solve many environmental problems at a profit.
18. Green and Competitive, Michael Porter, Harvard Business Review, July/August 1995. ONLINE Requires Login/Password: see note at the top of the page for login instructions.
An underlying logic links the environment, resouce productivity, innovation, and competitiveness.
19. End User Programming in an Industrial Research & Development Group By Howard Goodell, Tech report, 2001. ONLINE
This paper presents partial results from a case study of a full application of end user programming in an industrial product Research & Development (R&D) organization. Scientists and engineers developing large industrial machines built all application software, with programmers (including the author) in a support role. In interviews, the project team and its managers described a sophisticated and complex integration of programming into their work activities, similar to those described in other end user programming environments.
20. Towards More Natural Functional Programming Languages by Ben Myers. Invited keynote talk , The Seventh ACM SIGPLAN Intl. Conference on Functional Programming, ICFP 2002. Pittsburgh, PA. p. 1. ONLINE
Programming languages are the way for a person to express a mental plan in a way that the computer can understand. Therefore, it is appropriate to consider properties of people when designing new programming languages. In our research, we are investigating how people think about algorithms, and how programming languages can be made easier to learn and more effective for people to use. By taking human-productivity aspects of programming languages seriously, designers can more effectively match programming language features with human capabilities and problem solving methods. Human factors methods can be used to measure the effects, so unsubstantiated claims can be avoided.
This talk will present a quick summary of new and old results in what is known about people and programming, from areas that are sometimes called “empirical studies of programmers” and “psychology of programming.” Much is known about what people find difficult, and what syntax and language features are especially tricky and bug-prone. Our new research has discovered how people naturally think about algorithms and data structures, which can help with making programming languages more closely match people’s problem solving techniques.
21. A Small Matter of Programming: Perspectives on End User Computing by Bonnie Nardi, The MIT Press, 1993, ISBN 0-262-14053-5
A Small Matter of Programming asks why it has been so difficult for end users to command programming power and explores the problems of end user-driven application development that must be solved to afford end users greater computational power.
Drawing on empirical research on existing end user systems, A Small Matter of Programming analyzes cognitive, social, and technical issues of end user programming. In particular, it examines the importance of task-specific programming languages, visual application frameworks, and collaborative work practices for end user computing, with the goal of helping designers and programmers understand and better satisfy the needs of end users who want the capability to create, customize, and extend their applications software.
The ideas in the book are based on the author’s research on two successful end user programming systems – spreadsheets and CAD systems – as well as other empirical research. Nardi concentrates on broad issues in end user programming, especially end users’ strengths and problems, introducing tools and techniques as they are related to higher-level user issues.
Bonnie A. Nardi is a Member of the Technical Staff at Hewlett Packard Laboratories.
Textbooks – Optional with Selected readings from these books
22. In the Bubble : Designing in a Complex World by John Thackara
We’re filling up the world with technology and devices, but we’ve lost sight of an important question: What is this stuff for? What value does it add to our lives? So asks author John Thackara in his new book, In the Bubble: Designing for a Complex World.
These are tough questions for the pushers of technology to answer. Our economic system is centered on technology, so it would be no small matter if “tech” ceased to be an end-in-itself in our daily lives.
Technology is not going to go away, but the time to discuss the end it will serve is before we deploy it, not after. We need to ask what purpose will be served by the broadband communications, smart materials, wearable computing, and connected appliances that we’re unleashing upon the world. We need to ask what impact all this stuff will have on our daily lives. Who will look after it, and how?
In the Bubble is about a world based less on stuff and more on people. Thackara describes a transformation that is taking place now — not in a remote science fiction future; it’s not about, as he puts it, “the schlock of the new” but about radical innovation already emerging in daily life. We are regaining respect for what people can do that technology can’t. In the Bubble describes services designed to help people carry out daily activities in new ways. Many of these services involve technology — ranging from body implants to wide-bodied jets. But objects and systems play a supporting role in a people-centered world. The design focus is on services, not things. And new principles — above all, lightness — inform the way these services are designed and used. At the heart of In the Bubble is a belief, informed by a wealth of real-world examples, that ethics and responsibility can inform design decisions without impeding social and technical innovation.
23. Small Change: About the Art of Practice and the Limits of Planning in Cities by Nabeel Hamdi
Nabeel Hamdi is a consultant with long experience of urban development issues and is now attached to Oxford Brookes University, UK.
24. Essential Open Source Toolset by Andreas Zeller, Jens Krinke; Paperback
A unique guide to the classic Linux/Unix Toolset.
Programming is more than just coding. Software developers must build, analyse and test their programs; they have to avoid performance bottlenecks, administer internal and foreign modifications, find and remove errors. Using tools available under Linux/Unix, developers can solve the problems of the programming practice.
– Tools covered are the ‘classics’ in Linux/Unix environments
– Unique coverage of wide range of tools including: DIFF, PATCH, UNRAVEL, GPROF, GCOV, SniFF+ and many more
– Includes practical exercises to test competence
– Companion Web site includes information on more recent developments as well as extensive additional resources
25. The Industrial Design Reader by Carma Gorman (Editor)
A Time Machine for Industrial Design
Carma R. Gorman Brings Back to Life Familiar Voices in New Anthology on Industrial Design History
Remember Richard Nixon’s address to the nation during the energy crisis of 1973? Industrial design history is chock-full of speeches and statements that couldn’t feel timelier in light of today’s issues. Yet to get to these sources, readers often have to shuffle through dimly lit library floors or dusty newspaper archives. THE INDUSTRIAL DESIGN READER, a new book edited by Carma R. Gorman, promises relief to designers and historians who want to connect with their field’s rich past. Gorman has assembled sixty primary-source essays from 150 years of industrial design history— providing access to some of the most memorable and hard-to-find documents of this fascinating field. THE INDUSTRIAL DESIGN READER is co-published by Allworth Press and the Design Management Institute.
While many objects of industrial design have become icons, until now, a systematic attempt has never been made to feature the speeches, articles, and comments that have fueled (and often critiqued) these creations. THE INDUSTRIAL DESIGN READER is the first anthology to focus exclusively on the last 150 years of industrial design history, including the infrequently covered time period from World War II to the present. The selections not only include writings by designers, but also essays by the politicians, home economists, advertisers, social critics, manufacturers, and artists who influenced their work. Selections also include hard-to-find documents such as Henry Cole’s “On the International Results of the Exhibition of 1851,” The Program of the Ulm Hochschule für Gestaltung, and Marcy Babbitt’s 1935 interview with designer Belle Kogan.
Many of the essays in the book deal with timely issues such as environmentalism, gender, race, and global design, including: * Victor Papanek’s “Design for the Real World” * R. Buckminster Fuller’s “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth” * David H. Rice’s “What Color is Design?” * Kenichi Ohmae’s “Global Products”
26. Persuasive Technology : Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies) by B.J. Fogg
“The brilliance of Persuasive Technology is the way it analyzes the way we already view computers.” Technology & Society Magazine, May 2003
27. You Are Here by Katharine Harmon (Editor)
Into this seemingly lighthearted 7″ 10″ look into people’s love affairs with maps and mapmaking, Harmon packs some serious intellectual concepts about the human impulse to locate itself in the cosmos. Under the loose and expandable categories of “Personal Geography,” “At Home in the World” and “Realms of Fantasy,” Harmon presents 50 four-color and 50 b&w cartographical illustrations, including Professor Eugene Turner’s smily and frowny faces placed on a map of Los Angeles convey data on the unemployment rates, urban stress and racial composition of individual neighborhoods, putting substantive research in a down-to-earth guise. Ellsworth Kelly’s “Fields on a Map (Meschers, Gironde)” pulls an abstract pastoral out of a real place, while Kisaburo Ohara makes an octopus-like Russia seem vividly frightening in “A Humorous Diplomatic Atlas of Europe and Asia.” Kim Dingle’s collection of variously erroneous maps of the United States drawn by American students are equally thought provoking. Harmon has cannily selected a variety of essays, humorous, personal, analytical: e.g., Bridget Booher’s chronological “map” of every injustice done to her body, Roger Sheffer’s absorbing analysis of the little maps drawn in the registers of shelters along the Appalachian Trail, and Hugh Brogan’s professorial elegy for the fantastical maps that used to be printed in Arthur Ransome’s children’s books. Purists may dislike the way that illustrations of various maps are not linked directly to the texts; others may find it refreshing, much like the kind of map that makes you expect a new and alluring surprise around every corner. Harmon’s intricate and thoughtful selections do indeed prove her point that mapmaking is as diverse and extraordinary a human act as any other.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
28. The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor
Christensen (The Innovator’s Dilemma) analyzes the strategies that allow corporations to successfully grow new businesses and outpace the other players in the marketplace. Christensen’s earlier book examined how focusing on profits can destroy even well-run corporations, while this book focuses on companies expanding by being “disruptors” who are able to outpace their entrenched competition. The authors (Christensen is a professor at Harvard Business School and Raynor, a director at Deloitte Research) examine the nine business decisions integral to growth, including product development, organizational structure, financing and key customer base. They cite such companies as IBM, AT&T, Sony, Microsoft and others to illustrate their points. Generally, the writing is clear and specific. For example, in discussing whether a company has the resources necessary for growth, the authors say, “In order to be confident that managers have developed the skills required to succeed at a new assignment, one should examine the sorts of problems they have wrestled with in the past. It is not as important that managers have succeeded with the problem as it is for them to have wrestled with it and developed the skills and intuition for how to meet the challenge successfully the next time around”; they then provide a real-life example of a software company. Similar important strategies give readers insights that they can use in their own workplaces. People looking for quick fixes may find the charts, diagrams and extensive footnotes daunting, but readers familiar with more technical business management tomes will find this one both stimulating and beneficial.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc
29. Reinventing the Wheel by Jessica Helfand
“Twentieth-century volvelles–often referred to as ‘wheel charts’– offer everything from inventory control to color calibration, mileage metering to verb conjugation. They anticipate animal breeding cycles and calculate radiation exposure, measure chocolate consumption and quantify bridge tips, chart bird calls, convert metrics, and calculate taxes.” Starting as a collector of wheel charts, Helfand (a design critic and lecturer on graphic design at Yale University) came to recognize how old the concept is and to marvel at how many uses it has found. Focusing on the proliferation of these devices in the 20th century, she presents pictures and descriptions of nearly 100 of them. Her book is therefore visually intriguing. But it also ventures deep into the philosophy of the devices. Despite their wide range of content, Helfand writes, “these paper artifacts are somehow philosophically united in their unique approach to information design.”
Editors of Scientific American
30. Positive Turbulence : Developing Climates for Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal J-B CCL (Center for Creative Leadership)
“In this highly readable, soundly practical book, Gryskiewicz distills the wisdom gained in his twenty-five years of working with the world’s most creative organizations. The lesson is this: Managers can enable and even direct the seemingly random activity that often precedes creative breakthroughs and, in doing so, they can increase the probability of big hits.” —Teresa M. Amabile, MBA Class of 1954 Professor of Business Administration Senior Associate Dean, Director of Research, Harvard Business School
“We are constantly told that the very survival and future success of our business corporations depends on how fast and how efficient we seek out viable opportunities—and we are reminded that this is a continuous process. This book tells us how to do it and do it in a way that taps into the full innovative and creative capabilities of all employees. Stan Gryskiewicz’s work adds a distinctly human dimension to the whole renewal movement.” —Gerry Rooney, former director of executive development, World Bank
“Stan is an acknowledged pro at skillfully weaving practical business solutions with creative processes. In Positive Turbulence he takes us beyond just using the potential of the enormous change all around us into deliberately unsettling our comfort zones to inspire new opportunity. This is required reading for organizations looking to break out of the pack.” —Walter Elcock, merger transition executive, Bank of America
“To present, in a clear and comprehensive manner, the complexity ofmanaging corporate renewal in times of crises and chaos requires the experience and insightfulness of both an analytic and creative mind. Dr. Stan Gryskiewicz unites those qualities and has eloquently described the powerful tool of creating Positive Turbulence. This book is a must read for survival and success in the 21st century!” —Patrick Colemont, M.Sc., co-founder, European Association for Creativity and Innovation
“With Positive Turbulence, Stan Gryskiewicz gives us the wisdom of his career-long work in applied creativity. What he knows is well worth knowing. For anyone with a team, an opportunity and a corporate playing field, his book is a gift.” —Frank P. Bordonaro, Ph.D, chief learning officer, The Prudential Insurance Company of America
31. Managing Creativity and Innovation Harvard Business Essentials
Innovation is an undisputed catalyst for company growth, yet many managers across industries fail to create a climate that encourages and rewards innovation. Managing Creativity and Innovation explores the manager’s role in sparking organizational creativity and offers insight into what managers and leaders must do to increase successful innovation. Contents include: Generating new ideas and recognizing opportunities Moving innovation to market Removing mental blocks to creativity Establishing a strategic direction for profitable product development Brainstorming and fostering creative conflict within groups Creating an innovation-friendly culture Plus, readers can access free interactive tools on the Harvard Business Essentials companion web site. Series Adviser: Ralph Katz Dr. Katz is professor of management at Northeastern University’s College of Business and in the Management of Technology Group of M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management. He has carried out extensive management research on technology-based innovation with emphasis in the management of technical professionals and project teams. Harvard Business Essentials The Reliable Source for Busy Managers The Harvard Business Essentials series is designed to provide comprehensive advice, personal coaching, background information, and guidance on the most relevant topics in business. Drawing on rich content from Harvard Business School Publishing and other sources, these concise guides are carefully crafted to provide a highly practical resource for readers with all levels of experience. To assure quality and accuracy, each volume is closely reviewed by a specialized content adviser from a world class business school. Whether you are a new manager interested in expanding your skills or an experienced executive looking for a personal resource, these solution-oriented books offer reliable answers at your fingertips
32. Breakthrough : Stories and Strategies of Radical Innovation by Mark Stefik, Barbara Stefik
Since the late 1990s, technology markets have declined dramatically. Responding to the changing business climate, companies use strategies of open innovation: acquiring technologies from outside, marketing their technologies to other companies, and outsourcing manufacturing. But open innovation is not enough; it is mainly a way to run a business to its endgame. By itself, open innovation results in razor-thin profits from products that compete as commodities. Businesses also need a path to renewal. No one ever achieved a breakthrough with open innovation.
Our capacity for creating breakthroughs depends on a combination of science, imagination, and business; the next great waves of innovation will come from organizations that get this combination right. During periods of rapid economic growth, companies and investors focus on the short term and forget where breakthroughs come from. Without appropriate engagement and reinvestment, the innovation ecology breaks down. Today, universities, technology companies, government funding agencies, venture capitalists, and corporate research laboratories need to foster the conditions in which breakthroughs arise.
In Breakthrough, Mark and Barbara Stefik show us how innovation works. Drawing on stories from repeat inventors and managers of technology, they uncover the best practices for inventing the future. This book is for readers who want to know how inventors do their work, how people become inventors, and how businesses can create powerful cultures of innovation.
33. Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius; Revised and expanded edition by Nikolaus Pevsner, Richard Weston (Introduction)
“Essential for anyone interested in the roots of modern design.”
“[An] excellent and now classic introduction to modern design and twentieth-century modernism. . . .” – Christopher Menz, Australian Book Review
34. History of Modern Design (Trade Version) by David Raizman, Laurence Pu King
Design plays an integral part in our lives, surrounding us at home and in the office. The products of design—whether in the form of household products, packaging, fashion, software, industrial equipment, or promotional images in the mass media—can be seen both as objects of beauty and as the result of creative human endeavors.
This insightful, wide-ranging book surveys applied arts and industrial design from the eighteenth century to the present day, exploring the dynamic relationship between design and manufacturing, and the technological, social, and commercial context in which this relationship developed. The effects of a vastly enlarged audience for the products of modern design and the complex dynamic of mass consumption, are also discussed. Part of this dynamic reveals that products serve as symbols for desires that have little to do with need or function.
Wide-ranging examples of product and graphic design are shown—and their significance within the history of design explained—including vessels and other objects made from glass, ceramics, plastic, or metal, as well as tableware, furniture, textiles, lighting, housings for electric appliances, machines and equipment, cars, tools, books, posters, magazines, illustrations, advertisements, and digital information. The book also explores the impact of a wealth of new manmade industrial materials on the course of modern design—from steel to titanium, plywood to plastic, cotton to nylon, wire to transistors, and .from microprocessors to nanotubes. The research, development, and applications of these technologies are shown as depending upon far-reaching lines of communication, stretching across geographical and linguistic boundaries. In this way, David Raizman reveals the history of modern design as a “global” history.
35. Bucky Works: Buckminster Fuller’s Ideas for Today by J. Baldwin
Often alluded to as a 20th-century Leonardo da Vinci, R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was a visionary of the modern age. As an architect, inventor, engineer, writer, mathematician, and educator, his utopian humanism was evident in the way he devoted his life to designing objects, including buildings and cars, that would solve many of the problems of modern living. He was an early proponent of geodesic domes–semispherical structures made up of incredibly light and extremely strong triangular components–which he recommended for economical and energy-efficient housing and other purposes. An entire chapter in this engaging book is devoted to domes; other chapters cover Fuller’s far-reaching ideas on the Dymaxion House, Dymaxion Transportation, Synergetics, and Megastructures. (“Dymaxion” was a term Fuller coined to describe getting the most output from minimal input of energy and materials.) With more than 200 black-and-white photos and drawings, this is a wonderfully nontechnical introduction to and celebration of the man, his remarkable inventions, and their modern-day relevance.
36. Harvard Business Review on Innovation by Clayton M. Christensen, et al
In today’s ever-changing economic landscape, innovation has become even more of a key factor influencing strategic planning. This helpful volume will help the reader recognize and seize innovation opportunities. The Harvard Business Review Paperback Series The series is designed to bring today’s managers and professionals the fundamental information they need to stay competitive in a fast-moving world. From the preeminent thinkers whose work has defined an entire field to the rising stars who will redefine the way we think about business, here are the leading minds and landmark ideas that have established the Harvard Business Review as required reading for ambitious businesspeople in organizations around the globe.
37. The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
What do the Honda Supercub, Intel’s 8088 processor, and hydraulic excavators have in common? They are all examples of disruptive technologies that helped to redefine the competitive landscape of their respective markets. These products did not come about as the result of successful companies carrying out sound business practices in established markets. In The Innovator’s Dilemma, author Clayton M. Christensen shows how these and other products cut into the low end of the marketplace and eventually evolved to displace high-end competitors and their reigning technologies.
At the heart of The Innovator’s Dilemma is how a successful company with established products keeps from being pushed aside by newer, cheaper products that will, over time, get better and become a serious threat. Christensen writes that even the best-managed companies, in spite of their attention to customers and continual investment in new technology, are susceptible to failure no matter what the industry, be it hard drives or consumer retailing. Succinct and clearly written, The Innovator’s Dilemma is an important book that belongs on every manager’s bookshelf. Highly recommended. –Harry C. Edwards
38. Interaction Design for Complex Problem Solving : Developing Useful and Usable Software (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies) by Barbara Mirel
If your team already has someone responsible for the HCI of your products, encourage them to read this book and discuss the resulting issues with you. In the context of a team it might also be helpful to make this book a team study effort so that you all better understand those extra constraints on the total product that are necessary to convert excellent software into excellent usable software. — from a review by Francis Glassborow on accu.org
Barbara Mirel has spent years studying users for whom simple software solutions aren’t sufficient. Interaction Design for Complex Problem Solving is the first book to tackle the thorny problem of developing software that is both usable and useful for users who have complex problems to solve. With clear explanations, detailed case studies, and thoughtful ideas about how to proceed, this is an excellent resource for designers, developers, and usability specialists. — Janice (Ginny) Redish, Redish & Associates, Inc.
At last we have a text to help interaction designers, technical communicators, and programmers understand (rather than defeat) the complexities of users engaged in knowledge work in real-world contexts. Barbara Mirel’s Interaction Design for Complex Problem Solving weaves theory and practice into a coherent, rich framework for thinking about, researching, and designing powerful and useful systems. — Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Clarkson University
39. Creative Code: Aesthetics + Computation by John Maeda
This book presents the most fascinating work produced by the group, arranged into themes that apply to today’s design issues: information visualization, digital topography, abstraction, interaction design, and education.
40. Design By Numbers by John Maeda
Most art and technology projects pair artists with engineers or scientists: the artist has the conception, and the technical person provides the know-how. John Maeda is an artist and a computer scientist, and he views the computer not as a substitute for brush and paint but as an artistic medium in its own right. Design By Numbers is a reader-friendly tutorial on both the philosophy and nuts-and-bolts techniques of programming for artists.
Practicing what he preaches, Maeda composed Design By Numbers using a computational process he developed specifically for the book. He introduces a programming language and development environment, available on the Web, which can be freely downloaded or run directly within any JAVA-enabled Web browser. Appropriately, the new language is called DBN (for “design by numbers”). Designed for “visual” people — artists, designers, anyone who likes to pick up a pencil and doodle — DBN has very few commands and consists of elements resembling those of many other languages, such as LISP, LOGO, C/JAVA, and BASIC.
Throughout the book Maeda emphasizes the importance — and delights — of understanding the motivation behind computer programming, as well as the many wonders that emerge from well-written programs. Sympathetic to the “mathematically challenged,” he places minimal emphasis on mathematics in the first half of the book. Because computation is inherently mathematical, the books second half uses intermediate mathematical concepts that generally do not go beyond high-school algebra. The reader who masters the skills so clearly set out by Maeda will be ready to exploit the true character of digital media design.
41. Designing Business: Multiple Media, Multiple Disciplines by Clement Mok
This book is as sprawling, innovative, elegant, difficult to encapsulate, and even thrilling as the new age of computing in business it describes. The author, Clement Mok, is one of the leading practitioners of what I would call “informational design”, a hybrid of industrial design, advertising, and psychology. Lavishly illustrated with superb examples Multimedia design, and has great analyses of where current and future industries lie in the so-called process of convergence.
Everyone using the Internet, multimedia, or visual tools in business stands to learn a tremendous amount from this elegantly designed book. Very Highest Recommendation
42. Experience Design 1 by Nathan Shedroff
With Experience Design, Nathan Shedroff has designed and written a book for those in the digital and related design professions, especially those creating online and interactive media who are looking for core inspiration and meaning in their work. This is a book directly at the intersection of today’s design disciplines – interaction design, information design, visual design, and more. Shedroff provides not only a way of designing online experience, but also, and more importantly, an approach to all design, whether it be of products, services, environments, or events. Read cover-to-cover, Experience Design is a kind of textbook that presents theories and examples. Opened to any page at random, it is a source of inspiration that challenges your thinking about your creative work.
43. Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
Techno author Norman, a professor of computer science and cofounder of a consulting firm that promotes human-centered products, extends the range of his earlier work, The Design of Everyday Things, to include the role emotion plays in consumer purchases. According to Norman, human decision making is dependent on both conscious cognition and affect (conscious or subconscious emotion). This combination is why, for example, a beautiful set of old mechanical drawing instruments greatly appealed to Norman and a colleague: they evoked nostalgia (emotion), even though they both knew the tools were not practical to use (cognition). Human reaction to design exists on three levels: visceral (appearance), behavioral (how the item performs) and reflective. The reflective dimension is what the product evokes in the user in terms of self-image or individual satisfaction. Norman’s analysis of the design elements in products such as automobiles, watches and computers will pique the interest of many readers, not just those in the design or technology fields. He explores how music and sound both contribute negatively or positively to the design of electronic equipment, like the ring of a cell phone or beeps (“Engineers wanted to signal that some operation had been done…. The result is that all of our equipment beeps at us”). Norman’s theories about how robots (referred to here as emotional machines) will interact with humans and the important jobs they will perform are intriguing, but weigh down an already complex text.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
44. Visual Function: An Introduction to Information Design by Paul Mijksenaar
Visual Function: An Introduction to Information Design presents and discusses a variety of graphics used in transmitting information, analyzing signs, graphs, and charts through a method similar to that found in Edward Tufte’s books (Envisioning Information and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information), which have had an enormous influence on today’s graphic designers. With copious color and black-and-white illustrations, this book examines airplane safety cards, street maps, road signs, instruction booklets, corporate logos, subway guides, magazine advertisements, cookbooks, computer diagrams, and car manuals, all as a means of explaining how information can be conveyed without words.
45. Massive Change by Bruce Mau, et al
Massive Change is a modern illustrated primer on the new inventions, technologies, and events that are affecting the human race worldwide. The book is a part of a broader research project by Bruce Mau Design intended to provoke debate and discussion about the future of design culture, broadly defined as the “familiar objects and techniques that are transforming our lives.”
In essays, interviews, and provocative imagery aimed at a broad audience, Massive Change explores the changing force of design in the contemporary world, and in doing so expands the definition of design to include the built environment, transportation technologies, revolutionary materials, energy and information systems, and living organisms.
The book is divided into 11 heavily illustrated sections covering major areas of change in contemporary society — such as urbanism and architecture, the military, health and living, and wealth and politics. Each section intersperses intriguing documentary images with a general introductory essay, extended captions, and interviews with leading thinkers, including engineers, designers, philosophers, scientists, architects, artists, and writers. Concluding the book is a graphic timeline of significant inventions and world events from 10,000 B.C. to the present.
46. If Yearbook Product .05 by iF International Forum Design (Editor)
Since its inception in 1954, the iF Design Award has been synonymous with design excellence. The latest iF Design winners, from the fields of product, packaging, transport, and public design, are showcased in 600 generously illustrated pages, showing the state-of-the-art of European design today and for tomorrow. With the work of 400 winners presented in 800 color illustrations, along with the comments of the jury and complete details on the designers and manufacturers, the iF Product Design annual is an invaluable source of inspiration for designers, and a must-have resource for any decision maker in the design field.
47. Smart Design: Products That Change Our Lives by Clive Grinyer
Showing new product designs with processes, including some idea sketches. Many photos and good text. Not just for product designers but for those who likes good designs.
48. Professional Virtual Design of Smart Products by Kari Leppala, et al
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This book is intended for technical individuals, but also for other stakeholders. It begins by presenting the modern product creation process and continues to describe the capabilities of virtual product design, with examples using the Cybelius Maestro (TM) tool.
49. Design Secrets: Products : 50 Real-Life Projects Uncovered (Design Secrets Series) by Industrial Designers Society of America
The Design Secrets series takes readers inside the creative process. 50 interesting design projects are illustrated in detail, from concept to completion. Design Secrets: Products looks behind the scenes uncovering the creative process, the challenges, and the solutions that produced the innovative end-result. Original plans, sketches, visuals, interim drawings and presentations, each accompanied by informative text and captions, show how designers present their ideas and solve problems.
Each project includes complete text describing the designer’s insights and inspirations, as well as the evolution of the project illustrated. Working drawings, sketches, process books, computer visuals, storyboards, and color photographs show the story behind the design.
50. Design Secrets: Products 2: 50 Real-Life Projects Uncovered by Lynn Haller, et al
Fifty design projects are shown in detail from concept to completion and all the stages in-between for a real behind the scenes look that uncovers the design process that produced the end-result. These products are the winners of the Industrial Designer’s Society of America’s acclaimed Industrial Design Excellence Award (IDEA).
Text describes the designer’s insights and inspirations, as well as the evolution of the illustrated project. Working drawings, sketches, process books, computer visuals, storyboards, and color photographs show the story behind the design of these cutting-edge products, which range from electronic gadgets for the kitchen to high-tech equipment. It’s the perfect book for the working product designer and the student of product design.
Lynn Haller is a published author with more than 10 years of publishing experience as an acquisitions editor for North Light Publishing. Her previous books include Creative Edge: Letterheads; Creative Edge: Type; Creative Edge: Page Design; Fresh Ideas in Letterhead and Business Card Design 3; and Fresh Ideas in Promotion. She lives in Chicago, Illinois. Cheryl Dangel Cullen operates Cullen Communications, Inc., a marketing and consulting firm. She writes for several major graphic design and marketing publications including Digital Graphics, Digital Printing Solutions, Print Solutions, Big Idea, and Selling Power. Her books include Then Is Now, Promotion Design That Works, and Identity Design That Works. She lives outside of Chicago, Illinois.
51. Design Secrets: Packaging : 50 Real-Life Projects Uncovered (Design Secrets) by Catharine M. Fishel
How well a product is packaged can make or break its commercial success. The latest volume in Rockport’s popular Design Secrets series is a hands-on sourcebook for designers in any industry.
The Design Secrets series brings you inside the intriguing process of design. Unlike other design books that only show the final product, this series profiles design projects in detail, from concept to completion and all the stages in between, seasoned with the designer’s insights and inspirations. Each volume presents 50 successful projects, created by leaders in the design field.
Design Secrets: Packaging deconstructs 50 projects ranging from food and beverages to gift sets to electronics to illuminate some of the best thinking in this challenging arena. Unlike showcase volumes that present only the finished design, this book goes behind the scenes to highlight the entire design process, from how the idea was initially conceived to the techniques and trade secrets that produced the end result. Each project profile includes original sketches, computer visuals, color photographs, and other images, so designers can both see and understand how these award-winning designs came to life.
Catharine Fishel runs Catharine & Sons, a full-service editorial company that specializes in working with designers and related industries. Editor of Dynamic Graphics magazine, she frequently writes for Step-by-Step Graphics, PRINT, DesignNet, and other trade publications. She is the author of Paper Graphics, Minimal Graphics, Redesigning Identity, The Perfect Package, and Designing for Children, and co-author of Logolounge. She lives in Morton, Illinois.
52. Design Secrets: Advertising: 50 Real-Life Projects Uncovered by Lisa Hickey
In this fourth title in the Design Secrets series, each design project selected is shown in detail from concept to completion including all the steps in-between. This book presents 50 real-life design projects: original plans, sketches, interim drawings, and presentations each accompanied by informative captions that show how designers present their ideas, and solve problems.
Each campaign in this book will have one distinctive and creative element that sets it apart and makes it worthwhile to look at closely. For example, one campaign will go into detail about how the creative team came up with the idea; another will go into more detail on the use of a song in the campaign, and how that came to be; and another will address a television campaign that relied heavily on special effects.
Lisa Hickey opened Velocity, a Boston-based advertising agency, in 1999. Her past agency experience includes VP/Associate Creative Director posts at Arnold Worldwide, Creative Director positions at Heater Advertising and Holland Mark, and Art Director at Hill Holiday. She did the advertising that launched Lotus Notes – and just months after the campaign ran – Lotus was sold to IBM for an astounding $3.5 billion dollars. She has also worked on national branding campaigns for a diverse range of clients including McDonalds, Fidelity, Reebok, The Yellow Pages, and Polaroid. Lisa has won a host of national and international awards including Cannes and Clio. She has also taught advertising and graphic design at the Mass College of Art for the past 15 years.
53. Scanning: The Aberrant Architectures of Diller + Scofidio by Aaron Betsky, et al
Among the most talked-about names in contemporary architecture, the firm of Diller + Scofidio has for the last two decades redefined what architecture can be. Through site-specific, highly conceptual works such as the acclaimed redesign of the famed Brasserie restaurant in New York City’s Seagram Building, to the “Blur” building, created for the Swiss Expo 2002 and composed entirely of mist, the firm has consistently challenged and expanded the role of architecture and design in our technology-oriented environment.
In this first-ever comprehensive survey of the work of this internationally recognized firm, published to accompany a traveling exhibition organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, 10 of Diller + Scofidio’s most important site-specific pieces are examined, along with several of the artifacts they have created in order to examine issues of gender, surveillance, place, and travel. With essays by respected scholars and a contribution by contemporary artist Laurie Anderson, this fully illustrated volume offers a compelling look at the work of Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio.
K. Michael Hays, Adjunct Curator of Architecture, Whitney Museum of American Art, is a leading architectural theorist and historian and Eliot Noyes Professor of Architecture Theory at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Aaron Betsky, Co-curator of the Whitney exhibition, is Director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam. Laurie Anderson is a musician and performance artist.
54. Information Design Source Book : Recent Projects / Anwendungen heute by Institute for Information Design Japan (Editor)
Information Design is a central instrument for the solution of tasks of communication and range of application of numerous available media: Pressure and electronic media, architectural elements and Multimedia. The book represents approximately 70 successful concepts for the strategic dressing, presentation and structuring arranged by information, according to categories of contents which can be obtained: Corporate Communication, product/services, control systems guidances, methods/instruments and education/science/research.
55. The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher
Fletcher’s The Art of Looking Sideways is an absolutely extraordinary and inexhaustible “guide to visual awareness,” a virtually indescribable concoction of anecdotes, quotes, images, and bizarre facts that offers a wonderfully twisted vision of the chaos of modern life. Fletcher is a renowned designer and art director, and the joy of The Art of Looking Sideways lies in its beautiful design. Loosely arranged in 72 chapters with titles like “Colour,” “Noise,” “Chance,” “Camouflage,” and “Handedness,” Fletcher’s book, which he describes as “a journey without a destination,” is “a collection of shards” that captures the sensory overload of a world that simply contains too much information. In one typical section, entitled “Civilization,” the reader encounters six Polish flags designed to represent the world, a photograph of an anthropomorphic handbag, Buzz Aldrin’s boot print on the moon, drawings of Stone Age pebbles, a painting of “Ireland–as seen from Wales,” and a dizzying array of quotations and snippets of information, including the wise words of Marcus Aurelius, Stephen Jay, and Gandhi’s comment, “Western civilization? I think it would be a good idea.” Fletcher’s mastery of design mixes type, space, fonts, alphabets, color, and layout combined with a “jackdaw” eye for the strange and profound to produce a stunning book that cannot be read, but only experienced. –Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk
56. Information Design by Robert Jacobson (Editor)
Information design is the newest of the design disciplines. As a sign of our times, when the crafting of messages and meaning is so central to our lives, information design is not only important–it is essential. Contemporary information designers seek to edify more than to persuade, to exchange more than to foist upon. With ever more powerful technologies of communication, we have learned that the issuer of designed information is as likely as the intended recipient to be changed by it, for better or worse.
The contributors to this book are both cautionary and hopeful as they offer visions of how information design can be practiced diligently and ethically, for the benefit of information consumers as well as producers. They present various methods that seem to work, such as sense-making and way-finding. They make recommendations and serve as guides to a still young but extraordinarily pervasive–and persuasive–field.
57. Thoughtful Interaction Design : A Design Perspective on Information Technology by Jonas Lwgren, Erik Stolterman
The authors of Thoughtful Interaction Design go beyond the usual technical concerns of usability and usefulness to consider interaction design from a design perspective. The shaping of digital artifacts is a design process that influences the form and functions of workplaces, schools, communication, and culture; the successful interaction designer must use both ethical and aesthetic judgment to create designs that are appropriate to a given environment. This book is not a how-to manual, but a collection of tools for thought about interaction design.
Working with information technology — called by the authors “the material without qualities” — interaction designers create not a static object but a dynamic pattern of interactivity. The design vision is closely linked to context and not simply focused on the technology. The authors’ action-oriented and context-dependent design theory, drawing on design theorist Donald Schön’s concept of the reflective practitioner, helps designers deal with complex design challenges created by new technology and new knowledge. Their approach, based on a foundation of thoughtfulness that acknowledges the designer’s responsibility not only for the functional qualities of the design product but for the ethical and aesthetic qualities as well, fills the need for a theory of interaction design that can increase and nurture design knowledge. From this perspective they address the fundamental question of what kind of knowledge an aspiring designer needs, discussing the process of design, the designer, design methods and techniques, the design product and its qualities, and conditions for interaction design.
58. Digital Diagrams: How to Design and Present Statistical Information Effectively by Trevor Bounford
Diagrams need never be boring again, thanks to this manual showing how to present statistics that carry the right message in a clear, visually entertaining way. Exploring the myriad ways to design diagrams, first the author explains how to assess the information to be conveyed to determine what needs to be stressed within a chosen format. Then readers look at diagram options-pie charts, bars, flows, graphs, and scatter diagrams-to decide which is best for the purpose at hand. For instance, simple data can make an impact in a pie chart with overlaps of shadow or color, while complex information may demand more elaborate choices. Over one hundred examples of today’s best diagram design are included.
59. Information Anxiety 2 by Richard Saul Wurman, et al
Information might want to be free; but, why should we free it? We’ve got enough trouble keeping track of all the petabits that already run around untethered, and risk a computer counterrevolution if we let the situation get much crazier. Information architect Richard Saul Wurman swept the field clear in 1989 with his groundbreaking book that foresaw the problems of data clutter and proposed a radical new means of organizing and presenting knowledge humanistically; for the new century, he has revised it substantially as Information Anxiety 2. This book is sparklingly clear and readable–it’d better be, after all–and offers insight not only to designers, educators, and content developers, but also to anyone who needs to communicate effectively through dense clouds of facts. If Wurman occasionally indulges in New Age-y pop psychology, his analysis is never muddy, and the more hardheaded reader will forgive him soon enough. The discussion alternates between describing the deeply stressful task of absorbing poorly organized data and exploring solutions that require a bit of rethinking, but that reward such an investment with improved understanding and, maybe, a state change from information to wisdom. We could do worse–if we don’t pay attention to Wurman and his colleagues, we almost certainly will. –Rob Lightner
60. Information Architects by Richard Saul Wurman
Frankly, I have found most books about graphics in the information age to be riddled with hyperbole, poorly designed, and vastly overpriced. After looking at many of these books, I typically pull out my dog-eared copy of Edward Tufte’s Visual Display of Quantitative Information to clear my visual and conceptual palettes. However, Information Architects, edited by Richard Saul Wurman with contributions by 20 masters in the visual display of information deserves to be on the same shelf as Tufte’s masterpieces. Nor does this book shout a simplistic “Cyberspace über alles!”: there’s great material in here about the importance of informational design in physical spaces and virtual interfaces, and train tracks and track balls. Very highly recommended.
61. Design Fundamentals for the Digital Age by Linda Holtzschue, et al
If you want to solve design problems with the computer, Design Fundamentals for the Digital Age gives you the tools. At a time when designers rely increasingly on computers, finally here is a resource that integrates design fundamentals with the latest digital technology. Two leading New York designers demonstrate how to unite the foundations of design with a knowledge of the computer and its platforms. No other book introduces the fundamentals of Computer Aided Design (CAD) within the context of the design process. But this book is much more than a technical guide—it treats the computer as an exciting design medium whose potential is just beginning to be tapped. Using plain English, Design Fundamentals for the Digital Age shows you how to:
– understand CAD and effectively apply it in your design projects;
– explore the computer as an artistic medium, working with space, color, surface, structure, light, motion, and other design elements; and
– integrate the computer into the design process in order to meet the demands of today’s changing technology and job market.
With nearly 200 illustrations, this book includes an easy-to-use glossary of terms, a comprehensive bibliography, and a useful workbook with practical applications. It serves as a fundamental reference for graphic and interior design students, architects, fashion designers, product designers, and fine art professionals. This exciting guide helps students and professionals meet the changing requirements of the field, and is particularly relevant at a time when every designer is required to use the computer as an essential medium on the job. Design Fundamentals for the Digital Age provides real solutions to design problems as computers transform the way we think and work.
62. Seeing What’s Next by Clayton M. Christensen, Erik A. Roth, Scott D. Anthony
When a disruptive innovation is launched, it changes the entire industry and every firm operating within in This book argues that it is possible to predict which companies will win and which will lose in a specific situation-;and provides a practical framework for doing so. Most books on innovation-;including Christensen’s previous two books-;approached innovation from the inside-out, showing firms how they can create innovations inside their own companies. This book is written from an outside-in perspective, showing how executives, investors, and analysts can assess the impact of a new innovation on the firms they have a vested interest in.
63. Industrial Design A-Z by Charlotte and Peter Fiell
Where beauty meets function…
If you take even the slightest interest in the design of your toothbrush, the history behind your washing machine, or the evolution of the telephone, you’ll take an even greater interest in this new book. Individual designers and design firms can be referenced directly via the A-Z of Industrial Design section; here you’ll find the likes of Enzo Ferrari, Philippe Starck, Zanussi and Apple Computer, among many others. Exploding with color, aesthetic, and style, Industrial Design is both informative and fun; you’ll have a hard time putting it down. An invaluable reference book!
64. Design – An Illustrated Historical Overview (Crash Course Series) (Paperback) by Thomas Hauffe
Design (Crash Course Series) [Thomas Hauffe] is a condensed history of design from the 18th through 20th century. Hauffe’s writing style is interesting, informative and well thought-out. The book itself is visually stunning (a design feat in itself) with high quality images and an intuitive layout. Through the text, Hauffe explores the external influences – the developments and effects of technological advancements throughout time and the implications on design.
As a software engineer and an admirer of design / architecture, I find this small pocket book an excellent source of inspiration and an intriguing read. The factors influencing design also impact the realm of software design (a subset of design in general).
Technical, economic, aesthetic, and social developments along with political, psychological, cultural, ecological, and global influences will continue to impact software design (and all types of design). Throughout the text we can see that design is an integral part of history, and that innovation has been happening for centuries (designers have been constantly improving existing ideas). We can also observe that design is iterative (cyclic) and often occurs in patterns (similar to design patterns in the software realm).
This is an excellent book, a great source of inspiration. Many parallels can be drawn throughout this text and applied to any specific type of design.
We can learn more from history than we may think. Read!
65. Masters Thesis: Organic Information Design, by Ben Fry, ONLINE
Design techniques for static information are well understood, their descriptions and discourse thorough and well-evolved. But these techniques fail when dynamic information is considered. There is a space of highly complex systems for which we lack deep understanding because few techniques exist for visualization of data whose structure and content are continually changing. To approach these problems, this thesis introduces a visualization process titled Organic Information Design. The resulting systems employ simulated organic properties in an interactive, visually refined environment to glean qualitative facts from large bodies of quantitative data generated by dynamic information sources.
66. Doctoral Thesis: Computational Information Design, by Ben Fry, ONLINE
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The ability to collect, store, and manage data is increasing quickly, but our ability to understand it remains constant. In an attempt to gain better understanding of data, fields such as information visualization, data mining, and graphic design are employed, each solving an isolated part of the specific problem, but failing in a broader sense: there are too many unsolved problems in the visualization of complex data. As a solution, this dissertation proposes that the individual fields be brought together as part of a singular process titled Computational Information Design.
This thesis first examines the individual pedagogies of design, information, and computation with a focus on how they support one another as parts of a combined methodology for the exploration, analysis, and representation of complex data. Next, in order to make the process accessible to a wider audience, a tool is introduced to simplify the computational process for beginners, and can be used as a sketching platform by more advanced users. Finally, a series of examples show how the methodology and tool can be used to address a range of data problems, in particular, the human genome.
Useful Links67. Processing, Ben Fry