The personal disquiet of

Mark Boulton

January 25th, 2005

Top five design books

{title}After my trip to Lon­don, and the Design Museum, over the week­end I thought i’d share a pur­chase of mine.

I was led to believe the Design Museum had a great book­shop, which turned out to be almost the case. Yes there were some good books, but they were the usual cof­fee table type (you know — big, pretty pic­tures, the latest hip design­ers from the plan­ets hip stu­dios). All a bit dull really. That was until I noticed a stack of blue books in the corner, covered with a thin layer of dust… 

There, nestled next to the “A 1000 signs” and “Mul­ti­me­dia design” was a book which grabbed my attention. 

Uni­ver­sal Prin­ciples of Design by Jill But­ler, Krit­ina Holden, Will Lid­well looks like a bor­ing school text­book. The book looks pretty unin­spir­ing, blue and white with thin Hel­vetica adorn­ing it’s cover. But this was just the thing I was look­ing for.

The syn­op­sis is as fol­lows (from Amazon)

Whether a mar­ket­ing cam­paign or a museum exhibit, a video game or a com­plex con­trol sys­tem, the design we see is the cul­min­a­tion of many con­cepts and prac­tices brought together from a vari­ety of dis­cip­lines. Because no one can be an expert on everything, design­ers have always had to scramble to find the inform­a­tion and know-how required to make a design work — until now. 

This com­pre­hens­ive, cross-disciplinary encyc­lo­pae­dia of design pairs clear explan­a­tions of every design concept with visual examples of the con­cepts applied in prac­tice. From the “80/20” rule to chunking, from baby-face bias to Occam’s razor and from self-similarity to storytelling, every major design concept is defined and illus­trated for read­ers to expand their know­ledge.

A rather long-winded way of say­ing that this book lists many design the­or­ies used through­out the design industry as whole — from product design, to fash­ion design.

It eas­ily explains the Golden Mean, the Rule of Thirds and many other import­ant the­or­ies we, as design­ers, can all learn from. Actu­ally, many of these the­or­ies are not taught any­more in design school, which is a crime. Stu­dents are gradu­at­ing purely oper­at­ing on instinct where their designs are con­cerned, no the­or­et­ical decision mak­ing has entered the pro­cess. Although say­ing that how many design­ers have you worked with who exhibit work­ing know­ledge of these the­or­ies? I haven’t worked with many. 

Any­way, back to the point. 

This book is very inter­est­ing and well worth get­ting hold of. It did get me think­ing of my top five design books. So here they are (in no par­tic­u­lar order):

  1. Uni­ver­sal Prin­ciples of Design
  2. The Ele­ments of Typo­graphic Style
  3. Grid Sys­tems in Graphic Design
  4. Typo­grapie: A Manual of Design
  5. Design­ing books (out of print now)

If you’re ser­i­ous about extend­ing your know­ledge of design the­ory, espe­cially typo­graphic design the­ory, then these are the books to read in my opinion. 

So, in true “top 5” tra­di­tion. What are yours? 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 25th, 2005 at 8:24 am and is filed under Design.

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8 Responses to “Top five design books”

  1. Marilyn Langfeld said on: January 25th, 2005 at 11:25 am

    Here’s my list. Adds nicely to yours. 

    Book­mak­ing: Edit­ing, Design, Pro­duc­tion, Third Edi­tion — by Mar­shall Lee 

    A His­tory of Graphic Design — by Philip Meggs 

    The Ele­ments of Typo­graphic Style — by Robert Bringhurst 

    A Short His­tory of the Prin­ted Word — by War­ren Chappell 

    Stop Steal­ing Sheep (and find out how type works) — by Erik Spiekermann

  2. Steven Urmston said on: January 25th, 2005 at 12:16 pm

    These are all great books Mark. As a self taught designer, I’ve made a con­scious effort to read a lot of design the­ory prob­ably to make up for a inferi­or­ity com­plex in regard to design gradu­ates. I have to say that the Uni­ver­sal Prin­ciples is a fab­ulous read. Not only have I found it extremely use­ful, I couldn’t put it down! 

    I would add: 

    The Ele­ments of Graphic Design — Alex White’

    The Design of Every­day Things — Don­ald Nor­man

    Mak­ing & Break­ing the Grid — Timothy Samara

  3. Daniel Burka said on: January 25th, 2005 at 12:40 pm

    I com­pletely agree with Marilyn’s addi­tion of Stop Steal­ing Sheep. A fant­astic intro­duc­tion and hand­book on type. 

    I’d also add any of Edward Tufte’s three main books on inform­a­tion design but espe­cially Envi­sion­ing Inform­a­tion. They’re more than just pretty pictures…

  4. atk said on: January 25th, 2005 at 11:03 pm

    the typo­graphic grid by bosshard is pretty damn good.

  5. Phil Wright said on: January 26th, 2005 at 4:29 am

    Pretty much agree with Mark’s choices. Bring­hurst is fant­astic, both M?ller-Brockmann and Ruder are truly hard­core. They have that a won­der­ful pur­it­an­ical approach that makes you feel that you have to work hard to be worthy. Not a bad thing when it comes to type. 

    Out of interest Bring­hurst has just released the third edi­tion of ?Ele­ments of Typo­graphic Style? with a sig­ni­fic­ant new sec­tion that addresses mak­ing the most out of digital type. 

    One extra book I find essen­tial ref­er­ence for typo­graphy is ?The Oxford Guide to Style?, the updated ver­sion of Hart?s Rules for type­set­ters. This answers just about every ques­tion you might have on how text should be used. I think this should be intrin­is­cally linked to typography. 

    Phil

  6. Mark Boulton said on: January 26th, 2005 at 8:39 am

    Daniel — I’ve been mean­ing to get hold of Tufte’s books for the past year or so. They’re a bit expens­ive in this coun­try so I may have to wait until a stateside visit.

    Steven — I read Design of Every­day Things over the sum­mer, it’d been on my read­ing list for a while. What a great book. I’ve yet to start Aes­thetic Design of Every­day Things. It’s next on the list. 

    Thanks Phil. Just bought that book. It’ll come in very use­ful for the upcom­ing art­icles i’m writ­ing for DIF.

  7. Khoi Vinh said on: January 27th, 2005 at 5:22 pm

    “Uni­ver­sal Prin­ciples of Design “ is a great recom­mend­a­tion. I just ordered a copy. My favor­ite design book of all time is “Design: Vign­elli,” from which I’ve stolen so much (it’s now unpub­lished and goes for a ridicu­lous premium in the used book mar­ket). It’s not much for design the­ory, but it’s gorgeous.

  8. Foofy said on: January 30th, 2005 at 2:59 pm

    Is the “Design­ing Books” you men­tioned writ­ten by Jost Hochuli and Robin Kinross? If so, I’ve found sev­eral cop­ies of it for cheap on here: 

    http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?imagefield.x=0&tn=designing+books+practice+and+theory&imagefield.y=0

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