At MentorCruise, we are all about making the most out of the experience of others. As part of that, we've connected and asked dozens of experts and professionals about their favourite Design books – and here are the answers.
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Understanding the concepts of Design starts with understanding the fundamentals. On your way to mastery, it's crucial for you to understand how certain concepts were derived, and why things work like they do. Starting with these resources is the best way to do so.
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People combines real science and research with practical examples to deliver a guide every designer needs. With it you'll be able to design more intuitive and engaging work for print, websites, applications, and products that matches the way people think, work, and play.
Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise
In Logo Design Love, David shows you how to develop an iconic brand identity from start to finish, using client case studies from renowned designers. In the process, he reveals how designers create effective briefs, generate ideas, charge for their work, and collaborate with clients.
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Typographic organization has always been a complex system in that there are so many elements at play, such as hierarchy, order of reading, legibility, and contrast. In Typographic Systems, Kim Elam, author of our bestselling books, Geometry of Design and Grid Systems, explores eight major structural systems beyond the traditional ordering systems of the grid – including random, radial, modular…
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Michael Bierut (born 1957) is a graphic designer, design critic and educator, who has been a partner at design firm Pentagram since 1990. He designed the logo for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.
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"How to Draw Everything in 3D" offers simple, step-by-step guides to help artists of all levels master the art of three-dimensional drawing. Learn how drawing in 3D can enhance your skills and enable you to create beautiful, realistic artwork.
Dive in and discover:
Tips for maximizing your pencil usage
Various shading techniques
Instructions on drawing fundamental 3D shapes
Esse…
Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise
The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst (Book Summary) This book contains more than I've ever wanted to know about typography. It describes not only how to use fonts, but also how to create them, explaining the math and science involved in font design.
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These books are not required for you to learn Design, but they are highly recommended for you to deepen your knowledge.
This unprecedented TASCHEN publication, authored by Jens Müller, brings together approximately 6,000 trademarks, focused on the period 1940–1980, to examine how modernist attitudes and imperatives gave birth to corporate identity. Ranging from media outfits to retail giants, airlines to art galleries, the sweeping survey is organized into three design-orientated chapters: Geometric, Effect, an…
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The Design of Everyday Things is a best-selling book by cognitive scientist and usability engineer Donald Norman about how design serves as the communication between object and user, and how to optimize that conduit of communication in order to make the experience of using the object pleasurable.
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Decolonizing Design first asks how modernist design has encompassed and advanced the harmful project of colonization—then shows how design might address these harms by recentering its theory and practice in global Indigenous cultures and histories.
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In visual design, a grid system helps you align screen elements based on sequenced columns and rows. Like making a map, you apply the column-based structure of a grid system to guide your design, structuring your text, images and functions consistently throughout it so they can appear instantly recognizable elsewhere.
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A new book released by Set Margins press, titled What Design Can’t Do: Essays on Design and Delusion by Lisbon-based designer and writer Silvio Lorusso expresses the broken nature of design, gives a platform to represent the frustrations of designers and creatives, and elaborates on why good design is about inhabiting chaos.
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One of the last surviving members of the futurist generation, Bruno Munari's Design as Art is an illustrated journey into the artistic possibilities of modern design translated by Patrick Creagh published as part of the 'Penguin on Design' series in Penguin Modern Classics.
Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise
This list is curated by MentorCruise and can include Amazon affiliate links. Have any other suggestions? Add here.
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