If you’re looking for some gift ideas for the designer in your life, look no further. We have five hand-picked book suggestions which are sure to provide spark and inspiration:
The Web Designer’s Idea Book: The Ultimate Guide to Themes, Trends & Styles in Website Design
by Patrick McNeil
The Web Designer’s Idea Book includes more than 700 websites arranged thematically, so you can find inspiration for layout, color, style and more. Author Patrick McNeil has cataloged more than 20,000 sites on his website, and showcased in this book are the very best examples.
Sites are organized by color, design style, type, theme, element and structure. It’s easy to use and reference again and again, whether you’re talking with a co-worker or discussing website design options with a client. As a handy desk reference for design layout, color and style, this book is a must-have for starting new projects.
The Web Designer’s Idea Book, Vol. 2: More of the Best Themes, Trends and Styles in Website Design
by Patrick McNeil
Volume 2 of The Web Designer’s Idea Book includes more than 650 new websites arranged thematically, so you can easily find inspiration for your work. Author Patrick McNeil, creator of the popular web design blog designmeltdown.com and author of the original bestselling Web Designer’s Idea Book, has cataloged thousands of sites, and showcases the latest and best examples in this book. The web is the most rapidly changing design medium, and this book offers an organized overview of what’s happening right now. Sites are categorized by type, design element, styles and themes, structural styles, and structural elements. This new volume also includes a helpful chapter explaining basic design principles and how they can be applied online. Whether you’re brainstorming with a coworker or explaining your ideas to a client, this book provides a powerful communication tool you can use to jumpstart your next project.
Threadless: Ten Years of T-shirts from the World’s Most Inspiring Online Design Community
by Jake Nickell
Threadless.com is the phenomenally successful T-shirt company with millions and millions of tees sold since it began in 2000. It pioneered the online business model of crowd-sourced or community-driven design, in which people submit designs that are voted on by the site’s 1 million users and printed. Over the past 10 years, the company has amassed a vast archive of very cool, very hip, and often very entertaining designs, and Threadless is a spectacular showcase of 400 of the very best T-shirts created by the community–a barometer of art and design over the past decade.
Much more than a book of extraordinary graphics, Threadless tells the extremely interesting story that inspired Inc. magazine to hail Threadless.com as “the most innovative small company in America.” There are also profiles of individual designers and “think pieces” from influential admirers, including design guru John Maeda, Jeff Howe of Wired, and bestselling business/marketing writer Seth Godin.
Designing Media
by Bill Moggridge
Mainstream media, often known simply as MSM, have not yet disappeared in a digital takeover of the media landscape. But the long-dominant MSM—television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and books—have had to respond to emergent digital media. Newspapers have interactive Web sites; television broadcasts over the Internet; books are published in both electronic and print editions. In Designing Media, design guru Bill Moggridge examines connections and conflicts between old and new media, describing how the MSM have changed and how new patterns of media consumption are emerging. The book features interviews with thirty-seven significant figures in both traditional and new forms of mass communication; interviewees range from the publisher of the New York Times to the founder of Twitter.
We learn about innovations in media that rely on contributions from a crowd (or a community), as told by Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales and Craigslist’s Craig Newmark; how the band OK Go built a following using YouTube; how real-time connections between dispatchers and couriers inspired Twitter; how a BusinessWeek blog became a quarterly printed supplement to the magazine; and how e-readers have evolved from Rocket eBook to QUE. Ira Glass compares the intimacy of radio to that of the Internet; the producer of PBS’s Frontline supports the program’s investigative journalism by putting documentation of its findings online; and the developers of Google’s Trendalyzer software describe its beginnings as animations that accompanied lectures about social and economic development in rural Africa. At the end of each chapter, Moggridge comments on the implications for designing media. Designing Media is illustrated with hundreds of images, with color throughout. A DVD accompanying the book includes excerpts from all of the interviews, and the material can be browsed at www.designing-media.com.
Product Design in the Sustainable Era
by Dalcacio Reis
Consumers are increasingly sensitive and concerned about sustainability. Indeed, a recent study of purchasing habits shows demand for sustainable offerings remains strong—despite the economic downturn. According to a Cone Consumer Survey (February 2009), 44 percent of consumers say their “green” buying habits remain unchanged despite the current economy, and one-third of consumers say they are even more likely to buy green today than they were previously.
Sustainability is not a passing fashion, and people are constantly searching for more information, products and innovations in this area. Designers, in turn, are responding with elegant, efficient, low-impact products that look towards a sustainable future. This book brings together over 100 such innovative and award-winning projects from over 20 countries, launched by leading design offices and companies worldwide, including IDEO, IBM, and New Deal Design.
Featuring reusable products from water bottles and diapers to solar- and wind-powered goods; clocks that run by reacting with soil; air and water purifiers; coffins and urns for sustainable funerals; paper made from elephant and sheep dung—as well as eco-friendly chocolates, bikinis, guitars, energy efficient appliances and much more—this is a state-of-the-art update on the sustainable revolution in product design.
What design books would you add to this list? Leave your comments in the box below.
Tags: Bill Moggridge, Dalcacio Reis, designing media, gift ideas, Jake Nickell, Patrick McNeil, product design, threadless, web design books, web designer idea book
