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.

DaBomb Media has been very fortunate to work with some of the leaders in the electronics industry, helping them with creative ways to market their products online and at the point of sale at many of the largest online retailers. By gaining this experience, we have learned a lot about the various approaches to create enticing, creative and compelling informational pieces to help increase product knowledge and sales. We have learned to take a holistic approach to our projects.

Key Advantages for Using 3D Models and 3D Product Visualizations:

1. Creating photo realistic 3D product visualizations is the most cost effective approach to maximize the possibilities of online product marketing. You see, once a product has a life-like 3D model created for it, the sky is the limit. We have created interactive 360 product tours of over a dozen cameras for Canon. We have also created product informational videos for Casio to be used in tradeshows and viral marketing campaigns. We have also helped clients do market research testing by creating different products that consumer test groups can do A/B comparison testing on.
2. Making changes to the product with 3D models offers limitless possibilities while staying cost effective. If a furniture manufacturer wanted to see what color sofa consumers preferred, it is very easy to control the various elements of color, texture and materials. The possibilities are only limited to the imagination of the manufacturer, as we have done various out of the box examples that ended up becoming the final product that the company produced.
3. The angle and presentation of the product can easily be manipulated when 3D models are used for product marketing. Recently, Walmart started suggesting to their vendors that they create more compelling sales tools for their products for www.walmart.com. Think about it, if you had a bunk bed that you needed to create a 360 product tour for, how would you go about producing the 18 to 24 images to make up the 360 tour? Photography would be quite challenging to say the least.Having the product as a 3D model would make it as easy as programming the exact angle you wished to view the product from. So each frame of the 360 is from the perfect angle, and as the correct lighting and environmental elements, so that the product is consistently represented throughout the full 360 tour.

Check out some of the projects we have worked on, so that you can get a feel for what is possible.

Canon EOS 60D camera

Canon XF305 HD camcorder

Kolcraft Stroller

NewTrend Furniture

Dodge Journey

Canon SX210

Braun BodyCruzer

Cnet.com, ZDnet.com and PCworld focus on electronics from cell phones to computers.  We were tasked with coming up with not only the creative elements for the site, but also the functionality of the site.

We studied the best and worst of how some of the similar sites in different industries worked, and the technology used to run these sites.  Since we have worked with WordPress since the beginning, we couldn’t think of a better platform to run such a site.  We outlined some of the things we could take advantage of in the new 3.0 release, like taxonomies.  Now that the designs have been approved, we have jumped into making those beautiful designs come to life.

We Rate Sports will have partners like Nike, Sports Authority and Ticket Network just to name a few.  Check back in over the coming weeks as we update our progress on the project.