Recommended Design Books
These are highly recommended books on design and related topics. To access more information on each book, simply click the title link to go to the book on Amazon Books.
NOTE: This book section will be deleted on this site and moved to Bill's Product Design University site (thepdu.com) as soon as that site is published (announced on this site when done).
The Design of Everyday Things—This book by Donald Norman is consistently rated as one of the very best books on product design and is a best seller. Professor Norman does an excellent job of explaining what is both good and bad product design, and he especially focuses on the usability aspects of products and their design.
Design for the Real World—In this modern, updated version of Victor Papanek's 1971 seminal book, you will find the author covering a myriad of topics that relate to design for most all of life on Earth. It is one of the most read books on design in the history of publishing.
Watches Tell More than Time—Though this excellent book by Del Coates is now sadly out of print (you can buy it used), it remains highly recommended. The content deals primarily with the form, aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of products and their design.
A Short Course in Industrial Design—This book by Eskild Tjalve, though published in 1979 and long out of print, is arguably the best treatment of product form design and development ever written. The example products represented are necessarily old due to the publishing date, but the content principles and processes are enduring and profound, and, the title notwithstanding, are for both industrial design and engineering design.
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