Inspired by the Clouds: 7 Books Every Designer Should Read
Our team carefully picked eight books that will help you become a better designer. They’ll boost your knowledge of UX and cognitive psychology, stimulate your creativity and motivate you. Trust us, we checked!
In 10Clouds we believe in teamwork, growth, and power of constant learning. We travel to learn from the best people in the industry at design conferences and dribbble meetups, and also we share our knowledge with others.
We try to get inspired by every possible medium, whether it is an article with a fascinating story inside, a high-quality dribbble shot, or latest Netflix show. Everything makes us more creative and gives us a wider perspective when we attempt to solve a design problem.
This post is the first part of the series where we recommend books that boost that creativity and teach us how to unleash it wisely. The list was carefully hand-picked by our awesome Design Team, so we ensure you that you’ll have a good read!
Daria Khimych
Product Designer
Dribbble ;
Title: Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days
Author: Jake Knapp
Recommended for: Everyone
Daria’s Comment: This book changed my perspective on how we create products themselves. It teaches us to test our ideas first and solve all possible problems before making big decisions.
Field: Startups, Product Design
Agnieszka Cieplińska
UX Designer
Title: Thinking, Fast and Slow
Author: Daniel Kahneman
Recommended for: Everyone who is interested in people
Agnieszka’s comment: This book is extremely well-written: almost 800 pages has gone so fast! It showed me what shapes people judgments and decisions in everyday life, how we think, and why we can’t trust our thinking.
Field: Cognitive Psychology
Miłosz Piróg
Head of Design
Title: Creativity, INC. Overcoming the Unsees Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
Author: Ed Catmull
Recommended for: Everyone
Milo’s comment: This book taught me that scaling a design team and managing large projects is much more difficult than it might seem at first glance.
Field: Creativity, Motivation
Julia Mączka
UX Designer
Title: The User Experience Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide
Author: Leah Buley
Recommended for: Everyone
Julia’s comment: Thanks to this book, I have learned how to get satisfaction from my work, even if I don’t live in a perfect world. It teaches how to keep design process when you are the only UX Designer on the project.
Field: User Experience
Katarzyna Kubalska
UX Designer
Title: Articulating Design Decisions: Communicate with Stakeholders, Keep Your Sanity, and Deliver the Best User Experience
Author: Tom Greever
Recommended for: Everyone
Kasia’s comment: This book helped me understand how important it is for UX Designer to communicate design decisions to people involved in the project, that are not designers. Sometimes the success of new features or the whole project depends on whether you, as a designer, have the skill to explain why you do this thing this way or the other, and why this is important for the product. This book will introduce you to daily problems designers have and will make you go “oh, this happened to me yesterday” while reading it ;).
Field: User Experience, UX Design, Product design
Oliwia Przybyła
Product Designer
Title: Know Your Onions; Web Design
Author: Drew de Soto
Recommended for: Beginners
Oliwia’s comment: The book contains useful pieces of advice for beginner designers that are interested in web design. That’s why I think it’s one of those books that are worth to read before you decide to start, or if you would like to switch from editorial to digital world.
Field: Web Design, UI Design
Natalia Jach
UX Designer
Title: Evil by Design: Interaction Design to Lead Us Into Temptation
Author: Chris Nodder
Recommended for: Everyone
Natalia’s comment: This book isn’t about evil — it is about persuasion and knowledge of human nature. Persuasive design is not good or evil. Its application will result in good or evil depending on the intent of a person who applies it into projects. Knowing which technics work and what is the impact on human behavior you can design smarter and more ethical solutions. Books give you tools, but everything depends on you ;) I recommend it to everyone — UX Designers, Product Designers, entrepreneurs, and even Customers.
Field: User Experience, Product Design, Marketing
We get it — in daily task routine, it’s not easy to find a moment to read a book. But on the other hand, we also know that reading is fundamental. We already saved some of your time by choosing the books for you :) We are sure that they can have an impact on you as a creative soul, so take it and spread it to the world!
Thank you for reading! ✨
