40 must read books on storytelling, play & design
[UPDATED SUMMER 2021] What are the best books for those interested in storytelling, play and design? While I was prepping for a course that I’m teaching this semester at Columbia University, I reached out via facebook for some reading recommendations. Below is a partial list of some of the wonderful suggestions.
Special thanks to the following for their suggestions and comments
Christy Dena, Lina Srivastava, Nick Fortugno, Jeff Watson, Stuart Candy, Peter Sims, Alexa Clay, Jeff Gomez, Ele Jansen, Jan Libby, Alex Hermann, Trevor Haldenby, Marie James, Alex Pearson, Vincent Routhier, Karin Ryding, Erek Tinker, Gerry Flahive, Dorothee Olivereau, Erinma Ochu, Kiira Benzing and Margaret Doyle
The following list is in no particular order…
1. The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation Is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories — Frank Rose
2. Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries — Peter Sims
3. Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free — Cory Doctorow
4. The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for Defeating the Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization — Tom Kelly
5. Casual Game Design: Designing Play for the Gamer in ALL of Us — Gregory Trefry
6. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture — Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford & Joshua Green
7. A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling: How to Captivate and Engage Audiences Across Multiple Platforms — Andrea Phillips
8. Open Design Now — Bas van Abel, Roel Klaassen, Lucas Evers & Peter Troxler
9. Crowdstorm: The Future of Innovation, Ideas, and Problem Solving — Shaun Abrahamson, Peter Ryder & Bastian Unterberg
10. Visualizing Information for Advocacy — Stephanie Hankey, Tom Longley, Marek Tuszynski & Maya Indira Ganesh
11. The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now — Robert Atkins, Rudolf Frieling, Boris Groys & Lev Manovich
12. Design for the Real World — Victor Papanek
13. Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction — Jeff VanderMeer
14. Making is Connecting — David Gauntlett
15. Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming -Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby
16. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness — Antonio Damasio
17. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals — Katie Salen Tekinbas & Eric Zimmerman
18. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses — Jesse Schell
19. Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games — Tracy Fullerton
20. The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology — Katie Salen Tekinbas & Eric Zimmerman
21. Fundamentals of Game Design — Ernest Adams
22. Critical Play: Radical Game Design — Mary Flanagan
23. The Misfit Economy: Lessons in Creativity from Pirates, Hackers, Gangsters and Other Tales of Informal Ingenuity — Alexa Clay & Kyra Maya Phillips
24. Transmedia Marketing: From Film and TV to Games and Digital Media -
Anne Zeiser
25. Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration — Ed Catmull & Amy Wallace
26. This is Service Design Thinking: Basics, Tools, Cases — Marc Stickdorn and Jakob Schneider
27. Interaction Design: Beyond Human — Computer Interaction — Yvonne Rogers, Helen Sharp & Jenny Preece
28. The Timeless Way of Building — Christopher Alexander
29. Transmedia 2.0: How to Create an Entertainment Brand Using a Transmedial Approach to Storytelling — Nuno Bernardo
30. Make It So: Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction — Nathan Shedroff
31. Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire, and the Internet of Things — David Rose
32. The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism — Jeremy Rifkin
33. Reality is Broken — Jane McGonigal
34. Tinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques — Michael Michalko
35. Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers — Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur
36. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t — Jim Collins
37. Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup — Bill Aulet
38. Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now — Douglas Rushkoff
39. Nordic Larp — Jaakko Stenros & Markus Montola
40. Building Storyworlds: the art, craft & biz of storytelling in 21c — Lance Weiler
41. Impro for Storytellers — Keith Johnstone
42. Design is Storytelling — Ellen Lupton
43. The Artist in the Machine: The World of AI-Powered Creativity — Arthur I. Miller
*This additional title was recommended by Tasso Stevens who pointed out that the list was missing a critical element — narrative impro.
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