56 Design Books We Love
We surveyed our global Salesforce Design team to get their must-reads.
If you love design, you’ll love this book list. There’s a good read whether you’re a veteran, a student, or an enthusiast. Explore design thinking, human-centered design, visual design, creativity, UX, and UI. Some titles are hot off the presses and others are classics that have inspired generations of designers.
In our work-from-anywhere culture, Slack is where a great many things begin. I asked our team of over 1,400 designers worldwide: What are your favorite design books and why? They responded in droves. The titles rolled in from Salesforce architects, innovation consultants, product designers, experience designers, writers, UX directors, creative strategy leads, and more.
One note: While this list is extensive, we hope to add more design books by under-represented authors. (If you have suggestions, let us know in the comments.) Still, it’s become my go-to book list — especially when there’s a breeze outside and I have time to read on days without morning meetings. I hope it will be the same for you.
56 Design Books We Love (in alphabetical order)
- 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People by Susan Weinschenk
- A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander
- Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Umoja Noble
- Architecture Without Architects by Bernard Rudofsky
- Aspects of Symmetry by Sidney Coleman
- Beautiful Evidence by Edward Tufte
- Build Better Products by Laura Klein
- Building Access by Aimi Hamraie
- Communicating the New by Kim Erwin
- Creative Confidence by Tom Kelley and David Kelley
- Design a Better Business by Patrick van der Pijl, Justin Lokitz and Lisa Kay Solomon
- Designing Interfaces by Jennifer Tidwell
- Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
- Drawing Ideas by Mark Baskinger and William Bardel
- Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte
- Evil by Design: Interaction Design to Lead Us into Temptation by Chris Nodder
- Extra Bold by Ellen Lupton, Farah Kafei, Jennifer Tobias, Josh A. Halstead, Kaleena Sales, Leslie Xia, and Valentina Vergara
- Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh
- Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Your World or CAD Monkeys, Dinosaur Babies and T-Shaped People: Inside the World of Design Thinking and How It Can Spark Creativity and Innovation by Warren Berger
- Hooked by Nir Eyal
- How I Teach by Jon Kolko
- How to See: A Guide to Reading Our Man-Made Environment by George Nelson
- Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few
- Just My Type by Simon Garfield
- Microcopy: The Complete Guide by Kinneret Yifrah
- Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design by Kat Holmes
- Product Management for UX People by Christian Crumlish
- Reimagining Design by Kevin G. Bethune
- Rethinking Users by Michael Youngblood
- Rocket Surgery Made Easy by Steve Krug
- Ruined by Design by Mike Montiero
- Sketching User Experiences by Bill Buxton
- Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky
- Technically Wrong by Sara Wachter-Boettcher
- The ABC’s of Bauhaus, The Bauhaus and Design Theory by Ellen Lupton
- The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher
- The Crystal Goblet or Printing Should Be Invisible by Beatrice Warde
- The Design Thinking Toolbox: A Guide to Mastering the Most Popular and Valuable Innovation Methods by Michael Lewrick, Patrick Link and Larry Leifer
- The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
- The Elements of Color by Johannes Itten
- The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
- The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design by IDEO.org
- The Field Study Handbook by Jan Chipcase
- The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin
- The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda
- The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
- The User Experience Team of One by Leah Buley
- The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte
- Thinking In Systems by Donella H. Meadows
- Thinking With Type by Ellen Lupton
- Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
- Universal Methods of Design: 100 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective Solutions by Bella Martin and Bruce Hanington
- Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell
- User Friendly by Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant
- Visual Dictionary by Jean Claude Corbeil
- Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite by Paul Arden
Is your favorite design book missing from this list? Let us know in the comments!
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