Designers Should Read!

You didn’t think reading stopped when you graduated did you?

In grad school, I had to read more than I read the previous five years of undergrad combined (yes, it took me five years. It would have been faster had I been reading what I was supposed to Freshman year). Once I entered the professional world, I stopped reading for several years just to detox but when I started up again, I used the same habits I did in college. These habits of reading were all geared towards either passing a test or writing a paper. As a result, I tended to read cover-to-cover, regardless of how I felt.

After entering the professional world of design in 2007, I detoxed from reading books. But that led to an overwhelming anxiety to keep up with the constant influx of change happening in the industry. I struggled keeping up with what — at the time — felt like a deluge of information (Twitter and Medium didn’t even exist!). Books started feeling slow and outdated; the good stuff all seemed to happen on the internet.

But after over a decade in the industry, and information flowing even faster, I’ve come full circle and see books as being instrumental to my professional growth. Through this process, I’ve learned some helpful tips to how to read books effectively. (note that I think these are probably fairly generalizable, but my focus is…