“The recently released book ‘Data Flow: Visualising Information in Graphic Design’ available at Amazon.com and Gestalten.de seems to be an ideal Christmas gift. The book introduces an expansive scope of innovatively designed diagrams, and presents an abundant range of possibilities in visualizing data and information. These range from chart-like diagrams such as bar, plot, line diagrams and spider charts, graph-based diagrams including line, matrix, process flow, and molecular diagrams to extremely complex three-dimensional diagrams.”
The Best Type Book with No Typesetting
“The 1927 edition of Studio Handbook by Samuel Welo is 233 pages of beautiful type and timeless design advice. Only this book comes with a twist – every page was hand-lettered by Welo.”
Sizes May Vary: A Workbook for Graphic Design
“This book references the varying standardized formats and systems used within graphic design. Part sketchbook, part reference book and part notebook — it is a space for composing and visualizing layouts, sketching and developing ideas, taking reference and making note.” (Thanks Coudal Partners!)
The Pitfalls of Self-Published Books
“Given all the brouhaha over self-published books (or, more accurately, books on demand) I thought I’d give it a shot myself… A few days later, my little booklet arrived in the mail. What can I say? While on the outside everything looks fine (apart from the fact that the image on the cover is stretched slightly), the images inside the book look like crap.”
The Future of the Book
“Last night several dozen of us convened at the NextNow Collaboratory in Berkeley to discuss the future of the book. Everyone came armed with passion, questions, and issues about books. More than half the group were published authors, so we were personally invested in the future of publishing. The opening self-introductions became so engrossing that I was tempted to declare the session an un-meeting and throw away Clark’s and my loose script for the evening.”
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“Marks and Meaning” a new book by XPLANE founder Dave Gray
“Marks and meaning is a work in progress; an evolving exploration of visual language, visual thinking and visual work practices by the founder and Chairman of XPLANE, the visual thinking company. An unfinished work, it’s a hybrid: part sketchbook, part textbook, part workbook, and continuously updated by the author, based on feedback and conversations with readers. This is version zero: the first version available to the public.”
Brilliant, Engaging, But Modest It’s Not
Rick Poynor: “Stefan Sagmeister’s latest book may reveal as much about the state of graphic design as it does about its compelling author.”
Stefanie Posavec “On the Map”
“However, the works that caught my eyes was that of Stefanie Posavec. Stefanie’s maps capture something above and beyond that of the others. Rather than mapping physical geography, her maps capture regularities and patterns within a literary space. The pieces featured in On the Map focused on Kerouac’s On the Road. The maps visually represent the rhythm and structure of Kerouac’s literary space, creating works that are not only gorgeous from the point of view of graphic design, but also exhibit scientific rigor and precision in their formulation: meticulous scouring the surface of the text, highlighting and noting sentence length, prosody and themes, Posavec’s approach to the text is not unlike that of a surveyor.” (Thanks kottke.org!)
ABC:3d — A pop-up alphabet book by Marion Bataille
This is awesome: “Video Demonstration of a work in relief filled with ingenuity: on each page deploy forms cut from paper. The book by Marion Battle is a lively primer in three colors: red, black and white. “
The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas
“How do we ensure that our Web sites actually give users what they need? What are the best ways to understand our users’ goals, behaviors, and attitudes, and then turn that understanding into business results? Personas bring user research to life and make it actionable, ensuring we’re making the right decisions based on the right information. This practical guide explains how to create and use personas to make your site more successful.”
