Ace Books

Last week I set myself up nicely for Andrew and Dory's question about a must-read list for designers. So I've been thinking about it and what I thought was that there's no point me being obscure (like suggesting Vincent Steer's Printing Design and Layout, which is brilliant but ancient) because if it's not accessible it's not much use. I also thought there's not much point me giving you a list of the same old same old (like Spiekermann's sheep book, essential though it is or that Phil Baines book that everyone likes).

But then I thought it might be just ever so slightly more interesting and useful to suggest a list of books that are not obvious designer fodder but that might just help you become a more rounded designer. They also touch on some of those things that Adrian Shaughnessy talked about when he was here last week.

So, in no particular order (and no links to Amazon where you'll find most, if not all):

A Technique for Producing Ideas
James Webb Young
A classic for advertising types but great for rationalising something that a lot of us designer types already do and oh, how I wish I'd known this when I started out. It's dead cheap and worth loads.

It's not how good you are, but how good you want to be
and
Whatever you think, think the opposite
Paul Arden
Full of simple (sometimes surprising) truths that we forget.

Perfect Pitch
Jon Steel
Heralded by much cleverer people than me as the bible for anyone who has to develop and present ideas, don't be put off because it looks like a book for the ad industry. It's much more than that.

Common Sense Direct Marketing
Jackson Bird
Again, don't be put off just because this looks like a monster. It's ugly but if, like me, you're from a design studio background but have to develop DM concepts, this book tells you how to do it and increase the chances of it actually working and not being a waste of money and trees.

Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers
and
Copy-Editing: The Cambridge Handbook for Editors, Authors, Publishers
To quote Fletcher, "You can only muck about with language if you know what you're mucking about with. Otherwise, you're just being sloppy". These books will help with that and with the typographic details.

Art without Boundaries: 1950-70
Gerald Wood
Hooray! Something creative! This is a brilliant snapshot of amazing, inspiring, ground-breaking stuff happening between those dates. Out of print but easy to get, and cheap, and shows where we're coming from.

Comments

[Rob Sawkins]

I'm so glad to see Judith Butcher's Copy-Editing on your list (3rd edition). It's a prime example of clear thinking in both it's content and presentation. I see you've taken off the jacket to reveal the lovely blocking design. That and the fantastic text design are both by typo guru/book design genius Dale Tomlinson. Aside: the jacket would have been a 'MetaDesign masterpiece' but the then director of Communications at CUP, watered down the design, so it's now rather average. Shame.

May I be so bold – see what I did there – as to add Rhyme & Reason: a typographic novel (translated by Erik Spiekermann and edited by my old tutor at Reading Paul Stiff) and also Modern typography by Robin Kinross to your list? A fellow student accused the first of being condescending, but I think she rather missed the point. And Modern typography? Well, I'm backing you up on your last choice. If you don't know where you've come from, how can you know where you're going?

[Richard]

Hi Rob,

I took that jacket off ages ago for exactly the reason you describe. The book is indispensable. Thanks for the background info.

Rhyme & Reason is great. Posted on that a while back:
http://acejet170.typepad.com/foundthings/2006/10/ryme_reason_a_t.html
I just didn't want to suggest anything that would be tricky to get hold of. It's not in print is it?

[Rob Sawkins]

Ah yes I should have dug deeper ref: R&R. One day perhaps someone might take a few more shots and whack them up on Flickr...seems a good excuse to get a new Nikon D3 (if you have a spare £3K+ lying around that is ;-)

And I take your point about still being in print. I've got a couple of extra copies of the above, but am loathed to part with them. But books in print as a replacement, let's see...how about some/one of these (I hope I've stayed away from the usual suspects):

The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action by Donald A. Schon (hard work in most places but worth a look if you've the time); Dark angels by John Simmons (he writes nicely for a simple guy like me); The best software writing I selected by Joel Spolsky (for the geekier part of the designer psyche); and last but not least, The Gutenberg elegies by Sven Birkerts (love that wordsmithery). I could go on, but I'm boring myself. I'm interested in what the fellow AJ170 readers add...

[ManxStef]

Hart's Rules has since been absorbed under the Oxford banner and is now known as the Oxford Style Manual :-
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Oxford-Style-Manual-Robert-Ritter/dp/0198605641/

It's on my list of future purchases, though'll have to wait for a while as I just spent my book budget on Josef Müller-Brockmann's "Grid Systems" and it'll take some time to fully absorb that one - it looks fascinating, but heavy going!

[Ricky Irvine]

(I'm new here. Fantastic site!)

ManxStef, I found The New Hart's Rules: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0198610416/ a newer publication than the Oxford Style Manual, but authored the same by Robert Ritter.

It's a shame some of these titles are not in print.