Everything By Design

So much goes unnoticed. We multi-task, switch between screens, work faster. When was the last time you paused to consider a beautifully made object or stunning natural landscape? Yet this is when our spirits lift, our soul is restored. Designer Alan Moore invites us to rethink not only what we produce – whether it's a website, a handmade chair, or a business – but how and why. With examples including Pixar, Apple, and Blitz Motorcycles, we are encouraged to ask: Is it useful and considered. Is it a thing of beauty? Do Design will inspire you to: • Improve your creative process • Raise the quality and craft of your work • Consider the experience as much as the product • Adopt simplicity, utility and honesty as guiding principles We are creative beings. We love to make things. This book will inspire you to create better things, for better reasons. Things that people will love – for a long time to come. Some say beauty is a luxury. But what if it is key to creating a better world for us all?

How to use design as a tool to create not only things but ideas, to speculate about possible futures. Today designers often focus on making technology easy to use, sexy, and consumable. In Speculative Everything, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby propose a kind of design that is used as a tool to create not only things but ideas. For them, design is a means of speculating about how things could be—to imagine possible futures. This is not the usual sort of predicting or forecasting, spotting trends and extrapolating; these kinds of predictions have been proven wrong, again and again. Instead, Dunne and Raby pose “what if” questions that are intended to open debate and discussion about the kind of future people want (and do not want). Speculative Everything offers a tour through an emerging cultural landscape of design ideas, ideals, and approaches. Dunne and Raby cite examples from their own design and teaching and from other projects from fine art, design, architecture, cinema, and photography. They also draw on futurology, political theory, the philosophy of technology, and literary fiction. They show us, for example, ideas for a solar kitchen restaurant; a flypaper robotic clock; a menstruation machine; a cloud-seeding truck; a phantom-limb sensation recorder; and devices for food foraging that use the tools of synthetic biology. Dunne and Raby contend that if we speculate more—about everything—reality will become more malleable. The ideas freed by speculative design increase the odds of achieving desirable futures.

A funny, colorful, fascinating tour through the work and life of one of today’s most influential graphic designers. Esquire. Ford Motors. Burton Snowboards. The Obama Administration. While all of these brands are vastly different, they share at least one thing in com­mon: a teeny little bit of Aaron James Draplin. Draplin is one of the new school of influential graphic designers who combine the power of design, social media, entrepreneurship, and DIY aesthetic to create a successful business and way of life. Pretty Much Everything is a mid-career survey of work, case studies, inspiration, road stories, lists, maps, how-tos, and advice. It includes examples of his work—posters, record covers, logos—and presents the process behind his design with projects like Field Notes and the “Things We Love” State Posters. Draplin also offers valuable advice and hilarious commentary that illustrates how much more goes into design than just what appears on the page. With Draplin’s humor and pointed observations on the contemporary design scene, Pretty Much Everything is the complete package.

DIV In the world of interior design, thousands of bits of crucial information are scattered across a wide array of sources. The Interior Design Reference & Specification Book collects the information essential to planning and executing interior projects of all shapes and sizes, and distills it in a format that is as easy to use as it is to carry. You’ll also find interviews with top practitioners drawn across the field of interior design. —Fundamentals provides a step-by-step overview of an interiors project, describing the scope of professional services, the project schedule, and the design and presentation tools used by designers. —Space examines ways of composing rooms as spatial environments while speaking to functional and life-safety concerns. —Surface identifies options in color, material, texture, and pattern, while addressing maintenance and performance issues. —Environments looks at aspects of interior design that help create a specific mood or character, such as natural and artificial lighting, sound and smell. —Elements describes the selection and specification of furniture and fixtures, as well as other components essential to an interior environment, such as artwork and accessories. —Resources gathers a wealth of useful data, from sustainability guidelines to online sources for interiors-related research. /div

An essential primer for students and first-stop reference for professionals, The Fashion Design Reference & Specification Booktakes the fashion designer through the entire design process, from conceiving a garment to marketing it. This valuable handbook contains the information and ideas essential to planning and executing fashion projects of every scale and distills them in an easy-to-use format that is compact enough to slip into a tote. Linking six central phases in the cycle of fashion—research, editing, design, construction, connection, and evolution—The Fashion Design Reference & Specification Book helps designers develop effective strategies for building a cohesive collection and communicating their vision. The Reference & Specification Book series from Rockport Publishers offers students and practicing professionals in a range of creative industries must-have information in their area of specialty in an up-to-date, concise handbook.

Alan Lapidus's life has been a Zelig-like romp through most of the cultural and political highlights of the recent past. He has popped up as architect for or observer of many of our era's most iconic figures, including Donald Trump, various Mafia big shots, mayors, Aristotle and Jackie Onassis, Bob Guccione, pit bosses, real estate legends, and spies. Everything by Design takes us behind the scenes in Las Vegas, Disney World, Havana, Atlantic City, Moscow, the Amazon rainforest, and New York. Along the way we learn why Mickey Mouse never seems to use the restroom, why the baccarat tables in casinos are always far away from the dice tables, why the CIA wanted him to redesign Havana's main synagogue, and why the tunnels under the Hotel Moskva can't be touched. Everything by Design is a keenly observed social and cultural history of modern America by one of its key shapers.

The Graphic Design Reference & Specification Book should always be next to a designer's computer. Completely practical with only the most needed information, this valuable book provides designers with all the little details that can make or break a design, such as how much space to leave in the gutter when designing barrel folds, how to layout a template for a box, and the ratios of each part, as well as metric conversion charts, standard envelope sizes in the USA, Europe, Canada and Asia, and much more. This hardworking handbook is compact and accessible and is a must-have for any graphic designer.

We can't predict the future, yet we do it all the time. We organize projects, events, days, weeks, and years. We plan to buy a home, build a career, travel, get married, raise children, teach a class, retire, or get in shape. Our ability to model the world as it is and might be is a gift, but mental time travel is also really hard. Fortunately, since planning is a skill, everyone from playful improviser to rigorous planner can greatly improve, if they are ready to learn: The principles and practices of nonlinear planning. How to grow and sustain hope with willpower and waypower. When to pivot or persist with paths, goals, values, and metrics. How myths, memories, fears, and feelings shift the future. Why the plans of an octopus are the product of evolution. How artificial intelligence is poised to transform what we plan. If you hate planning, you're doing it wrong. The uncertainty of change makes us crave chaos or control, but it's as dangerous to be rigid as it is to move fast and break things. To organize the future, we will find better ways, because happiness is a prediction, and it's also the freedom you'll feel upon realizing there is no one right way to plan.