1. DESIGN IS
http://www.papress.com/html/book.details.page.tpl?isbn=9781568983141
Design Is celebrates the immense variety of design. Everyone and everything is here. Scholars, pundits, designers, architects, critics, and reporters are all represented, while everthing from election ballots to urban design, chairs to fuzzy logic, housing to the Internet is discussed. The richness of thought and stimulating ideas found here could only come from Metropolismagazine. Where else would bar codes be discussed along with cities, NASA rub shoulders with garden design, and a mechanical yam-pounder share space with Robert Moses? No other publication can provide the density of observation, range of perception, and unbridled enthusiasm for design found here. Like Metropolis itself, Design Is radiates the confidence and missionary zeal of those who would change the world
2. DOT DOT DOT
http://www.chroniclebooks.com/titles/art-design/graphic-design/dot-dot-dot-18.html
After seventeen issues, Dot Dot Dot remains the must-read journal on every designers desk. By steering clear of both commercial portfolio presentations and impenetrable academic theory, it has become the premier venue for creative journalism on diverse subjectsmusic, art, literature, and architecturethat affect the way we think about and make design. Dot Dot Dot 18 presents the latest fieldwork of a multidisciplinary group ofcontributors investigating the web of influences shaping contemporary culture. Smart, passionate, and imaginativelydesigned, Dot Dot Dot is for graphic designers and anyone interested in the visual arts.
3. TYPOHOLIC
http://www.victionary.com/book/typoholic_info.html
Letters and words are the most efficient way to talk. The great demand for quick and effective communication has challenged designers’ originality to innovate expressions in words, phrases and letter forms. From digital types to real life installations, Typoholic is a thorough review of modern type-making that makes the core of communication itself. In two separate sections, the book introduces more than 40 new illustrative and animated type families that come in a narrative package of alphabets, numbers and punctuations, followed by 200 colourful pages of ad-hoc projects featuring custom type designs as logo marks, campaign installations and editorial art. The book would particularly highlight how meanings of words and phrases multiples when typography meets design, handworks, photography, performance art and illustrations that individually convert the process of reading into unique experience which one can embrace, encounter, touch and explore.
4. DESIGN PLAY
http://www.victionary.com/book/design-play_info.html
Games and tricks often breed big ideas, and the idea of ‘Play’ has prompted artists and designers to bring peculiarity into the routine and amuse the bored with visual tricks and interactive designs. Be it simple or complicated, deliberate or unintentional, this art of spreading joy demands a strong commitment to break the rules and a knack of poking fun in a lighthearted way. From mimicries to interactive approaches that engage users in the development of desirable design outcomes, Design•Play put together a rich source of playful ideas that challenge your normative perceptions by means of five distinctive kinds of ‘Play’ embraced in graphic, product and spatial designs.
5. CREATIVE ISLAND
http://www.laurenceking.com/product/Creative+Island+2.htm
Following the success of the first volume, Creative Island 2 takes an entirely fresh look at the extraordinary range and quality of design in Britain today, including work from 25 design disciplines – from architecture and engineering to fashion and jewellery; from new media and graphics to theatre and retail design, and many more. Showing more than 100 recent projects, and also featuring design ideas and visuals of work that is yet to be realized, each one tells the designers’ stories of their work in their own words. Through a series of themes, John Sorrell explores the relationships between different projects and the way in which different disciplines cross-fertilize, which, he argues, is the key reason for the current wealth of inspired design from the United Kingdom.