Lists of design books

Jump to:

Design books I recommend

Here are the books I’d recommend to anyone who designs interfaces.

  1. The Non-Designer’s Design Book, Robin Williams: If you’re familiar with visual design, you can skip this one. If you’re completely new, this book might be the fastest way to improve your visual design skills. The four principles in this book are easy to remember and will help you improve any visual design.
  2. Don’t Make Me Think, Steve Krug: A short book that outlines everything you need to keep in mind to design better interfaces.
  3. Just Enough Research, Erika Hall: There are many books about research methods. You only need to read this one. It covers, as the title suggests, just enough about research to make you effective.
  4. Designing Visual Interfaces, Kevin Mullet and Darrel Sano: This is the best book written about the visual design of software interfaces. All of the examples in the book are decades old, but it doesn’t matter. No-one else has approached visual design like Mullet and Sano did.
  5. On Web Typography, Jason Santa Maria: There are a few good typography books. I find they generally all teach you the same concepts. They generally teach them well. But few typography books are focused on digital typography. That’s why I recommend this book. There aren’t any pages dedicated to print typography, which most interface designers don’t care about.

Short design books I recommend

Some design books are too long. Here are the books I recommend that are 200 pages or fewer.

  1. Do Design: Why beauty is key to everything, Alan Moore (93 pages)
  2. The Tao of User Experience, Robert Hoekman Jr (100 pages)
  3. The Vignelli Canon, Massimo Vignelli (112 pages)
  4. Envisioning Information, Edward R. Tufte (128 pages)
  5. Conversational Design, Erika Hall (130 pages)
  6. The Shape of Design, Frank Chimero (142 pages)
  7. On Web Typography, Jason Santa Maria (142 pages)
  8. Steal Like An Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative, Austin Kleon (144 pages)
  9. Design is a Job, Mike Monteiro (149 pages)
  10. Laws of UX: Using Psychology to Design Better Products & Services, Jon Yablonski (150 pages)
  11. Picture This: How Pictures Work, Molly Bang (152 pages)
  12. Less But Better, Dieter Rams (155 pages)
  13. User Interface Design for Programmers, Joel Spolsky and Dave Winer (159 pages)
  14. Accessibility for Everyone, Laura Kalbag (166 pages)
  15. Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems, Steve Krug (168 pages)
  16. How to Make Sense of Any Mess, Abby Covert (174 pages)
  17. Simplicity: A Matter of Design, Per Mollerup (192 pages)
  18. The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond, Jesse James Garrett (192 pages)
  19. Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Steve Krug (200 pages)

A list of every visual design book

This is every book I can find where the majority of the book is about the visual design of software interfaces. Books with a specific focus (e.g. grid design) are not included.

  1. Visual Design of the User Interface, Edward Tufte (1989)
  2. Graphic Design for Electronic Documents and User Interfaces, Aaron Marcus (1991)
  3. Designing Visual Interfaces: Communication Oriented Techniques, Kevin Mullet and Darrell Sano (1994)
  4. Visual Interface Design for Windows: Effective User Interfaces for Windows 95, Windows NT and Windows 3.1, Virginia Howlett (1996)
  5. Site-seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability, Luke Wroblewski (2002)
  6. Designing for the Web, Mark Boulton (2009)
  7. Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty, David Kadavy (2011)
  8. Visual Usability: Principles and Practices for Designing Digital Applications, Tania Schlatter and Deborah Levinson (2013)
  9. Design Fundamentals—Elements, Attributes, & Principles, Steven Bradley (2013)
  10. Refactoring UI, Adam Wathan and Steve Schoger (2018)
  11. The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, Jason Beaird, James George, and Alex Walker (2020)
  12. Conquering UI Design, Ruben Cespedes (2021)
  13. Designing User Interfaces, Mike Malewicz and Diana Malewicz (2021)
  14. Hello Web Design, Tracy Osborn (2021)
  15. Master UI Design Elements - The hidden secrets, Denislav Jeliazkov (2021)
  16. UI Design Principles, Michael Filipiuk (2021)
  17. UI Design Tactics, Przemyslaw Baraniak (2021)
  18. UI Pedia, Pixsel Academy (2022)
  19. Practical UI, Adham Dannaway (2022)

A list of every interaction design book

This is every book I can find where the majority of the book is about the interaction design of software interfaces. Books with a specific focus (e.g. form design) are not included.

  1. The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems, Jef Raskin (2000)
  2. User Interface Design for Programmers, Joel Spolsky and Dave Winer (2001)
  3. Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design, Robert Hoekman Jr. (2002)
  4. Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions, Bill Scott and Theresa Neil (2009)
  5. Web Application Design Patterns, Pawan Vora (2009)
  6. Inventing the Medium: Principles of Interaction Design as a Cultural Practice, Janet H. Murray (2011)
  7. Usable Usability: Simple Steps for Making Stuff Better, Eric Reiss (2012)
  8. Cadence & Slang, Nick Disabato (2013)
  9. UI is Communication: How to Design Intuitive, User Centered Interfaces by Focusing on Effective Communication, Everett N. McKay (2013)
  10. Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Steve Krug (2013)
  11. About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design, Alan Cooper etc. (2014)
  12. Mobile Design Pattern Gallery: UI Patterns for Smartphone Apps, Theresa Neil (2014)
  13. Designed for Use: Create Usable Interfaces for Applications and the Web, Lukas Mathis (2016)
  14. Conversational Design, Erika Hall (2018)
  15. Interdisciplinary Interaction Design, James Pannafino (2018)
  16. Intuitive Design: Eight Steps to an Intuitive UI, Everett N. McKay (2018)
  17. Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design, Jenifer Tidwill, Charles Brewer, and Aynne Valencia (2020)
  18. Designing with the Mind in Mind: Simple Guide to Understanding User Interface Design Guidelines, Jeff Johnson (2020)
  19. Laws of UX: Using Psychology to Design Better Products & Services, Jon Yablonski (2020)
  20. UX Magic, Daniel Rosenberg (2020)

[← anthonyhobday.com]