Design Books for Inspiration

This is mostly graphic inspiration. For interaction design:

"Thoughtless Acts" by Jane Fulton Suri is one of the best. Pages and pages of photos of objects as they are actually used, rather than what they were designed for, gives deep insights into use.

"Design Research" by Brenda Laurel is an exhaustive collection of design methods, which you can pick from to solve almost any specific design problem.

In my opinion, those two books and The Design of Everyday Things are all anyone needs to know in order to be a better interaction designer than 99.9% of professionals.

One thats been around since 1980 (updated regularly since) that is REALLY good is Graphic Idea Notebook by Jan V. White, does not just dump a bunch of finished layouts, mainly various sketches and design layouts for communicating ideas and concepts.

https://www.amazon.com/Graphic-Idea-Notebook-Treasury-Soluti...

You can't have a collection about design without having Josef Müller-Brockmanns' Grid Systems.

https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Systems-Graphic-Design-Communica...

Universal principles of design, by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden and Jill Butler is a compilation of ideas, principles and techniques from several disciplines that can be used in all domains of design. It is a very good starting point for studies.

Lidwell made an interesting presentation of some design heuristics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdH8Kuku9tA

I keep track of the most inspiring design-related books I read at https://greatdesignbooks.com/

I would add: American Wood Type, 1828-1900 - you will only find it used and it is pricey but totally worth it. It recently got a mention in Netflix's Abstract show.

https://www.amazon.com/American-Wood-Type-1828-1900-Evolutio...

I highly suggest you add some sort of timer to the FAYT feature to avoid premature AJAX calls to the server. If I type "hipster" into the search box, it makes seven calls: one for each letter of the search term. I'm starting to get 502s so I imagine this could be mitigated by only submitting an AJAX call when the user hasn't typed something for a second or two.

Understanding Comics

Not just comics, but design, art and media theory. Utterly brilliant.

Anybody have good recommendations on courses or a curated study list for someone new to Design in general? Looking to learn fundamentals before diving into more detail on any specific field.

"101 Things I Learned in Architecture School" would be worth adding; it's clear and concise, and the lessons apply well beyond architecture, to design in general.

HN hug of death?