Five books that formed me as a designer

You know, it's actually been a little while since I last read a book specifically about design and/or product. But I recently saw Jonas Downey's post on Bluesky asking about this, looked up at my bookshelf, and started to reflect on what I've read thus far and where I'm at as a designer. It's honestly surprising that the ideas introduced in these books are still very close to me. So, if you haven't dug into them yet, here's yet another book-list recommendation on the internet, in no particular order.

This Book Will Make You Kinder

Written by Henry James Garrett.

I can't count how many blog posts, talks, courses, and even books I've read throughout the years about design that included "empathy" as part of what the role entails. It's usually framed in the context of being empathetic to user needs, to better solve a product problem. That's, of course, great, but exercising this muscle isn't something we should do just for the sake of product development, and it definitely shouldn't be exclusive to the designer role. It is a must for any type of relationship to be even remotely successful and pleasurable.

For the last four years or so, I've been mostly working and interacting with open-source communities, as well as international teams with varied cultural backgrounds. All of that happening, for the most part, digitally, where a lot of the nuance isn't there. Obviously and naturally, I've gone through challenging situations where my empathy muscles were really stretched and put to stress, but Henry helped me in crafting new lenses to approach them.

This book is not only possibly one of the cutest ones I have in terms of editorial as it is filled with lovely illustrations made by the author, but it's also just written out of first principles and science, which creates a smooth flow of understanding. The chapter I love the most—"Empathy has an off switch"—is the one that addresses what I think is the elephant in the room whenever talking about this topic: the reason why certain situations make it close to impossible to be empathetic. Like, should you be empathetic with someone who's committing any form of violence? "This Book Will Make You Kinder" might help you navigate this.

Ruined By Design

Written by Mike Monteiro.

This one is honestly heavy, necessary, and painful to read. Broadly speaking, on the one hand, I kind of take the stance that "designers destroyed the world" with a grain of salt. More often than not—and as Mike himself generally argues in his other book, "Design Is A Job"—we do what's necessary to keep ourselves employed. But on the other hand, that can't simply be used as a hand-wavy excuse, either. Historically, we've seen how that's been said to cause absolute disasters. The fact is: designers do shape the world. The products and surfaces that are drastically changing society go through some of our hands, and we need to take responsibility.

I can't avoid feeling that this book has, to some extent, a lot of "every country is like the US" biases, but it did hit me really hard when I read it as I was working in a company contributing to the gig economy. Nevertheless, Mike manages to wrap it up on a hopeful tone and gives a lot of practical measures that we could employ to fix the world, as designers. It all comes down to the title of the book's last part: "You Can't Go Alone." "Ruined By Design" was written in 2019, and it feels like a mandatory read to navigate the next 20+ years.

Thinking In Systems

Written by Donella H. Meadows.

You know, as a designer, you'll join a team and be tasked with working on a certain feature. You may start by mapping its flow: what happens before and what will happen after the main button is pressed. Then, as time passes, you begin to make sense of the whole sequence of events of the entire product you're working on. Eventually, you find yourself having more strategic conversations as you can now clearly visualize the root—the fundamental steps that dictate everything else.

Essentially, this book gives us the capacity to observe and deeply understand systems around us, and the tools to navigate through multiple levels of abstraction. Ultimately, it is only in doing so that we acquire a strong and firm handle to confidently know which faucet to turn on and off, depending on the particular system you're interfacing with.

Here and there, I get a bit randomly anxious about how massive and vast the world is; how many points of view there are, the amount of information, the oppressive complexity, etc. But I clearly remember getting out of this book with a calmer feeling of: "well, there's a way to make sense of all of these things, and I don't necessarily need to be extraordinary to do that." "Thinking in Systems" helps us understand the connected tissue of all things, and through that, figure out what's needed to fundamentally transform any environment.

Good Services

Written by Lou Downe.

Yeah, yeah, Dieter Rams' principles are good, I know. However, I think the principles presented here are the ones that should be the new standard. This book is filled with practical guidance that all of us as designers should follow to create something truly transformative. I personally love that it is framed as "services," as opposed to "products," due to the broader nature of the concept. There are just so many more aspects to the products we work on than just the immediate digital interface. Everything that revolves around it, from customer support, marketing, branding, etc., is part of the overall service. And we should always be mindful of that.

Not only does this book have beautiful typography throughout, but it was a super smooth read. I'd easily carry this in my pocket, or at least always have it on my desk, so I can diligently comb through each principle and reflect on what I haven't checked off yet. "Good Services" should be the new handbook for designing anything that truly works.

Pretty Much Everything

Written by Aaron James Draplin.

This is probably my favorite in the list. It's a sort of biographical walkthrough of Aaron's life, and it's the most beautifully designed book I've ever seen. It's truly a testament to creativity, filled with personality and passion. Aaron's life, career, and his outlook on design and craft have deeply affected the way I thought about my work early on and to this day. Even though there's a significant aspect of designing for software that's not necessarily creative (rather mechanical), in essence design will regardless always have an ubiquitous creative component.

Whenever I feel like I'm in a bit of a rut, I just grab this gorgeous, colorful hardcover book, open a random page, and just stare at it for a few minutes. Aaron could've made a regular, white-page book to document his life and career, but he chose to make a piece of art. One that serves as proof of his incredible capacity to create and communicate ideas visually, while full of character. "Pretty Much Everything" is a gracious reminder that design will always be a profound creative exercise, and that the act of making is an endless pleasure in itself.

Wrapping up

It's been interesting to set aside some hours to write this post and realize how these books have helped me in such different ways. Some of them have taught me more tactical approaches, showing me how to address certain product and organizational problems differently. Others have given me a much broader perspective on my role on planet Earth, as well as sharper tools to systematically navigate and understand this world, which is filled with an excessive amount of information and complexity.

Hopefully, they'll help you in some way, too!

Very much still a physical book type-of person.