8 Must-read Books for Design Students

If the full 10-word title of Shaughnessy’s book isn’t quite wordy enough for your newly established design bookshelf, up steps Michael Bierut to triple it, with: How to use graphic design to sell things, explain things, make things look better, make people laugh, make people cry, and (every once in a while) change the world.

Published in 2015, the veteran designer and Pentagram New York partner puts a fresh twist on the conventional monograph by treating it as a combination of manual and manifesto.

Using 35 projects by way of demonstration, Bierut illustrates the varied role that graphic design plays in the modern world, from his own invariably entertaining perspective. 

By including rough sketches and rejected ideas alongside the finished work, he also makes the towering success of his career much more accessible to anyone at the start of theirs – and the book is packed with insights into the creative process.