Design Books Gift Guide 2024

If you’re looking for the perfect gift for a creative person in your life who appreciates stunning visuals and innovative concepts, here is the list of Design Books Gift Guides for 2024 curated by Swipe Design | books + objects that will leave designer readers inspired.

Letters from the North Pole by Annie Atkins, illustrations by Fia Tobing

Abrams Books, 2024

This book invites young readers to experience the magic of Christmas through five delightful letters from Santa Claus himself.

Five children from around the globe write to Santa with their Christmas wishes and are thrilled when he writes back! Each letter reveals fascinating secrets about the North Pole, from how reindeer sleep standing up to Santa’s favourite snacks on Christmas Eve. This interactive book allows children to pull out and read Santa’s letters, making it a perfect holiday keepsake. 

Fake Love Letters, Forged Telegrams and Prison Escape Maps: Designing Graphic Props for Filmmaking by Annie Atkins

Phaidon, 2024

This book offers a  behind-the-scenes look at the extraordinary and meticulous design of graphic objects for film sets

Although graphic props such as invitations, letters, tickets and packaging are rarely seen close-up by cinema audiences, they are designed in painstaking detail. Dublin-based designer Annie Atkins invites readers into the creative process behind her intricately designed, rigorously researched and visually stunning graphic props. These objects may be given just a fleeting moment of screen time, but their authenticity is vital and their role is crucial to nudge both the actors on set and the audience just that much further into the film's fictional world.

Made By James by James Martin

Rockport Publishers, 2021

UK-based graphic designer James Martin shares his wealth of experience, information and advice with one goal in mind: to help designers at all levels create better work and enjoy the process. 

Discover how James creates innovative, clever, memorable logos with his hands-on, step-by-step process, including word mapping, rapid prototyping and sketching ideas on paper. In addition to the important “hows” of logo design—techniques, ideas and examples of creating logos and building brands—you will learn aspects of the business: how to become more disciplined, how to see failures as valuable experiences and ways to avoid burnout.

Made in Japan: Awe-Inspiring Japanese Graphics

Victionary, 2018

Known for their minimalist, clean lines, the iconic styles of Japanese designs are admired and imitated worldwide. Truly standing at the forefront of establishing a national design identity, it is the prime example of how culture meets design, mixing history, traditional art and philosophy into contemporary designs.

With the spotlight on 40 local creatives behind all sorts of different projects in different fields, Made in Japan spans brand identities to spatial design to illustrations and more, examining how the influence of a common culture holds together variety.

Shape Up!

Gingko Press Inc., 2024

Shapes are a fundamental building block for how we perceive and react to the world around us, making up our visual landscape. Whether geometric, abstract or figurative, they can convey various feelings, emotions and connotations through their representations of form. Designers use these relationships, incorporating shapes into their designs to appeal to our innate sense of pattern memory while creating something graphically pleasing. Beginning with a historical perspective on the development of pictorial graphics from ancient times to the present, Shape Up! explores their modern expression through countless examples and interviews with designers on inspiration and design with shapes.

DESIGN{H}ERS: A Celebration of Women in Design Today

Victionary, 2019

With the amount of progress humankind has made in attitudes and achievements to date, the time cannot be more apt than now to celebrate how far women have come in the creative industry today.

DESIGN{H}ERS is a stunning showcase of up-and-coming talent spanning various design mediums to highlight women's distinction and diversity in their respective fields. Coupled with compelling stories revolving around the journeys of luminaries who have already made their mark, this book intrigues and inspires future creatives.

Twenty-Five Years at the Public: A Love Story by Paula Scher

Princeton Architectural Press, 2020

A larger-than-life figure in the design community with a client list to match, Paula Scher turned her first major project as a partner at Pentagram into a formative 25-year relationship with the Public Theater in New York. This behind-the-scenes account of the relationship between Paula and "the Public", as it's affectionately known, chronicles over two decades of brand identity development and an evolving creative process in a unique "autobiography of graphic design".

The book contains hundreds of Paula's posters, including those for Hamilton, Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk and numerous Shakespeare in the Park productions, along with other printed and process-related matter. Essays by two of the theatre's artistic directors, George C. Wolfe and Oskar Eustis, and design critics Steven Heller and Ellen Lupton contextualize Paula's dynamic typographic treatment.

Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers by Ellen Lupton, Farah Kafei, Jennifer Tobias, Josh Halstead, Kaleena Sales, Leslie Zia and Valentina Vergara

Princeton Architectural Press, 2021

Extra Bold is the inclusive, practical and informative (design) career guide for everyone.

Part textbook, part comic book, zine, manifesto, survival guide and self-help manual, Extra Bold is filled with stories and ideas that don't appear in other career books or design overviews.

Both pragmatic and inquisitive, the book explores power structures in the workplace and how to navigate them. Interviews showcase people at different stages of their careers. Practical guides cover everything from starting out to wage gaps, coming out at work, cover letters, mentoring and more. Critical essays  rethink design principles and practices through theories of feminism, anti-racism, inclusion and non-binary thinking. The book also features typefaces and projects from dozens of contributors from various racial and ethnic backgrounds, abilities, gender identities and positions of economic and social privilege.

From Series

Counter Print, 2017-2023

Get the From Japan, From Scandinavia, From Eastern Europe, From Latin America, From Switzerland, From South Korea, From Africa and From Italy, published by Counter-Print. Each book is a celebration of graphic design from the area featured.

Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister

Phaidon, 2023

Stefan Sagmeister’s newest project encourages long-term thinking and reminds us that many things in the world are improving.

Initially conceived in 2020 as the world entered a pandemic lockdown, Stefan has created a book that looks at the state of the world today, illuminating, through collected data, how far we’ve come and encouraging us to think about where we go from here. Statistics are vividly brought to life, as numbers are transformed into graphs, inlaid into 19th-century paintings, embroidered canvases, lenticular prints and hand-painted water glasses. The book includes a foreword from psychologist and leading authority on language and the mind Steven Pinker; a featured essay by graphic designer and historian Steven Heller; and a conversation between Stefan and Hans Ulrich Obrist, curator and artistic director of Serpentine Galleries in London. Published in softcover with flaps, Now is Better is contained within a die-cut slipcase and accompanied by a lenticular print designed by Stefan.