RGD Book Club’s guide to must-read books for designers in 2025

To celebrate the New Year, the RGD Book Club has created a list of books to add to your reading goals in 2025 or gift them to the book-loving designer in your creative circle. No matter the career stage, something can be learned from the lessons in these books. Happy reading!!

Mismatch: How inclusion shapes design

By Kat Holmes

A must-read for understanding inclusive design, this book highlights how designing for diversity fosters innovation and functionality, backed by case studies and personal stories. Through compelling stories and practical insights, the book illustrates the power of inclusive design to transform industries and societies. It is an essential read for designers, innovators and leaders aiming to create products, spaces and experiences that truly serve a diverse range of people​

The Black Experience in Design: Identity, expression & reflection

By Kelly Walters and contributors

This anthology focuses on the contributions of Black designers, providing an alternative lens on design history and practice while celebrating cultural expression. Featuring essays, interviews and projects from over 70 designers, artists, educators and researchers, it offers a richly diverse perspective on identity, culture and design practices within the African diaspora.

The book explores design as a cultural expression and empowerment tool, highlighting teaching practices, innovative projects and personal reflections. It's an enlightening resource for designers seeking to understand and incorporate perspectives often overlooked in traditional design discourse.

Thinking with type

By Ellen Lupton

Thinking with Type is the definitive guide to using typography in visual communication. Ellen Lupton provides clear and focused guidance on how letters, words and paragraphs should be aligned, spaced, ordered and shaped. The book covers all typography essentials, from typefaces and type families to kerning and tracking to grid use. Visual examples show how to be inventive within systems of typographic form, including what the rules are and how to break them.

Design for a Better World: Meaningful, sustainable and humanity-centered

By Don Norman

How human behaviour brought our world to the brink, and how human behaviour can save us. The key to change, says Don Norman, is human behaviour, covered in the book's three major themes: meaning, sustainability and humanity-centeredness.  Emphasize quality of life, not monetary rewards; restructure how we live to better protect the environment; and focus on all of humanity. Design for a Better World presents an eye-opening diagnosis of where we've gone wrong and a clear prescription for making things better.

Made by James, the honest guide to creativity and logo design

By James Martin

Design better logos and become a more successful, confident graphic designer. Discover how James creates innovative, clever and memorable logos with his own hands-on, step-by-step process that includes word mapping, rapid prototyping and sketching ideas on paper. Learn how to become a visual storyteller by understanding the key factors of working with clients and making them a valued part of the process.

James shows that design isn’t just about creating images; it’s about building trusting relationships with clients, finding inspiration and using it effectively and sharing ideas and becoming part of a community.

Make It, turn your creative skill into a business and thrive doing what you love

By Martina Flor

There has never been a better moment to turn your creative passion into a thriving business.

"Make It" is your ultimate handbook for building a profitable and fulfilling career in the creative industry. Perfect for artists, illustrators, graphic designers and freelance creatives, this book offers practical steps and inspiring stories to guide you on your journey.

Join Martina on her journey from a job she despises to becoming a successful commercial artist. Her story gives you insights and practical advice to turn your creative dreams into reality. 

Feck Perfuction

By James Victore

Begin before you're ready and other lessons on living a happy and creative life: Renowned designer and professional hell-raiser James Victore wants to drag you off your couch and throw you headfirst into a life of bold creativity. In Feck Perfuction, Victore will guide you through all the twists, trials and triumphs of starting your creative career, from finding your voice to picking the right moment to start a project (It's now). Bring your biggest, craziest, most revolutionary ideas and he will give you the kick in the pants you need to make them real. Fans of Austin Kleon's Keep 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad and Steal Like 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative will love James Victore's inspiring book on embracing authenticity and unleashing your creative self.

Begin before you're ready, live dangerously and take a risk and other lessons on living a purpose-driven life.

The look of the book

By Peter Mendelsund

Why do some book covers instantly grab your attention while others never get a second glance? Fusing word and image, as well as design thinking and literary criticism, this captivating investigation goes behind the scenes of the cover design process to answer this question and more.

As the outward face of the text, the book cover makes an all-important first impression. The Look of the Book examines art at the edges of literature through notable covers and the stories behind them, galleries of the many different jackets of bestselling books, an overview of book cover trends throughout history and insights from dozens of literary and design luminaries. Co-authored by celebrated designer and creative director Peter Mendelsund and scholar David Alworth, this fascinating collaboration, featuring hundreds of covers, challenges our notions of what a book cover can and should be.

Brutally Honest: No bullshit strategies to evolve your creative business

By Emily Ruth Cohen

Brutally Honest is chock full of advice, insights, best business practices, actionable strategies and 20 compelling, real-world case studies from other creative professionals. Critical business challenges explored and addressed in this book include positioning & specialization, marketing, case studies, new business development, strategies for qualifying new clients, pricing, retainers, proposals, contracts, organizational structures, staff management, client & project management, creative briefs and industry trends. Unlike many other professional practice books for our industry, Brutally Honest is designed for visual learners (like us!) and includes colourful, illuminating information graphics and checklists, as well as short, impactful and insightful sound bites and quick wins.

Your Brain on Art: How the arts transform us

By Susan Magsamen, Ivy Ross

Many of us think of the arts as entertainment--a luxury of some kind. In Your Brain on Art, authors Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross show how activities from painting and dancing to expressive writing, architecture and more are essential to our lives.

Your Brain on Art is a portal into this new understanding of how the arts and aesthetics can help us transform traditional medicine, build healthier communities and mend an aching planet.

The Cure for Burnout: How to find balance and reclaim your life

By Emily Ballesteros

In The Cure for Burnout, burnout management coach and TikTok influencer Emily Ballesteros combines scientific and cultural research, her expertise in organizational psychology and the tried-and-true strategies she’s successfully implemented with clients around the globe to demystify burnout for our post-pandemic world—and set you on a path toward a life of personal and professional balance. Ballesteros outlines five areas in which you can build healthy habits to combat burnout — mindset, personal care, time management, boundaries and stress management. She offers clear, easy-to-implement tools to help you find greater balance, energy and fulfillment.

Yumi and the nightmare painter

By Brandon Sanderson, Aliya Chen (Illustrator)

Yumi comes from a land of gardens, meditation and spirits, while Painter lives in a world of darkness, technology and nightmares. When their lives suddenly become intertwined in strange ways, can they put aside their differences and work together to uncover the mysteries of their situation and save each other’s communities from certain disasters?

This will be our first Bookclub’s book of 2025! Buy it for the designer in your life (or yourself). Join us in February as we discuss what everyone read/listened to over the holiday season and discover what everyone thought of Yumi’s story!

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Contributors: 

• Catherine Charbonneau RGD, Book Designer at Catherine Charbonneau
• Bianca Jozwiak RGD, Graphic Designer at CPA Ontario
• Natasha Rutledge RGD, Art Director at Fusion Design Group

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