1. Sketchbooks: the Hidden Art of Designers and Creatives
As the title says, this is a book about the stuff from designers you never get to see because it's in their private sketchbook or they just never chose to show it. I find this book to be very inspiring, certainly interesting if you like to see how someone else tries to hunt ideas or work them out.
2. New Retro: Classic Graphics, Today's Designs
This is very interesting if you like old design. Personally I always loved anything vintage, though it's always tricky trying to imitate something vintage or old. Often I create the risk of falling into the same old pattern, trying to create something old when it would just look fake and dried out. So this book has been a very refreshing breeze for me, it's the proof that making something old alive again really is possible in design.
3. Web Design Handbook
I don't believe the makers of this book have been spending a lot of time trying to think of a decent title, nevertheless the content is great. It's a very thick book full of modern web designs (559 pages to be exact!). I use it from time to time to flip open when I haven't got any ideas, webpages are almost always about a concept and it works great that way.
4. Illustration Now 3
Of course this can't miss from the row. I'm totally head over heels in love with it. I bought it a few months ago at a design fair and someone reminded me about the fact that these books always come in a big and a small version. I have to say, I was totally not interested in waiting for a smaller version when I had these fabulous pages in my hands. These drawings can't be big enough!
And of course I always have a wishlist, this is one I've discovered recently and really really want:
Creative Space: Urban Homes of Artists and Innovators
Featuring interiors created by people who shop in Colette in Paris, live on the Lower East Side in New York and travel to Tokyo; the domestic spaces are often DIY and strongly reflect pop culture. Filled with post-modern collectables, vintage junk finds, camouflage and graffiti, clothing and toy collections, contemporary art resting in bookshelves and crammed onto walls, these homes are an antidote to the sterility of minimalism.
