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My third book

BOOK I

A book of absurd UI design ideas by Soren Iverson

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Examples of software architecture documentation using arc42.

A guide to visualising your software architecture with the C4 model.

A developer-friendly, practical and pragmatic guide to lightweight software architecture, technical leadership and the balance with agility.

“White” is not a book about colors. It is rather Kenya Haras attempt to explore the essence of “White,” which he sees as being closely related to the origin of Japanese aesthetics – symbolizing simplicity and subtlety. The central concepts discussed by Kenya Hara in this publication are emptiness and the absolute void. Kenya Hara also sees his work as a designer as a form of communication. Good communication has the distinction of being able to listen to each other, rather than to press one’s opinion onto the opponent. Kenya Hara compares this form of communication with an “empty container”. In visual communication, there are equally signals whose signification is limited, as well as signals or symbols such as the cross or the red circle on the Japanese flag, which – like an “empty container” – permit every signification and do not limit imagination. Not alone the fact that the Japanese character for white forms a radical of the character for emptiness has prompted him the closely associate the color white with emptiness.

Valiz, 2021. Softcover, 240pp., 9.5 x 12.5 inchesNew'On the Necessity of Gardening' tells the story of the garden as a rich source of inspiration. Over the centuries artists, writers, poets, and thinkers have each described, depicted, and designed the garden in different ways. In medieval art, the garden was a reflection of paradise, a place of harmony and fertility, shielded from worldly problems. In the eighteenth century this image tilted: the garden became a symbol of worldly powers and politics. The Anthropocene is forcing us to radically rethink the role we have given nature in recent decades. Through essays and an extensive abecedarium this book reflects on the garden as a metaphor for society.

Why attractive things work better and other crucial insights into human-centered designEmotions are inseparable from how we humans think, choose, and act. In Emotional Design, cognitive scientist Don Norman shows how the principles of human psychology apply to the invention and design of new technologies and products. In The Design of Everyday Things, Norman made the definitive case for human-centered design, showing that good design demanded that the user's must take precedence over a designer's aesthetic if anything, from light switches to airplanes, was going to work as the user needed. In this book, he takes his thinking several steps farther, showing that successful design must incorporate not just what users need, but must address our minds by attending to our visceral reactions, to our behavioral choices, and to the stories we want the things in our lives to tell others about ourselves. Good human-centered design isn't just about making effective tools that are straightforward to use; it's about making affective tools that mesh well with our emotions and help us express our identities and support our social lives. From roller coasters to robots, sports cars to smart phones, attractive things work better. Whether designer or consumer, user or inventor, this book is the definitive guide to making Norman's insights work for you.

An essay on aesthetics by the Japanese novelist, this book explores architecture, jade, food, and even toilets, combining an acute sense of the use of space in buildings. The book also includes descriptions of laquerware under candlelight and women in the darkness of the house of pleasure.

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Representing a new generation of designers in Japan, Kenya Hara pays tribute to his mentors, using long overlooked Japanese icons and images in much of his work. In Designing Design, he impresses upon the reader the importance of “emptiness” in both the visual and philosophical traditions of Japan and its application to design, made visible by means of numerous examples from his own work.“To understand something is not to be able to define it or describe it. Instead, taking something that we think we already know and making it unknown thrills us afresh with its reality and deepens our understanding of it,” Hara says of his design philosophy. Designing Design gives the reader an understanding of said philosophy as well as opens their mind to new ways of thinking.Hara, born 1958, is a Japanese graphic designer and professor at the Musashino Art University. He for instance designed the opening and closing ceremony programs for the Nagano Winter Olympic games 1998. In 2001, Hara enrolled as a board member for the Japanese label MUJI and has considerably molded the identity of this successful corporation as communication and design advisor ever since.

Karl Gerstner’s work is a milestone in the history of design. Designing Programmes is one of his most important works: in four essays, the author provides a basic introduction to his design methodology and suggests a model for design in the early days of the computer era. The book is especially topical and exciting in the context of current developments in computational design. With many examples from the worlds of graphic and product design, music, architecture, and art, it inspires the reader to seize on the material, develop it further, and integrate it into his or her own work.Designing Programmes was first published in 1964; in 2007 Lars Müller Publishers launched a re-designed version. This year’s release of Designing Programmes is a facsimile of the originaledition of the book, designed by Karl Gerstner.

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The career of the pioneering designer Muriel Cooper, whose work spanned media from printed book to software interface; generously illustrated in color.Muriel...

Otl Aicher's writings are explorations of the world, a substantive part of his work. In moving through the history of thought and design, building and construction, he assures us of the possibilities of arranging existence in a humane fashion. As ever he is concerned with the question of the conditions needed to produce a civilised culture. These conditions have to be fought for against apparent factual or material constraints and spiritual and intellectual substitutes on offer. Otl Aicher likes a dispute. For this reason, the volume contains polemical statements on cultural and political subjects as well as practical reports and historical exposition. He fights with productive obstinacy, above all for the renewal of Modernism, which he claims has largely exhausted itself in aesthetic visions; he insists the ordinary working day is still more important than the "cultural Sunday". Wolfgang Jean Stock