Library
The books that argue with me.
Not a reading list — a working library. These are the books I return to when a problem stops being a design problem and starts being a thinking problem.
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The Elements of Typographic Style
Robert Bringhurst · 1992
The book that made me treat typography as a craft with history rather than a panel of settings. I disagree with parts of it now, which is the point — it gave me something solid enough to push against.
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Thinking with Type
Ellen Lupton · 2004
The book I hand to engineers and product managers. It makes typographic decisions discussable by people who were never taught to see them.
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Thinking in Systems
Donella Meadows · 2008
Taught me to ask where the leverage is before asking what the interface should look like. Half of my design reviews are now a search for the feedback loop nobody drew.
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How Buildings Learn
Stewart Brand · 1994
Buildings and design systems age the same way: the parts that change fastest should be the easiest to replace. This is the book behind every layering decision I make.
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Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman · 2011
Useful and dangerous. Useful because it explains why people misread a form; dangerous because it is the most frequently misused book in product design. I keep it close to stay honest about the difference.
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Shape Up
Ryan Singer · 2019
Not gospel, but the clearest writing I have found on fixed time and variable scope. It gave my teams a vocabulary for saying no at the right moment.