Tis the season for Christmas shopping and Wishu is here to help support your retail therapy. Whether you’re looking to enlighten yourself or gift a loved one, here is a collection of our favourite books on creativity and design for 2022. Happy shopping!
The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition
Published in 2013, this intriguing and charming book demonstrates the beauty in good, usable design is possible. The Design of Everyday Things also provides insight on how to design for the everyday consumer and is a powerful primer on how, and why, some products satisfy customers while others only frustrate them.
Prada Catwalk: The Complete Collections
This coffee table dream provides a concise history of the iconic house of Prada and has been illustrated with carefully curated catwalk images that showcase hundreds of spectacular clothes, details, accessories, beauty looks and set designs – and, of course, the top fashion models who wore them on the runway, from Naomi Campbell and Gisele to Kate Moss and Kaia Gerber.
Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook 2022
The Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook has been guiding writers and illustrators on the best way to present their work, how to navigate the world of publishing and ways to improve their chances of success, for over 110 years. If you want to find a literary or illustration agent or publisher, would like to self-publish or crowdfund your creative idea then this Yearbook will help you. As well as sections on publishers and agents, newspapers and magazines, illustration and photography, theatre and screen, there is a wealth of detail on the legal and financial aspects of being a writer or illustrator.
The Package Design Book
Each year, the Pentawards celebrate the underrated art of package design by recognizing the most influential pieces from around the world. Featuring hundreds of works and with key pieces described in detail, this book brings together the lucky winners to celebrate the vivid creativity of packaging in its every form.
Make Your Mark: The Creative’s Guide to Building a Business with Impact
Marketed as a book for ‘makers’ not ‘managers’, Make Your Mark asks the bright minds behind companies like Google X, Warby Parker, Facebook, O’Reilly Media on their advice for startups. Featuring hard-won wisdom from twenty leading entrepreneurs and designers, this book will arm you with practical insights for launching a purpose-driven business, refining your product, delighting your customers, inspiring your team—and ultimately—making something that matters.
The Art of Creative Thinking
The Art of Creative Thinking reveals how we can transform ourselves, our businesses, and our society through a deeper understanding of human creativity. In Audiobook format, Rod Judkins, of the world-famous St. Martin’s College of Art, has studied successful creative thinkers from every walk of life throughout history. Drawing on an extraordinary range of reference points – from the Dada manifesto to Nobel Prize-winning economists, from Andy Warhol’s studio to Einstein’s desk – he distils a lifetime’s expertise into a succinct, surprising book that will inspire you to think more confidently and creatively.
Book of Ideas: 2: a journal of creative direction and graphic design
This stunning, multi-colour paged publication covers issues ranging from creativity for good, how to decode our own creative DNA, embracing limitations, using humour and how to entertain the right wrongs. It discusses how to improve design work through more skilful use of language, and in doing so, how to stir the right reactions and present well-rounded creative projects with confidence.
Burning Questions by Margaret Atwood
This one may not seem to relate to creativity on the surface but is a great help in opening our minds to the science of storytelling which is crucial to design. Cultural icon Margaret Atwood presents a brilliant collection of essays — funny, erudite, endlessly curious, uncannily prescient — which seek answers to Burning Questions such as: Why do people everywhere, in all cultures, tell stories? And how much of yourself can you give away without evaporating?
In over fifty pieces, Atwood aims her prodigious intellect and impish humour at our world, and reports back to us on what she finds. The roller-coaster period covered in the collection brought an end to the end of history, a financial crash, the rise of Trump and a pandemic.
The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures
The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures pulls back the curtain and reveals the riveting story of both Louis Le Prince’s (cinema’s originator) life and work, dispelling the secrets that shroud each. This captivating, impeccably researched work presents the never before told history of the motion picture and sheds light on the unsolved mystery of Le Prince’s disappearance. You might have to pre-order this one as it is due to be published in April.
