Recommended Read: How to…

How to Use Graphic Design to Sell Things, Explain Things, Make Things Look Better, Make People Laugh, Make People Cry, and (every Once in a While) Change the World

by Michael Bierut. 2015. Harper Design, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

Michael Bierut is one of my personal design heroes. I had the privilege of meeting him in 2013 at the AIGA National Design Conference in Minneapolis. I heard him speak again at the 2015 conference in New Orleans, while he was promoting this book. And at the end of 2022, I finally got around to finishing this book.

How to… highlights Beirut’s long and rich design career at Pentagram, the New York-based studio. He is arguably one of the last true design craftsmen. He’s a design thought leader and a true believer in the process of design, which so clearly comes through when you read about the attention to detail and care taken on every project highlighted in this book.

You’ll feel inspired in reading and looking at the visuals featured in this book. You may also find this book a little discouraging because Michael Bierut and his team are working on a whole different stratosphere than most designers. They regularly get to work on what most designers would consider dream projects, not projects that your regular graphic designer such as myself get to work on very often. The volume of high caliber work Pentagram produces is unattainable to the average designer. And with the increasing democratization of design through accessibility of software, pre-made templates and crowdsourcing, it may be that no one will work in this way in the future.

That said, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. And let’s not forget from where we came as an industry. Graphic Design as an industry still has value in 2023. And this great book is a must read for every level of designer!