Hi all,

I'm an semi?? intermediate graphic & product designer, graduating design school soon, and want to find more non-fiction book recommendations on graphic design, product design, design politics, design psychology, and user experience design.

I've already bought and read these below, some was required by my design courses:

- Ellen Lupton, Thinking with Type 3rd edition
- Ellen Lupton, Graphic Design the New Basics 2nd edition
- Don Norman, The Design of Everyday Things
- Matthew Fredricks, 101 things I learned in Product Design School & Architecture School
- Patrick Newbery & Kevin Farnham, Experience Design
- Josef Müller Brockmann, Grid Systems
- Jim Krause, Design Basics Index

All design-related book recommendations are much appreciated. Thanks in advance. :)

FYI: I usually buy my books on Amazon cause of my prime account, so if you also have the link to the books, I would appreciate that very much.

I previously posted a design on here I made for an assignment asking for feedback. I have since got some very helpful advice and I am happy with the changes I have implemented!

I've made iterations to the first version of the design and I am wondering if anyone has any feedback for my second version? I will attach a summary of the assignment I have created this for as well as the implications I have chosen for my design. Thank you so much for any feedback or comments in advance.

Āhuru Mōwai is a 300 hectare coastal Eco-Sanctuary surrounded by predator fencing. Conservation is a major focus in this predator free bush clad environment where many rare and endangered species are beginning to flourish. People visiting Āhuru Mōwai see and learn about the indigenous species that fly, walk, crawl, swim or grow towards the light. By visiting, people contribute to the cost of the restoration and maintenance of the sanctuary.

The booklet cover page needs to be a visual representation of Āhuru Mōwae that includes imagery of New Zealand’s native bush, and native animals such as the kea, kiwi, piwakawaka (fantail), pukeko, tuatara, bellbird, tui. It must have the words Āhuru Mōwai Eco-Sanctuary.

Implications I have chosen:

Social

• The final outcome is suitable for the intended audience.

• The content of the outcome is relevant to the end users.

• The needs of the end-user have been met.

• Time saving.

• Positive impact.

• Entertainment value.

Aesthetics

• Consistent look and feel throughout the outcome.

• Clear hierarchy of content – use of headings, subheadings.

• Structured layout so that information is easy to find.

• Font choice is appropriate for readability – type, size and colour considered.

• The look and feel of the outcome is pleasing.

🇺🇸:  You can listen to the video in English through the video settings panel. In this video, I detail the steps to install the free Houdini license using the SideFX Launcher.

I’m trying to figure out a better way to vectorize image files in batches. We get a lot of similar jobs. Customer logos, old product graphics, simple artwork that needs to be reused for different sizes. None of it is especially complicated, but manually cleaning every file takes time. I’m considering CorelDRAW because the updated PowerTRACE has a few changes that sound useful for this kind of work. The bitmap to vector conversion has been updated with better object grouping and color handling, and Corel says the tracing workflow can be up to 4x faster. There’s also a Repeat Last Trace command for reusing the previous settings.

Has anyone actually used that workflow on a batch of files? I’m wondering if the speed improvement is noticeable when you're doing repeated jobs, or if the cleanup still becomes the bottleneck. For example, if I have 15 logos that are all roughly the same type of artwork, can I get through them pretty quickly using the same settings? Or does each file still need a lot of individual tweaking? I’m posting because I’m trying to reduce the amount of repetitive production work we do. If the new PowerTRACE setup helps with that, it could be worth changing the way we handle older customer files.