Design
Principles
- Dieter Rams: 10 Principles for Good Design — the Braun canon
Identity & Graphic Standards
- NASA Graphics Standards Manual (1975) — the worm era; Standards Manual reprint
- NYC Transit Authority Graphics Standards Manual — Vignelli / Unimark International; Standards Manual reprint
- Standards Manual — independent publisher reprinting classic identity systems as physical books
- LogoArchive Shop — original vintage brand guidelines for sale; mid-century corporate identity programmes
- Letterform Archive Online — 3,500+ digitised design artefacts, type specimens, posters, ephemera
Type Specimens
- 1923 ATF Specimen Book & Catalogue (Hi-Res) — the definitive American Type Founders catalog
- 1912 American Specimen Book — 1,096 pages; full ATF catalog including machinery
- 1898 ATF Desk Book — borders, ornaments, brass rule; oldest of the ATF books
- Specimen Book of Linotype Faces — Mergenthaler Linotype Company
- IBM Plex Mono — IBM's open-source typeface; clean monospace specimen
Design Archives & Inspiration
- Are.na — where serious design people collect references; search "brutalist typography", "xerox", "Swiss grid"
- Emigre Magazine Archive — experimental typography journal; important for the intentional-ugly tradition
- Monoskop — Swiss Graphic Design — scanned PDFs of Swiss poster and print design
- Monoskop — Typography — Swiss typography books and design theory
- TM Research Archive — Typographische Monatsblätter covers; some of the best typographic reference available
- Design Is History — clean design history reference
Books to Order
- Type: A Visual History Vol. 1 & 2 — Taschen — reprinted specimen sheets 1628–1938; not commentary
- Grid Systems in Graphic Design — Müller-Brockmann — the Swiss grid bible
- Typographie — Emil Ruder — Swiss modernism; reads like a technical manual
- The New Typography — Jan Tschichold — rational layout principles from the 1920s
- Asymmetric Typography — Jan Tschichold — practical companion to The New Typography
- An Atlas of Typeforms — Sutton & Bartram — dense catalog-style type reference
Reading / Writing Vocabulary
- Capitalist Realism — Mark Fisher — short; gives you vocabulary around media and aesthetics
- Understanding Media — Marshall McLuhan — foundational for thinking and writing about media
- Mythologies — Roland Barthes — short essays; usable vocabulary for describing culture and design
- The Society of the Spectacle — Guy Debord — language around image and representation
Creative Tools
Access the Web
- 12ft Ladder — bypass paywalls
- Bionic Reading — reading assistance
- uBlock Origin — ad blocker
Privacy
- Privacy Guides — community guide
- Have I Been Pwned — breach check
- ToS;DR — Terms of Service summaries
Personal Web
- 32-Bit Cafe — web community
- Melonland — forum and directory
- GifCities — GIF search