A Reading Guide For Designers Who Want To Write

We asked prominent designers and design writers to select the best books and essays for designers who want to hone their writing skills.

The 2017 Design In Tech Report, John Maeda’s influential industry overview, lists writing as a key design skill. There are several reasons why. With the rise of chatbots and artificial intelligence, the success or failure of a software product increasingly falls to interface copy–the text with which a user interacts. In a more general sense, design is about communicating ideas, and writing can help clarify your thoughts. To paraphrase George Orwell: Write well, think well.

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One problem: Few designers are trained to write. Or the training is so rudimentary, it’s largely useless in a professional setting. Luckily, the best way to get better at writing is to do something you already do every day: read.

We asked designers and design writers to recommend books and essays for designers who want to sharpen their writing skills, whether to write books, work on interface copy or just tap out better emails. This is not a comprehensive list, nor do we suggest that by reading these, you will miraculously become the design world’s very own Jonathan Franzen. It’s a place to start. And if there’s a larger takeaway, it’s that quality and quantity matter. As Newyorker.com contributing writer Nicola Twilley tells us in an email: “You have to read, and read a lot, before you can hope to write well. How else will you know what good writing even is, let alone be able to create it yourself?”

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