#10/111: The Non-Designer’s Design Book

What is it about?

Robin Williams explains four simple rules to create better and clearer designs. She explains each rule with examples and uses these examples in other categories like color or typography.

Key points?

Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity and don’t be a wimp. Proximity means that you should group relevant information together. If you use contrast it is important that you aren’t a wimp. Use hard contrast like black and white or big font size and very small font size.

Conclusion

The Non-Designer’s Design Book is a pretty cool introduction book in design. It shows the main patterns of good design. Surprisingly you are going to see each of this pattern everywhere. I tell you, I’m dammed!

#9/111: :59 Seconds

What is it about?

Prof Wiseman writes about a lot of psychological misconceptions in various topics like creativity, relationships or happiness. For each of these topics he cities scientific studies, busts old myths and gives valuable tips.

Key points?

There is many great material in this book, so here is an example. You want to come up with a creative solution to a problem: You can brainstorm with a group, brainstorm alone or solve a hard word puzzle. Which one will you take? If you believe in scientific studies, the last one. Researchers have shown that brainstorming in groups decreases the quality and quantity of ideas. The best way is ask your subconsciousness. But how?

Think about your problem for some seconds. Now you have to distract your consciousness mind. E.g. try to solve a hard word puzzle. If you have finished think another some seconds about your problem and write down your solutions.

Conclusion

This book is just tremendous. There is so much actionable advice in this book about a bunch of different topics. The best thing: This advice got a scientific background, it is not just happy world advice. Furthermore, Richard Wiseman cities studies which shows that a lot of this self-help literature is not helping at all or is actually worsening the situation.

#8/111: Baked In

What is it about?

Bogusky and Winsor shows different examples for merging your product and its marketing. They present how innovation changed companies and how to improve collaboration between companies silos.

Key points?

Do not disconnect marketing and product development. The product itself should be your marketing instrument, e.g. Apple’s Ipod.

Conclusion

This book offers some great examples of innovating your product and explains how you can overcome these barriers in bigger companies. Although there are some nice inspirations for companies of every size. For example, try the opposite of the status-quo: If they build big, build small (e.g. cars). Or sacrificing instead of adding features.

In conclusion, I really like Baked In because it presents you a lot of actionable possibilities to improve your product.

#7/111: The New Rules of Marketing & PR

What is it about?

In the first half of this book, David Meerman Scott explains different platforms, e.g. blogs, news releases or social networking. In the second half he writes about planning your marketing strategy and tips for execute them on these platforms.

Key points?

Segment your customers. Do not try to sell your product instead try to help your (prospective) customer. Give away valuable content and establish a relationship to your online community.

Conclusion

The first half is not that interesting for people who are not so new to the web. The second half includes some nice ideas. E.g. customer persona, i.e. you take one individual of your market segment and build a story for this individual. Also tips on individual topics like getting press coverage are quite useful.