🟧 YC Design Resources
Length: • 2 mins
Annotated by Happy Joy
This is for any design-curious founders interested in leveling up.
It’s my personal list of design resources I've kept over the years. All the shiny and cool stuff you see on tech design Twitter was almost assuredly influenced by the following:
Watch
- Helvetica
- Objectified
- Exit Through the Gift Shop
- Eames: The Architect & The Painter
- Abstract: The Art of Design
Books
- Megg’s History of Graphic Design
- Graphic Design School
- Graphic Design Referenced
- How to Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul
- Thinking with Type
- Making and Breaking the Grid: A Graphic Design Layout Workshop
- The Elements of Typographic Style
- The Art of Looking Sideways
- Steal Like an Artist
- Design Is a Job
- Information Is Beautiful
- Logo Design Love
- Do Good Design
- Work for Money, Design for Love
- The Design of Everyday Things
Design guides
- Apple Human Interface Guidelines (https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines)
- Google Material Design (https://material.io)
- Microsoft Fluent Design System (https://fluent2.microsoft.design)
- IBM Carbon Design System (https://carbondesignsystem.com)
- Atlassian Design System (https://atlassian.design)
- Salesforce Lightning Design System (https://www.lightningdesignsystem.com)
- Shopify Polaris (https://polaris.shopify.com)
- Adobe Spectrum (https://spectrum.adobe.com)
- GOV.UK Design System (https://design-system.service.gov.uk)
- US Web Design System (USWDS) (https://designsystem.digital.gov)
- NHS Service Manual and Design System (https://service-manual.nhs.uk)
- W3C WCAG (https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag)
- WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices (https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg)
- Inclusive Design Principles (https://inclusivedesignprinciples.org)
- Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit (https://inclusive.microsoft.design)
- Ant Design (https://ant.design)
Notable designers to follow
Graphic / identity
- Paul Rand
- Saul Bass
- Massimo Vignelli
- Milton Glaser
- Michael Bierut
- Paula Scher
- Stefan Sagmeister
- Jessica Walsh
- Neville Brody
- April Greiman
- Ivan Chermayeff
- Tom Geismar
- Sagi Haviv
- Michael Johnson
Typography
- Erik Spiekermann
- Jonathan Hoefler
- Tobias Frere-Jones
- Matthew Carter
- Zuzana Licko
- Adrian Frutiger
- Hermann Zapf
Product / industrial
- Dieter Rams
- Charles & Ray Eames
- Jony Ive
- Alan Dye
- Yves Béhar
- Naoto Fukasawa
- Jasper Morrison
- Marc Newson
- Oki Sato (nendo)
- Hella Jongerius
- Patricia Urquiola
- Tinker Hatfield
Interaction / UX
- Don Norman
- Alan Cooper
- John Maeda
- Susan Kare
- Bret Victor
- Luke Wroblewski
- Julie Zhuo
- Irene Au
- Golden Krishna
- Brenda Laurel
Trusted design research groups
- IDEO (https://www.ideo.com)
- Nielsen Norman Group (https://www.nngroup.com)
- NHS Service Manual (https://service-manual.nhs.uk)
- MeasuringU (https://measuringu.com)
- Baymard Institute (https://baymard.com)
- Interaction Design Foundation (https://www.interaction-design.org)
Podcasts
- Design Matters with Debbie Millman (https://designmattersmedia.com)
- 99% Invisible (https://99percentinvisible.org)
- Design Better (https://designbetter.co/podcast)
- Clever (https://www.cleverpodcast.com)
You can also join the Bookface YC Alumni Design Group or the Telegram YC Alumni Design Group for more of this type of content!
PS - If you need design help, use NUMI’s YC Deal...and yes, we’re the same guys who just launched @Flowglad; so if you need infinite pricing models, one source of truth, zero webhooks relating to payments and billing, peep that YC Deal too :)
