Dave Gray's reading list

Advanced Presentations by Design: Creating Communication that Drives Action

by Andrew Abela

Andrew Abela has scrupulously surveyed any and all research that pertains to presentation design and has compiled it in this excellent and very readable book. Every principle he describes is supported by scientific research and the advice he offers is excellent. This is the best book I am aware of that focuses on applying research-based principles to presentation design.

The Art Spirit

By Robert Henri

Robert Henri was a member of the Ashcan School, an American painting movement from the early 20th Century. He was also one of the most inspiring painting teachers in history.

This is a great book from a great teacher. It's inspiring, and if you want to learn to paint, it also has many practical tips.

The Back of the Napkin

by Dan Roam

Dan Roam has burst on the scene with this bestselling book on visual thinking. He does a great job of showing how you can use sketching and visual thinking to convey complex or potentially confusing ideas clearly and visually.

The Backchannel

by Cliff Atkinson

Social media is changing the way people interact everywhere, including at conferences. If you're a presenter, the ideas in this book will help you understand the social media backchannel so you can leverage its strengths and avoid fatal mistakes. Social media is a two-edged sword. Make sure you wield it wisely and don't get cut!

Beyond Bullet Points

by Cliff Atkinson

Cliff Atkinson is one of the most sought-after consultants in the legal world -- he helps lawyers make PowerPoint presentations for high-profile legal cases, and his services are very expensive. But now you can get his advice in book form. An excellent book with many practical tips, tools and examples.

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School

by John J. Medina

John Medina is a rare thing: a brain researcher who is also a lively writer and great speaker. In this book he lays out 12 "brain rules" that I found highly informative -- and they stimulated a lot of good thinking. His points are backed up by research and made vivid with many fascinating stories which drive them home and make them memorable. In other words, he practices what he preaches, and has written a very brain-friendly book that will help you learn and present information better. A really valuable read for teachers, managers or anyone who is involved in presenting information.



There's a version which comes with an accompanying DVD, which is also excellent.

Colin Ware

Colin Ware is the Director of the Data Visualization Research Lab at the University of New Hampshire. His books are a great resource if you want to understand how the brain processes visual information.

Ware is focused on both research and practical application, and his books offer a wealth of information that will be useful for any information designer.

Dictionary of Symbols

By Carl G. Liungman

This excellent book is a broad-ranging reference that contains more then 2,000 symbols used in western civilization, from ancient societies until today. Special features of this book include a visual index to identify and find symbols visually, and some excellent appendices, which include insights from the author that by themselves are worth the price of the book.

Donald A. Norman

Guru of usability

Donald A. Norman is a former Apple fellow and champion of user-centered design. The principles he discusses and advocates will help you see how to make your designs easier for people to understand, think with, and work with.

Ed Emberly

Simple visual vocabulary for drawing anything

Ed Emberly shows you how to use simple shapes like boxes, circles, lines and squiggles to draw nearly anything. These books are primarily aimed at children but they are also a fantastic resource for those who want to look like a star at the flip chart or whiteboard.

But the best is when you make them do double-duty: If you have kids you can explore the Ed Emberly books together. Your kids will have fun drawing and you will learn together -- then when you show up at work you'll be a whiteboard superstar!

Edward Tufte

The Gallileo of graphics; the Da Vinci of Data

Edward Tufte is one of the most influential thinkers in information visualization. He's the one who inspired me to get into this business in the first place. His books are elegant, thought-provoking and visually stunning.

I recommend the entire set.

E. H. Gombrich

E. H. Gombrich was an Austrian-born art historian who spent most of his life in the UK. One of his books, The Story of Art, was and is a standard text in Art History. But Gombrich goes far beyond art history and has written extensively, and influentially, on art, cognition and perception.



He writes with elegance and wit, and although he is an academic, his work is very accessible to the lay reader.

The Elements of Typographic Style

By Robert Bringhurst

The best book on Typography I have ever read. Beautiful and lucidly written, it's not so much an introductory book as a thorough exploration of type. This book will help you understand the history of typography from the 1400's till today, and if you read it carefully, by the time you finish you will have a love for typography that will never be extinguished. It happened to me.

Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making

by Sam Kaner, Lenny Lind, Catherine Toldi, Sarah Fisk and Duane Berger

A great book if you facilitate meetings, or if you want to gain a better understanding of group dynamics. You'll gain a better understanding of what goes wrong in so many meetings, why it happens and what you can do about it. The book also has many practical tips and is designed for easy photocopying so you can share the ideas more easily in your meetings.

First Drawings: Genesis of Visual Thinking

By Sylvia Fein

An excellent book that examines how we represent thoughts visually. Lots of visual comparisons of children's drawings and drawings from ancient societies. A great demonstration of how images, thoughts and world views evolve together. With a foreword by Rudolf Arnheim.

GLUT

by Alex Wright

This book is a fascinating journey through the history of how humans classify ideas, starting before the written word was invented and continuing through the present. This book will help you understand why organizing information is so important, and how we have done it through the ages.

It's an amazing book -- I quote from it and refer back to it all the time.

Hare Brain Tortoise Mind

By Guy Claxton

I love this book. If you want to understand current research into brain science, this book has a lot of examples and the studies are well-described and well-cited. The author also does a great job of pulling them together. The book's main premise is that there are "kinds of mind" that are conducive to different kinds of thought.

This book is a rare combination: Scientifically based and intuitively true.

Information Rules

By Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian

This is one of the best books that I have ever read on how the information economy works. It takes an historical look at networks, and how network-oriented businesses evolve over time, by looking at the history of other network-oriented businesses like the electricity and railroad businesses.

This is a dense book, which takes some time to read, but well worth it for the insights it will deliver. The lessons of history are more valid today than ever.

James Elkins

James Elkins is another great art teacher who currently teaches at the Art Institute of Chicago. His books are provocative, thought-provoking and mercurial -- and fun to read.

Kurt Hanks

Don't miss these hands-on, practical how-to guides from Kurt Hanks. Hanks is a consultant and "interpretive designer" who is focused on rapidly visualizing ideas rather than drawing for art's sake. If you want to hone the skills you will need to draw like an architect or product designer, Hanks is your guy -- and his books are fantastic, with lots of images and examples.

Language in Thought and Action

By S. I. Hayakawa

A thoughtful and illuminating book on language and its power to persuade and manipulate. In this educational and cautionary, tome, S. I. Hayakawa -- not only an author but also a U. S. Senator -- shows how language works, how it shapes our thinking, and also how it can be manipulated.

This is a book that will change the way you "think about thinking." It has helped me understand my own mind, which is a lot to say about a book. Hayakawa also offers some thoughts that can help clarify why it's so easy to fall into "two-party thinking" and offers some ideas about how we can escape that trap.

A good book to read before voting!

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

by Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos Papadimitriou

The story of logic, told in comic form. A wonderful, layered, full-color historical graphic novel about the story of logic, built mainly around the life and thought of the philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell. A prominent and surprising (to me) theme is the surprising relationship between the search for truth and madness. Be warned!

Management of the Absurd

by Richard Farson

One of the best books on management I have ever read. The author is clearly an experienced manager and makes the point that "one size fits all" management rules are ridiculous; that management is complex and situational. He makes his points with stories and examples. A great read for any manager.

Marginalia

By H. J. Jackson

An interesting and very readable anthropological history of "readers writing in books." Why do people write in books? When did the practice begin? How has it changed throughout history? What are some of the common themes?

In a kind of archaeological investigation, the author examines hundreds of books in libraries around the world and discovers some interesting social patterns and behaviors.

Not for everyone, but a great read for bibliophiles who like to mark up their books and want to understand the phenomenon in greater depth.

A side note: As I read my copy, I tried out every annotation method described by the author, so my copy of this book has been marked, folded, starred and underlined more than any other book I own :)

Metaphors We Live By

by Goeorge Lakoff and Mark Johnson

An important book about how we use metaphor not just to make comparisons but to organize our thoughts. The authors argue -- and demonstrate -- that metaphor is a mechanism of mind, embedded in our thought and language.

The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting

By Michael J. Hiscox and Mai-mai Sze

This book was written about 300 years ago as an instruction manual for Chinese artists. It has helped me understand some of the differences in "seeing" between eastern and western cultures.

By all accounts this is a terrible translation, but since I don't read Chinese I wasn't overly disturbed.

Some food for thought though: Written Chinese is an ideographic language; that is, it's not tied to phonetics but to ideas, which are represented visually. Even though I can't read or write Chinese, I am certain that language is deeply tied to thought.

In China, I suspect, learning to read/write and learning to draw are more closely linked than they are in the west.

Like Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language, this book is very browsable, and a great window into another way of seeing the world.

Multimedia Learning

By Richard Mayer

If you are interested in the research that supports visual learning, this is a great place to start. It's written by a researcher from UC Santa Barbara, and it's very clear, succinct and easy to read (A rare combination).

Mayer's principles, if applied, will help you dramatically improve your PowerPoint presentations. Many of today's "PowerPoint gurus" use it as their bible and reference it often. The research and principles in this book form the foundation for Cliff Atkinson's Beyond Bullet Points method for creating effective presentations.

The Natural Way to Draw: A Working Plan for Art Study

by Kimon Nicolaides

I've been drawing all my life, but this was one of the most influential books of my childhood art study. The book was recommended to me by an art teacher and I spent countless hours working through the exercises. It was my first serious self-study in any subject for that matter. Nicolaides prescribes a very rigorous set of exercises from minutes to hours long (375 hours in total). He's quite adamant about the times but I found that if I practiced the exercises without adhering to his drill-sergeant schedule things still turned out fine. Use the book as it makes sense to you and if you want to improve your drawing, and you work hard, you will reap some great rewards :)

A New Kind of Science

by Stephen Wolfram

A fascinating tome that develops a new framework for exploring and understanding the world. Like Euclid, Wolfram builds a new framework from scratch, using visual elements to simulate and explore complex phenomena.

It's thicker than a phone book and not for the timid, but rewarding to thumb through. But don't drop it on your foot or you might break a toe :)

Painting and Reality

By Etienne Gilson

This is perhaps more of a philosophy book than a book on painting. Nevertheless it changed the way I think about art. It's not an easy read but it's ideas are original and thought-provoking.

A Pattern Language

By Christopher Alexander

Christopher Alexander is a maverick and innovative architect. In this book he explores the patterns of life and building. The book is a catalog that moves from the very macro -- socio-political patterns -- to the micro -- patterns for joining beams.

But the patterns in the middle are the ones I find most fascinating. Patterns like "Common Areas at the Heart" and "Flexible Office Space."

This is a book built for browsing rather than reading. Not only has this book brought me much joy, it has inspired many software designers and architects: Patterns are now considered an essential concept in software design.

Pedagogical Sketchbook

By Paul Klee

A classic and quirky book from another great artist and art teacher. Taken the notes that Paul Klee used to teach his students at the Bauhaus, this small, highly illustrated volume seems simple on the surface but rewards careful and repeated reading.

Picasso on Art

Edited by Dore Ashton

The master artist speaks out on life, love, creativity, art and just about everything else you can imagine. This is one of those books that is always a joy to open and always delivers a jolt to the imagination.

It's organized by theme, so it's never difficult to find a quote that will help you break out of a creative slump.

I keep it within arm's reach of my desk and travel with it often.

Presentation Zen

by Garr Reynolds

Garr Reynold's blog, Presentation Zen, is the most respected source on the internet for presentation advice, and his reputation is well-deserved. Now his advice is clearly and beautifully collated into an excellent book. This one is not to be missed.

Proust was a Neuroscientist

By Jonah Lehrer

This is a must-read. Lehrer explores every sense perception from both an artistic and scientific perspective. Each chapter takes a different aspect of neurology and perception and shows how science and intuition go hand-in-hand -- and in his hands they complement each other beautifully.

Using great creative minds such as Walt Whitman (Feeling), Marcel Proust (Memory), Paul Cezanne (Sight), Gertrude Stein (Language) and others as examples, he demonstrates that many current neurological discoveries were anticipated by the artists of the past.

A wonderful, sweeping and harmonic work.

Rapid Problem-Solving with Post-it Notes

By David Straker

This great little book is written by a former internal consultant at Hewlett-Packard and has served as the foundation for many of XPLANE's consultative methods. It's full of simple, easy-to-understand drawings and "recipes" that will help you use sticky-notes to solve problems visually, in collaboration with others. I refer to it often.

Robert McKim

Robert McKim helped start a cross-disciplinary visual thinking Stanford program in the 1960's -- a program that influenced many silicon valley pioneers, including people at XEROC PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), where the modern computer interface was invented (mouse, graphical user interface, windows and so on). His books are excellent with lots of visuals and very practical techniques and applications.

Scott McCloud

Scott McCloud does for comics what Marshall McLuhan did for the medium of television. Using the medium to explain the medium. I follow his explorations with excitement and anticipation. All of the works below are excellent, each explaining and exploring a different facet of this versatile medium.

Search Patterns

by Peter Morville and Jeffrey Callender

It's not often that I come across a book that asks deep and profound questions about a fundamental human activity, and then proceeds to explore and answer those questions with real, practical observations and suggestions. Morville and Callender are the Lewis and Clark of search: they explore new territory and come back with thought-provoking observations and discoveries. "Search Patterns" is an expedition into the heart of the web and human cognition, and for me it was a delightful journey that delivered scores of insights.

Slide:ology

by Nancy Duarte

This wonderful book by Nancy Duarte -- the woman who does Al Gore's presentations -- will help you improve your presentations dramatically. A great read.

Small Pieces Loosely Joined

By David Weinberger

Some have called David Weinberger "Marshall McLuhan for the Web" and I agree. This short, very readable book does a great job of analyzing the web as a medium for communication and exchanging ideas. One of the best books I've seen on the internet as media.

Space and Place

By Yi-Fu Tuan

An amazing but little-known work on human geography, that is, how humans understand and operate in physical space. Although the book was written in the sixties it has many implications when considering online experience.

Yi-Fu Tuan explores concepts of space, including home, neighborhood and how we experience places in time and across different cultures.

One of my favorite books.

Thinking Visually: Business Applications of 14 Core Diagrams

By Malcolm Craig

This little-known book is a real gem. Malcolm Craig offers a brilliant introduction to some basic diagrams and how they can be used to solve business problems. He's got numerous examples and case studies, but this is not a simple book. Any time you spend with it will be truly rewarded. My copy is completely covered with notations, drawings and underlining, and I will never loan it to anyone or let it out of my hands for any reason.

The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down To Size

by Tor Norretranders

This mind-bending book by Danish science writer Tor Norretranders will change your thinking forever about the mind and how we think. There's a lot of research here and by about halfway through the book, you will realize how and why we actually make up most of what we experience.

The varsity pen

My current favorite pen

I love a good pen and I have always liked fountain pens for the luxurious feeling they give you as they lay down ink on a page. But they are so damn expensive! I tend to lose pens, or else my friends "borrow" them or they somehow walk away from my desk when I am away. A good pen seems to disappear so easily.

But now Pilot has come up with a disposable fountain pen, and I love it. It's my new favorite. Buy one and you won't have to steal mine :)

Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See

by Donald Hoffman

In this book, Donald Hoffman shows that vision is not merely a sensory input, but a method by which we create what we see. The book is packed with diagrams and visual demonstrations that help explain this not-so-intuitive concept. He shares 35 "rules of vision" that scientists believe we use to make sense of our environment

Visual Language

By Bob Horn

This book is written by my friend and mentor Bob Horn, and I liked his book so much that my company, XPLANE, decided to reprint it. Bob believes as I do that visual language is the global language of the future, and to prove the point he wrote his entire book using clip art. It might be a little daunting at first, but a deep read will offer many insights.

Visual Language for Designers: Principles for Creating Graphics that People Understand

by Connie Malamed

This is a beautiful and helpful book for any information designer who wants to improve their practice. Connie Malamed has a background in art as well as cognitive science, and she offers many research-based principles for information design, supported by numerous examples. This book is great for study or just for leafing through.

Visual Thinking

By Rudolph Arnheim

This is the classic book that started it all for me. Former Harvard professor Rudolph Arnheim has studied the psychology of art and makes an argument that vision and thinking are inextricably linked -- that seeing IS thinking. It's a groundbreaking book. Written in 1969, but still relevant today.

The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics: The Dos and Don'ts of Presenting Data, Facts, and Figures

by Dona Wong

The Wall Street Journal is known for its excellent information graphics, especially when it comes to representing data. Now WSJ graphics director Dona Wong shares the secret sauce in this excellent book. I especially like her "Do and don't's" examples. If you want a book to keep handy on your desktop to help you make better charts and graphs -- and avoid the worst mistakes -- this is the one.

You are the Message

by Roger Ailes

One of my favorite books on how to present yourself, by Fox News president Roger Ailes. He was also a media consultant/speech coach for Ronald Reagan, Rudolph Giuliani and others. Great advice for any presenter -- and even more useful if you are in the public eye.