Please Make This Look Nice: The Graphic Design Process

Equal parts design inspiration and manual, Please Make This Look Nice combines interviews, writings, case studies, and personal ephemera from celebrated designers into a solid primer for designers and design enthusiasts alike. Please Make This Look Nice is a behind-the-scenes look at the graphic design process of more than fifty graphic designers, typographers, and studios from around the world. Hundreds of never-before-seen images mined from their archives are woven together with first-hand observations, resulting in a rich and diverse perspective on the nature of making. A must-have for students, devotees, and practicing designers, it expands the most basic understanding of graphic design—how it gets made and its effect on the modern world. Celebrated graphic design contributors including Maira Kalman, Milton Glaser, Michael Bierut, Experimental Jetset, Carin Goldberg, Ivan Chermayeff & Tom Geismar, Paul Sahre, and Stefan Sagmeister, as well as emerging design stars share their far-ranging insights and personal means of finding inspiration. Kalman advises on the importance of journals and walking; Sagmeister meditates on his desire to find, define, and create beauty in a world defined by efficiency; Bierut speaks to the existence of many possible solutions to a single design problem as well as how his own process developed in response to his mentor Massimo Vignelli; and Ed Fella encourages designers to experiment, innovate, and discover a personal methodology unique to their own criteria, interests, and values. Please Make This Look Nice is sure to appeal to type and graphic design professionals, students, and design fans alike.

Peter Ahlberg is a designer and principal/creative director of AHL&CO. He teaches graphic design and visual/critical studies at the School of Visual Arts, New York.