15 Smart Design Books to Inspire You in 2015

Shooting Space: Architecture in Contemporary Photography explores the long, often symbiotic, relationship between architects and photographers. Bas Princen's subject of choice were monolithic structures like this Dubai cooling plant. Read more here. Bas Princen

Shooting Space: Architecture in Contemporary Photography explores the long, often symbiotic, relationship between architects and photographers. Bas Princen's subject of choice were monolithic structures like this Dubai cooling plant. Read more here.

Bas Princen

Instead of featuring famous skyscrapers and monuments, Imagine Architecture: Artistic Visions of the Urban Realm is filled with upside down apartment flats, levitating houses, and skyscrapers made of clouds. It's a quixotic branch of architecture: the kind that's only imagined. Dionisio González, from Imagine Architecture, Gestalten 2014

Instead of featuring famous skyscrapers and monuments, Imagine Architecture: Artistic Visions of the Urban Realm is filled with upside down apartment flats, levitating houses, and skyscrapers made of clouds. It's a quixotic branch of architecture: the kind that's only imagined. Dionisio González, from Imagine Architecture, Gestalten 2014

Collector's Editions documents the rise in elaborate collector's edition packaging that's happened as young designers combine digital and analog craft techniques. For The National's latest album, Trouble Will Find Me (seen here), the band adapted an image from a performance piece by Korean artist Bohyun Yoon. See more editions here. Ivan Jones

Collector's Editions documents the rise in elaborate collector's edition packaging that's happened as young designers combine digital and analog craft techniques. For The National's latest album, Trouble Will Find Me (seen here), the band adapted an image from a performance piece by Korean artist Bohyun Yoon. See more editions here.

Ivan Jones

Before Instagram existed, photo-takers could capture tinted filters and light leaks with cheap toy cameras, often manufactured to market movies or companies. Camera Crazy features dozens of such cameras. Check out more cameras here. J.K. Putnam

Before Instagram existed, photo-takers could capture tinted filters and light leaks with cheap toy cameras, often manufactured to market movies or companies. Camera Crazy features dozens of such cameras. Check out more cameras here.

J.K. Putnam

Variations On Normal is like a pint-sized sketchbook of contraptions, all sprung from designer Dominic Wilcox’s puckish, fertile imagination---square peas, anyone? More here. Dominic Wilcox

Variations On Normal is like a pint-sized sketchbook of contraptions, all sprung from designer Dominic Wilcox’s puckish, fertile imagination---square peas, anyone? More here.

Dominic Wilcox

These days, it seems like every other person is trying to launch a new app. That kind of entrepreneurial fever isn't so new: Inventions That Didn’t Change the World is a collection of Victorian era design ideas that didn't quite see the light of day. More would-be inventions here. The National Archives, London, England 2014. © 2014 Crown Copyright

These days, it seems like every other person is trying to launch a new app. That kind of entrepreneurial fever isn't so new: Inventions That Didn’t Change the World is a collection of Victorian era design ideas that didn't quite see the light of day. More would-be inventions here.

The National Archives, London, England 2014. © 2014 Crown Copyright

TM: The Untold Stories Behind 29 Classic Logos is brimming with fun historical graphic design facts. Such as: the CBS eye logo was inspired by a mid-19th century Shaker religious drawing. Read more here. Courtesy of Laurence King Publishing

TM: The Untold Stories Behind 29 Classic Logos is brimming with fun historical graphic design facts. Such as: the CBS eye logo was inspired by a mid-19th century Shaker religious drawing. Read more here.

Courtesy of Laurence King Publishing

Midcentury industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss pioneered the idea of designing for users. For an exhibit at the newly opened Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, designer Ellen Lupton curated Dreyfuss's charts and thoughts on ergonomics in Beautiful Users . Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Midcentury industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss pioneered the idea of designing for users. For an exhibit at the newly opened Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, designer Ellen Lupton curated Dreyfuss's charts and thoughts on ergonomics in Beautiful Users .

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Tiki Pop: America Conjures Up Its Own Polynesian Paradise looks at the peculiar Tiki design aesthetic that made rattan furniture and tropical drinks all the rage of the 1960s. More Tiki trivia here. Taschen

Tiki Pop: America Conjures Up Its Own Polynesian Paradise looks at the peculiar Tiki design aesthetic that made rattan furniture and tropical drinks all the rage of the 1960s. More Tiki trivia here.

Taschen

Sometimes the most staggeringly beautiful designs have humble origins. Horn Please chronicles the bus drivers on the Grand Trunk Road in India. The drivers essentially live in their buses, so each one gets lovingly decorated, like a home. More images here. Dan Eckstein

Sometimes the most staggeringly beautiful designs have humble origins. Horn Please chronicles the bus drivers on the Grand Trunk Road in India. The drivers essentially live in their buses, so each one gets lovingly decorated, like a home. More images here.

Dan Eckstein

MoMA unveiled an ambitious exhibit this year. In Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Growing Megacities the museum invited six teams of architects, urban planners, and researchers to propose urban planning solutions for future mega-cities. Curator Pedro Gadanho's book provides a closer look at the proposals. See more urban planning ideas here. Courtesy NLE and Zoohaus/Inteligencias Colectivas and MoMA

MoMA unveiled an ambitious exhibit this year. In Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Growing Megacities the museum invited six teams of architects, urban planners, and researchers to propose urban planning solutions for future mega-cities. Curator Pedro Gadanho's book provides a closer look at the proposals. See more urban planning ideas here.

Courtesy NLE and Zoohaus/Inteligencias Colectivas and MoMA

Working On My Novel isn't technically a book about design, but the spare and witty book could only have come from a designer: New York artist Cory Arcangel had to write a bit of code to properly mine Twitter for the best tweets containing “working on my novel.” It’s a pithy take on the nature of creativity. More tweets here. Cory Arcangel

Working On My Novel isn't technically a book about design, but the spare and witty book could only have come from a designer: New York artist Cory Arcangel had to write a bit of code to properly mine Twitter for the best tweets containing “working on my novel.” It’s a pithy take on the nature of creativity. More tweets here.

Cory Arcangel

Another children and parent pleaser: The op art works of 1970s psychedelic artist Victor Vasarely become three-dimensional in the colorful Pop-Up Op-Art: Vasarely . Prestel

Another children and parent pleaser: The op art works of 1970s psychedelic artist Victor Vasarely become three-dimensional in the colorful Pop-Up Op-Art: Vasarely .

Prestel

Design was still a budding industry when some of the most iconic album art---think the cover of The Beatles's Revolver---hit stands. Rock Covers tells the stories behind 250 of them. Taschen

Design was still a budding industry when some of the most iconic album art---think the cover of The Beatles's Revolver---hit stands. Rock Covers tells the stories behind 250 of them.

Taschen

German photographer Herlinde Koelbl traveled to 30 countries and visited military camps to photograph the shooting targets used around the world. The sometimes eerie, sometime comical results are compiled in Targets . See more here. Herlinde Koelbl

German photographer Herlinde Koelbl traveled to 30 countries and visited military camps to photograph the shooting targets used around the world. The sometimes eerie, sometime comical results are compiled in Targets . See more here.

Herlinde Koelbl