Creating a unique value for your customers is crucial if you want to differentiate in an overcrowded market. To do so, you need to define a powerful strategy that determines consistent action across your organisation to deliver your unique flavour. Szóstek describes this strategy as umami, which is the fifth category of taste (besides sweet, sour, salt and bitter), and gives an exceptional flavour to your food.

How do you build a powerful yet actionable strategy, and successfully implement i...

My Icon Library is an essential collection of impactful images that will empower you to embark on your own journey of visual thinking and storytelling. The collection consist of the most common, interesting, weird and wonderful concepts created during the author’s visual thinking workshops.

The concepts are grouped into categories that regularly crop up at the workshops: ‘finance’, ‘technology’, ‘innovation’, ‘agile’ and ‘sales’, as well as broader themes such as ‘team...

'Imagine Me' is a game that enables players to talk about the complicated and intimate subject of identity in a playful and accessible manner. This is done by using visualisations, instead of words and questions, to start an (open) conversation. The various cards are displayed in order to create a moodboard representing your identity.

The game can be played in various environments to uncover different social structures, for example, in a professional environment, at school or during a fun eve...

'How to Create Better Ideas' gives insight in the design process and how to create better ideas with examples ranging from Precious Plastic to the Sheltersuit. It is divided into two sections: the right and left brain. The first part analyses the general design process. The second part introduces six self developed methods that teach you to create more and better visual ideas relevant for all design disciplines.

It is a book for anyone who would like to learn and understand design more in-dep...

We think, feel and talk in metaphors. Why not use them for design?

Feeling down? Cheer up! We use metaphors every day and often without being aware of it. Many metaphors are more than figures of speech. They reflect basic bodily experiences and help to structure our thinking and experiences of the world. 'Happy is Up, Sad is Down' is a collection of 65 metaphors with research facts and applications in product and interaction design, information graphics and advertising.

Metaphors show how to...

This is the definitive and comprehensive guide for what you can do about climate change and to contribute to a better world. It contains lists of go-to shops, beautiful brands, inspiring insights, surprising facts and useful solutions. Through in-depth interviews with leading pioneers, such as Livia Firth, Green Kitchen Stories and Andrew Morgan, you will find exactly what you need to live a more sustainable life. After all, doing good and feeling good at the same time: does it not get any be...

The time has come in which graphic designers are playing an important role in rendering ever more complicated information transparent and understandable for a wider audience. To stress this urgency, Renate Boere dove head first in the world of project management lingo, confidentiality statements, copyright, complicated rights contracts, the search for stakeholders and grand applications. This journey has resulted in the journalistic novel 'Beyond Design'.

This designer’s novel provides insi...

While writing the journalistic novel, 'Beyond Design', Renate Boere discovered 10 steps that can be taken in order to set up one’s own project. These steps allow designers to render complicated information transparent and understandable for a wider audience. Boere wanted to make this easily accessible and transformed these 10 steps into a game.

'Beyond Design, The Game of Social Solutions' guides you to set up your own socially relevant design project. This game navigates you through the 1...

Delft Design Guide provides an overview of the perspectives, models, approaches, and methods used in the bachelor's and master's curriculum of Industrial Design Engineering at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). Some of these are unique to the university, others are well known and are used by designers worldwide. Designing products and services at this faculty is considered a systematic and structured activity, deliberately and purposefully, and with moments of increased creativity.

-T...

Is there anything more entertaining, inspiring and instructive than observing art? Yes, it is watching the people interacting with this art. This book may forever change your approach to art as it urges you to always consider both the work and the response. Because ultimately artists create, but we – the audience – complete the picture.

'A Spectator is an Artist Too' is a visual essay about human behaviour around art: what happens when we are confronted with something immensely beautiful,...