Design as Art

The Italian designer-artist's 1966 collection of short essays is the most charming book on this list. Munari finds design in everything — traffic signs, oranges, fax machines, church pews — and argues that the designer's job is to make the everyday world clear, humane, and quietly beautiful.

It is the book to hand to someone who asks what design actually is. Its spirit — curiosity first, ego last — is a corrective to every trend-driven, self-serious impulse in the field.