Design Forward: The Next Step

"Design Forward" is a book about design, and about being "designed."

It's not a tutorial or a portfolio of works; rather, it aims to make readers realize:

In the things we encounter daily—how information is presented, what feelings graphics evoke, why brands communicate with us in certain ways—these are all the result of design. We've just become so accustomed to their existence that we've gradually lost the ability to perceive them.

Author Nod Young has been involved in design for twenty-five years, with projects spanning numerous fields including technology, finance, food, pets, healthcare, fashion, publishing, lifestyle, and art. His works are a constant presence in the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people. The fundamental questions he continually faces are:

Why do some choices change lives, while others have no effect? When design truly works, is it in the expression of the work itself, or in real life?

This book attempts to reopen these questions. It allows people to see that design is not just an internal industry activity; it impacts our judgments, choices, and emotions every day, though most people have never understood it from this perspective.

The life experiences in the book are not meant to simply recount life, but to help people understand: How do designers think? Where do judgments come from? Why do different people make completely different decisions when looking at the same thing? And how do these decisions constitute the reality of our shared lives?

Even if you know nothing about design, you'll find chapters relevant to you in this book. You might notice for the first time why brands speak in a certain way, why products look the way they do, why some things feel just right, while others might cause unease.

Design is not distant; it's in our everyday reality. Understanding design is also understanding how we live, how we understand, and how we choose.

This is not a book to teach you something, but a force to stimulate thought. When you are interested enough to open it, a question has already been raised: Where to next?