From groundbreaking ideas on sustainability to the art of personal and systemic change, these are the reads that continue to shape her creative journey.
It’s been quite a while since we last explored the inspiring world of book recommendations from leading creatives across the globe, but we’re excited to bring the series back with a fresh perspective. This time, we’ve asked Laura Stein, CCO of Bruce Mau Design, to reveal her top five books that have shaped her approach to design, branding, and sustainability.
Laura has a ton of experience in the field, leading global rebrands for the likes of Sonos, ASICS, and Linksys. She has collaborated with everyone from Lululemon to Hutchins Center at Harvard University and the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism. Her work lies in culture, fashion, architecture, technology, education, and place across brand, print, motion, digital, and environmental. Recent projects include a rebrand for the National Ballet of Canada, designing signage and donor recognition for the Montreal Holocaust Museum, and crafting the branding and website for Wrensilva.
Laura’s selection of books offers a unique mix of thought-provoking ideas, ranging from environmental manifestos to design philosophy. They also provide insight into the creative process that continues to inspire her. Let’s explore her favourite reads and their powerful impact on her work.
1. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart
I’m unsure what prompted me to pick up this book in 2002. I was out of art school and inching my way to a life in graphic design. But I did, and it truly blew my mind. What if we
completely rethought our physical world? What if waste wasn’t actually waste? It’s a manifesto for designing in the way that nature is designed – positive and regenerative. The biomimetic approach — the central image is how a tree’s waste, fruit, nuts, etc, become nutrients for the forest — has become more widespread. But I continue to love this book for its power to inspire us to reimagine the way the world works.
2. MC24: 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in your Life and Work by Bruce Mau
Three years after reading Cradle to Cradle, I got hired at Bruce Mau Design. Heaven! Massive Change had just been exhibited, and the show’s book was published. Bruce had been asked to curate an exhibit about the state of design but chose to turn that on its head: “Massive Change is not about the world of design; it’s about the design of the world”.
The book helps us understand that we have actively designed the many destructive systems that we live in and identifies the designers out there challenging those systems. MC24 is the next generation. The ultimate goal is still change — our planet needs change more than ever — but adding to systems change and perspective change, there is also personal change. And a focus on how to actually design change. It’s a big, juicy book with colour, humour, and sizable type, making it the kind of book you can just dive into wherever it opens.
3. Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You by Peter Eleey & Robyn Farrell
I graduated with a degree in Fine Art, and in retrospect, it makes sense that I later moved into design. My favourite artists often combined text and images: Jenny Holzer, Ed Ruscha, Lorna Simpson and, of course, Barbara Kruger, making her explosive work. Thinking of You is the catalogue for Kruger’s show at MOCA in LA and could be my desert island book for both the form and content.
The work is so sharp, the essays excellent, and the book beautiful with minty green uncoated paper complementing the glossy black, white and red. So much of the work in here feels more urgent than ever, especially posters like ‘Untitled (Your body is a battleground)’, made for the 1989 March for Women’s Lives in Washington and wheat-pasted under cover of night. As Steven Heller writes, Kruger “…proves that graphic design is an influential medium for good and ill”.
4. Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits by Debbie Millman
This is a fascinating collection of interviews with diverse experts on the notion of brand. There’s Seth Godin, Wally Olins, and Daniel Pink, but my favourite interview is with Dori Tunstall, author of Decolonizing Design. She looks at brands from an anthropological perspective and reveals the human truths about why we get so attached to them. Many of us listen to Debbie Millman’s podcast, but the book is different. There’s something that happens when the interviews are side by side, which puts the experts in conversation with each other. I love these kinds of multi-logues; this one is done really well. It’s one of my go-to sources when I teach.
5. Can Marketing Save the Planet? 101 Practical Ways to Use Sustainable Marketing as a Force for Good by Michelle Carvill and Gemma Butler
Time will tell if this becomes my favourite book, but it’s the one I’m reading the most these days. It is not necessarily beautiful but highly practical, supremely no-nonsense and relevant to anyone involved in communications, including designers. Carvill and Butler pull content from their lively and intelligent podcast by the same name and bring it into bite-sized themes with references and resources and “Three Actions to Consider” for each theme.
It’s a good antidote to paralysing fear and depression because it feels so clear and level-headed and actually feasible. Similar to the book above, it combines a variety of perspectives, so it is not one long list of to-dos, but a cross-section of ideas that resonate differently with different readers.
