Pre-order now on Amazon Kindle (paperback coming soon) or join our substack for updates.

When you play a video game, you’re in control. You design and decide everything. We’re told this is how design careers unfold – that our ideas will be adored and we will influence big decisions. But this is not how the real world works. What we call designing is in reality mostly advising. We make things as suggestions for other powerful people—clients, executives, and project teams—and they often ignore our expertise. This is why design is hard.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. In this potent, humorous, real-world–based book by design-industry veterans Scott Berkun and Bryan Zug, you’ll learn how to use the skills you already have to navigate, negotiate, and influence the people and systems that currently hold you back.

Watch the explainer video about the book:

Praise for How Design Makes The World the prequel to Why Design is Hard:

“A masterpiece… the best book I’ve ever read on design thinking, and has replaced ‘The Design of Everyday Things’ as my go-to recommendation for design books.” Vanessa Harris, Google PM

“This fascinating book will help you see design everywhere and question why it works–or why it fails” – Ellen Lupton, curator at Cooper- Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

“An invaluable, essential resource that demystifies and democratizes design for everyone who lives with it–which is to say, all of us.” – Khoi Vinh, Principal Designer at Adobe and Former Design Director of The New York Times

“Design does indeed make the world… a highly readable book about this fact.” – Henry Petroski, author of Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design

“Nobody’s better at explaining how the world really works than Scott Berkun.” – Jeffrey Zeldman, co-founder of A List Apart

“A brilliant book.” – Alan Cooper, Author of About Face and founder of Cooper Interaction Design

Pre-order Why Design Is Hard: On Kindle.

Buy How Design Makes The World: at Amazon.com, on Kindle,  Paperback or Audiobook.