ON MY BOOKSHELF
Beautiful and useful reading for the visual thinkerThese are the visual thinking books I’d recommend to anyone who wants to work or live more creatively, whether or not you work in a creative industry or consider yourself a creative person. There are of course many more to add (check out our own Bookshop for more), but these books are a great foundation library for anyone who wants to communicate better, plan more clearly or just get those thoughts out of your head.
Cara x
One of my favourite books
Kriota Willberg
Draw Stronger: Self-Care for Cartoonists and Visual Artists
SELF-CARE // Whether you draw with pen and paper or a digital device, it can take a toll on your body. In fact the same applies to working from home on back-to-back Zoom calls. This book is a practical and beautifully visual guide to taking care of your body, with strengthening and stretching exercises and advice to avoid injuring yourself. Drawing is a physically demanding job!
We’ve partnered with Bookshop.org in the UK to offer you a choice of local bookshops to buy online from instead of the usual global online book store. The links in this page are affiliate links – you get a discount on the books and we both get the satisfaction of knowing we’re supporting small businesses in the UK. (For other countries you can use the information to search your own local bookstores for these gems.)
Visual Basics (Doodling) books
If you’re like me and were told off for doodling at school and work, you know that doodling is actually a super-power and those people are monsters. Whether it’s learning to draw basic icons for the first time, or be inspired by other people’s scribbles, doodling is where the ideas start.
If you’d like these books you’ll like our freshly updated Draw More Boot Camp beginner’s course. It’s free, if that helps.
Drawing Book: Make a World
DRAWING // Ed Emberley’s book is the one I recommend the most often to people who think they can’t draw.
Scrawl: An A-Z of Famous Doodles
Caren & Todd Strauss-Schulson. Including the first sketch of Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren. A fun insight, only let down by the lack of representation of women doodlers.
The Doodle Revolution
VISUAL THINKING // Sunni Brown is such an energetic advocate for working visually. She brings all of that energy to this book, which is full of hands-on activities.
Sketchnoting books
Sketchnotes are a powerful, portable visual note-taking skill. These books provide both inspiration and insight into a more structured form of doodling that you simply get better at the more you practise.
We have two sketchnoting options in the Academy if you want to learn more: for more informal use in your personal productivity, check out our Draw a Visual Journal online course. For a deeper dive, see our 12 week Be a Graphic Recorder course, which you can apply to the sketchnoting format.
The Sketchnote Handbook
SKETCHNOTING // Mike Rohde shows you his sketchnoting basics with this illustrated book.
Sketchnotes Einer Weltreise
SKETCHNOTING // Eva-Lotta Lamm produced this beautiful journal whilst travelling round the world. It will inspire you to get journalling. (The text inside is in English.)
The Visual MBA
SKETCHNOTING // Jason Barrow took an MBA and decided to sketchnote the journey. Full of fun visual summaries of business fundamentals this is a good example of how to simplify.
Visual Planning books
When you need to take a step back, to get a different perspective or to see patterns amongst the noise, drawing on a piece of paper still can’t be beaten, and it’s still where many product and process designers start… for a reason. Whether you’re thinking on your own (remember those days, before AI?) or with a group of people, sketching on paper is a powerful tool to flush your thoughts to the surface.
Alongside my own book, I now post my thoughts on running a graphic recording business on Substack, and if you want some practical planning tools for work, take a look at our Visual Planning course.
Draw a Better Business
Yes, my own book! Aimed at the self employed and small business owners, I help you get your visual thinking brain in gear and reap the business benefits. This book will help you tap into your innate creativity, stand out in the crowd and get the benefits of working visually for you, your clients and your business.
Design a Better Business
VISUAL PLANNING // Justin Lokitz, Lisa Kay Solomon and Patrick van der Pijl have pulled together this practical toolkit. With examples from large corporations, this book gives you 20 strategizing and planning tools using Design principles and visual thinking.
Design the Life you Love
VISUAL PLANNING // Ayse Birsel is inspirational and, having attended her interactive online sessions, I’m a big fan. Full of hand-drawn doodles and diagrams, Ayse uses her product design skills to walk you through this practical ‘playbook’.
Visual Storytelling books
Since cave drawings (which were mostly done by women – FACTOID!), humans have told stories by drawing them. Drawing cuts through literacy and language barriers, and touches something innate in us as creative beings (and yes, we all are).
Of course Graphic Recording is a type of storytelling, taking discussions and ideas and turning them into visuals far more engaging than reports, minutes or presentations. If you want a new skill or even a new career, take a look at our Be a Graphic Recorder 12 week course. For something more bitesize, I’ve created the Visual Storytelling mini course. You’re welcome.
99 Ways to Tell a Story
VISUAL STORYTELLING // Matt Madden’s exploration of how one story can be told in 99 different ways is a great exercise in creative thinking.
Visual Storytelling
INFOGRAPHICS // Full of interesting examples of complex information being visually displayed. Although the examples are digital it still has plenty of inspiration if you’re hand drawing your data. by Liu Yikun and Dong Zhao
Understanding Comics
COMICS // One of my favourites. I love this book by Scott McCloud, full of brilliant insights into the world of comics and visual storytelling.
Visual Facilitation books
Whether you call it visual facilitation or graphic facilitation, here’s some books covering the skill of herding your meeting, event or workshop participants using pre-prepared visual props to engage them, inspire them and help them get their ideas out of their heads and into reality.
Don’t underestimate the impact you can have on a room of people nowadays when, instead of AI-generated presentations, you rock up with a hand-drawn visual agenda! Alongside these books, my Visual Meetings mini course can give you practical tools and techniques. If you’re already a facilitator, you can take a deeper dive to enhance your visual skills with our Be a Graphic Facilitator course.
The Back of the Napkin
VISUAL FACILITATION // I’ll always have a soft spot for this book by Dan Roam. Dan’s take on how to apply visual skills in a business setting is well worth a read.
The Decision Book
GRAPHIC FACILITATION // I love this little book from Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschaeppeler. Full of neatly packaged decision making models, it isn’t visual as a book, but if you’re a facilitator it’s a great inspiration for creating your own useful tools.
The Graphic Facilitator’s Guide
GRAPHIC RECORDING // US-based graphic facilitator Brandy Agerbeck’s energetic take on the ins and outs of capturing content visually. A classic.
Gamestorming
GRAPHIC FACILITATION // Dave Gray, Sunni Brown and James Macanufo will change how you do meetings forever with their original action-packed book.
Gamestorming 2.0
GRAPHIC FACILITATION // Dave Gray, Sunni Brown and James Macanufo finally updated their original book to include hybrid and remote meetings in this much requested 2nd edition, with 3 new chapters and 95 new games.
Infographics & Data Visualisation books
These books prove that, even if you’re working digitally, your visualisations don’t need to be lacking character or use distracting AI infoslop (yes, we already know it when we see it, and it does distract from the message).
In fact, just because you’re producing an infographic or data visualisation doesn’t mean it has to be computer-drawn at all. One of the benefits of hand-drawing apps like Procreate (see my kit list for more tools) mean that you can include your own 100% human style in a visualisation and really stand out from the crowd!
Information is Beautiful
INFOGRAPHICS // David McCandless shows us that information really is beautiful in his updated classic. The playful approach to complex data is great inspiration for your own hand-drawn data projects. Proof of what a bored inquisitive mind can do!
Raw Data: Infographic Designer’s Sketchbooks
INFOGRAPHICS // I find this book by Steven Heller & Rick Landers totally inspiring. This book is not just for data lovers. A beautiful, nerdy coffee table book.
W.E.B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America
INFOGRAPHICS // Famed sociologist, writer, and Black rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois fundamentally changed the representation of Black Americans with his data visualizations. Collected here in full colour for the first time this collection is historically important and full of impact.
In Progress: Inside a Lettering Artist’s Sketchbook…
Jessica Hische has done hand-lettering projects for major clients like Starbucks and Wes Anderson. I loved this book for giving an insight into Jessica’s creative process. This revised edition includes more digital tool advice.
Also check out her beautifully hand-lettered children’s books Tomorrow I’ll be Brave and Tomorrow I’ll be Kind.
Designing Graphic Props for Filmmaking
DESIGN // A behind the scenes insight into the work of Annie Atkins might be slightly off topic, but is nonetheless a delightful insight into how to represent and support complex narratives with visual props.
Visual Journalism
INFOGRAPHICS // Edited by Javier Errea, this is a real coffee table book, giving a visually pleasing insight into infographics produced by newsrooms and designers.
Visual Thinking Theory books
Whether it’s public signage, or that annoying user manual that only has pictures, visual communication and visual thinking is what has made my career and this industry now possible. If you’re feeling properly nerdy (I’m here for that), then delve into one of these treasures. If you know a picture paints a thousand words but you don’t know why and you want to, these guides are for you.
For a simpler explanation from me, take a look at these benefits of drawing your message.
A Primer of Visual Literacy
VISUAL THINKING // This book from Donis Dondis is old (1974!), but is full of fascinating information about how we process visuals.
Visual grammar
VISUAL LANGUAGE // Christian Leborg’s book is a visually pleasing graphic design primer, exploring the fundamentals of how visual objects speak to us from the page.
The Elements of Visual Grammar
VISUAL LANGUAGE // Award-winning art director and design professor Angela Riechers introduces visual language principles in this Designer’s Guide.
Should you be on this list?
If you’ve written/drawn a book you think we should know about at Graphic Change, drop us an email and we’ll gladly include you!