Evidence receipt / recommendation
Published · transcript-backedRecommends The Elements of Typographic Style. Recommends Zen and the Motorcycle Maintenance. Recommends Time in the Art of Living.
12 Jun 2025 Lenny's Podcast 35 years of product design wisdom from Apple, Disney, Pinterest, and beyond | Bob Baxley
“So the three books I'm going to recommend, the first one's a beautiful poetic book about typography called The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. Robert was the poet laureate of Canada. And the first 80 pages will change how you think about typography. It will open you up to the wonderful world of typography that we all live in. You'll think differently about every sign you look at, about every movie credit you see, and it will give you an insight into the designer mindset. When you understand typography, I think you understand where designers come from and the best designers I know are just total type nerds. So highly recommend Elements of Typographic Style. Second book, Zen and the Motorcycle Maintenance. Many people may know ultimately a philosophy book, but it's about the concept of quality, which I think is a very important topic. So it talks about quality and the importance of how things integrate into cohesive whole, which I believe is the main challenge facing most software teams. They create something that's highly fragmented instead of a single hole. So, Zen in the Motorcycle Maintenance. And then the last one is a book called Time in the Art of Living by Robert Gruden. It's just a very interesting collection of impressionistic views of time and how time passes and what time means. So that's very different from the others and it's not something probably gets recommended on your show too often, but I think it'll help people in their lives in a powerful way.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Bob Baxley
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- recommendation
- Recorded
- 12 Jun 2025
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
Transcript context
…We added a ding to this. I like that drama you added and there's a whole thing now. Okay, first question, what are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people? So the three books I'm going to recommend, the first one's a beautiful poetic book about typography called The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. Robert was the poet laureate of Canada. And the first 80 pages will change how you think about typography. It will open you up to the wonderful world of typography that we all live in. You'll think differently about every sign you look at, about every movie credit you see, and it will give you an insight into the designer mindset. When you understand typography, I think you understand where designers come from and the best designers I know are just total type nerds. So highly recommend Elements of Typographic Style. Second book, Zen and the Motorcycle Maintenance. Many people may know ultimately a philosophy book, but it's about the concept of quality, which I think is a very important topic. So it talks about quality and the importance of how things integrate into cohesive whole, which I believe is the main challenge facing most software teams. They create something that's highly fragmented instead of a single hole. So, Zen in the Motorcycle Maintenance. And then the last one is a book called Time in the Art of Living by Robert Gruden. It's just a very interesting collection of impressionistic views of time and how time passes and what time means. So that's very different from the others and it's not something probably gets recommended on your show too often, but I think it'll help people in their lives in a powerful way. I think these are all brand new entries in this question. Next question, do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed?…
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