After a long period of planning, preparation, and design, I am proud to launch the Design Discipline Bookstore.

Contents

The Bookstore presents a collection of hand-picked must-haves for the library of any designer or design enthusiast.

Every single title that appears in the Bookstore is either chosen by myself after a cover-to-cover reading, or recommended by our guests. Both print- and e-books are available.

In addition to books, the Bookstore will include a small collection of creative implements that are well-worth their place on any creative's desk.

Strategy

The Bookstore is the first step in developing Design Discipline into an economically sustainable project that stands on its own feet. It is built using affiliate links which redirect you established vendors. At no extra cost to you, Design Discipline earns a small commission when you make the purchase.

Tools

For the Bookstore I needed the ability to serve the items I wished to offer to the diverse geographies where Design Discipline finds an audience. I wanted a vendor that I can personally vouch for, based on experience as a customer. I needed simple tools that let me focus on scholarship and content. For all of these reasons I chose to start with Amazon and Apple Books as our vendors. Over time, I intend to diversify.

To develop the Bookstore I utilized Geniuslink, which allows you to choose between vendors and automatically directs you to the locale that's closest to home.

It took a lot of iterations designing the Bookstore to be true to Design Discipline, and future-proof to eventually accommodate a larger selection of items. After experimenting with tools that included Shopify, Notion, Super, GitHub Pages, and Squarespace, I settled on investing my time to develop customizations on Ghost, our existing publishing platform. In the process I learned a lot about Ghost, and I'm planning to share these learnings with the world soon.

If you'd like to talk about design, books, bookstores, or web development, you are more than welcome to say hello on Twitter where I appear as @doctorBaytas.