Work for Money,
Design for Love
(David Airey, 2012)
Passion builds value — not just profit.
David Airey’s Work for Money, Design for Love is a rare mix of honesty and practicality — a book about what it really means to make a living from creativity.
It speaks to designers not as dreamers or businesspeople, but as both. Airey shares lessons learned from the messy middle ground between doing what you love and sustaining it as a profession.
The tone is human, transparent, and deeply grounded in experience. Airey reminds us that design is a relationship: between creator and client, vision and value, art and responsibility.
Reading it feels like talking with a mentor, one who has already made the mistakes you’re trying to avoid, and still believes in love as the ultimate motivator.
Do good work for good people.
The rest takes care of itself.
