I have probed the web for the mosthighly recommended and best-selling graphic design related books thatcan inspire and help you as a graphic designer. These books cover manyareas of design, including typography, color theory, layout, designtheory, web design, business and even search engine optimization andmarketing for designers.
These delightful graphic design books will make a great addition to any graphic designer’s library!
1. Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines
This is a book you should not do without. It touches on every topic youneed to know about how to be successful as a graphic artist. If youwant experienced and practical advice on anything from setting pricesfor your work on the Internet to how to best manage your clientrelations – this is the book for you.
2. Sagmeister: Made You Look
Daring designer, Stefan Sagmeister, chronicles almost 40 years ofworking in this business in this book. Sagmeister conveys his wit andhumor into these pages, as he tells you his personal adventures.
3. Make It Bigger
This book caters to designers who work with businesses. Read this to beinspired and benefit from the wisdom of years of experience working inthe field of graphic design.
4. About Face: Reviving The Rules Of Typography
Talking about the large topic of typography, About Face, helps younavigate through the world with ease. Many wonderful and successfulexamples of typography are provided in this book.
5. Typographic Design: Form and Communication
This is the fourth edition of a best-selling book. If you want just onebook to help you learn about how to properly typography, it’s thisone. Whether you’re interested in the history of this art, or how itcan be effectively used in this modern-era, this book is chock full ofvaluable information for graphic designers.
6. The Elements of Typographic Style
Author, Robert Bringhurst, has written this book, which uses beautifullanguage to tell the story of how to apply your own artisticsensibility to typography. One treat in this book is the examples offonts in different languages such as Russian and Greek.
7. The Elements of Graphic Design: Space, Unity, Page Architecture, and Type
This book’s author, Alexander W. White, is a strong advocate of whitespace – what you can also call negative space. Many designers feelthe need to clutter things up, but less can be more. Learn how tomaster that idea with this great book.
8. Making and Breaking the Grid: A Graphic Design Layout Workshop
This book focuses on layout. With it, you can comprehensively learn theelements of layout so that you can better use them in your work.
9. Designing with Type: The Essential Guide to Typography (Designing With Type)
A book that’s been around since 1971, this is something that willintroduce you to typography. It offers pointers on how to take intoaccount such things as the feeling of a text, as well as howeffectively it is conveyed in different formats.
10. Meggs’ History of Graphic Design
This offers a wonderful writing up of the history of graphic design. Itmay be of interest to both current graphic designers, and generalartistic-minded people.
11. Graphic Design: A New History
Own this book and learn about graphic design history in a new light.The book talks in-depth of the different times of history incorrelation to what graphic design’s were used.
12. Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students (Design Briefs)
Author Ellen Lupton has written this wonderful book. The book has threemain sections: letter, text, and grid. Learn the history of each, howtechnology can help you, and then see examples in practice.
13. The Designer’s Toolkit: 500 Grids and Style Sheets: 500 Grids and Style Sheets
As you may have already guessed, this book challenges designers tore-think their idea of how to work within a grid. There are 500 gridand style sheets ready for you to produce your work on and see what youlike.
14. Looking Closer 5: Critical Writings on Graphic Design
This is the fifth and final installment in a series of wonderful books.Within these pages you will find writing on controversial topics thatwill encourage you to think outside of the page, or the screen.
15. How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer
Learn what you have in common with other graphic designers who haveachieved success. What has helped them overcome obstacles may very wellhelp you as well. This book is full of interviews you will findinvaluable.
16. Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design
The title of the book tells you what you’re getting, right off thebat. Michael Bierut writes with whimsy and a critical eye in this bookthat you are sure to enjoy and be educated from.
17. How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul
The work of a graphic designer is not easy, and you probably alreadyknow that. Within these160 pages you will discover writing on topicssuch as how to generate ideas when your mind is void of them. Youdon’t want to become a slave to mundane tasks and lose your spark, ifyou feel yourself drifting – reach for this book.
18. LogoLounge 3: 2,000 International Identities by Leading Designers (LogoLounge)
If you’re crazy for logos then this is the book for you. In thisthird installment, you will find a myriad of different logos – 2,000to be exact. Get inspired with this book, and then get designing.
19. Logo Design (Midi Series)
This is a handy reference book on logo design. Students and professionals alike will enjoy this book.
20. Hand Job: A Catalog of Type
Fifty typographers are featured in this book, and what they all have incommon is that they reject technology, and design their fonts by hand.While the title at first can seem shocking to anyone, it will stayshocking to a designer. When’s the last time you reached for a penand paper for your final draft? Maybe next time you will, after readingthis book.
21. UniversalPrinciples of Design: 100 Ways to Enhance Usability, InfluencePerception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and TeachThrough Design
Well-written, this book is what it claims to be – 100 ways toenhance, influence, increase, teach – you get the idea. It is easy tounderstand and follow, and gives you well-researched briefs on avariety of topics that normally you’d have to read about in severaldifferent books.
22. Adobe Photoshop CS3 Classroom in a Book
Experts that make up the Adobe Creative Team have put together thisbook for you to easily expand your knowledge of the Adobe Photoshopprogram. Learn how to do things better and faster, all from readingthis book.
23. The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter)
To have Adobe Photoshop is one thing; to be able to use it is onething, but to be able to use it well is another. And that is especiallytrue when it comes to digital photography. If you want the best tipsand tricks, this book won’t lead you astray.
24. Adobe Illustrator CS3 Classroom in a Book
Master the programs in Adobe Illustrator by using this book as astep-by-stop guide. The Adobe Creative Team will guide you where youneed to go.
25. The Adobe Illustrator CS3 Wow! Book (WOW!)
If you want to be the best with using Adobe’s Illustrator, you needthis book. There are tons of lessons in this book to help you learn newtools. Ever wonder how to take a desaturated image and make it appearto be a color photo? Read and learn.
26. Adobe InDesign CS3 Classroom in a Book
This is a good book for beginners. Make sure to get the second printing, as the first as some typos!
27. HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition (Visual Quickstart Guide)
You should know HTML, and probably XHTML and CSS as well. So learn ithere, with this wonderful book! This is not for advanced students.
28. CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions
Authors Andy Budd, Simon Collison, and Cameron Moll have written theultimate guide to CSS! Learn everything you wanted to know, and more– in this book.
29. Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS (2nd Edition)
When you build a Web site, you want it to work. This book will help youlearn how to get out all of the kinks and bugs from your site so thatthe widest possible audience can access it without flaws.
30. SEO Book
When you have a Web site, you want traffic. You get that through searchengine optimization (SEO). This is the only book you will ever need tomaster search engine optimization and you can download it!