ILLUSTRATION BY KATY D.

As graphic designers, it’s important we take advantage of the resources offered to us in order to broaden our knowledge of design as well as find inspiration. We have a large library with a wide variety of books at the College of DuPage and we took the time to create a list of some design books we have in order to let you know what’s available for you to learn from. The COD library is located in the SRC (campus map here). You can check out the library’s hours and search through their catalogue here.

The Language of Graphic Design: an illustrated handbook for understanding fundamental design principles

Anyone attempting to communicate in a foreign language must first gain a complete comprehension of its fundamentals, which include definitions, usage, and functions. The Language of Graphic Design, now available in paperback, provides graphic designers and students with a full understanding of the language’s basic components and ideas, explaining what they are, why they matter, and how to apply them. This reference, organized according to the main aspects of the graphic design language, includes the work of some of the world’s most talented and well-known practitioners, as well as an explanation of how they incorporated these fundamental ideas into their designs.

This comprehensive handbook is a more relevant, memorable, and inspiring resource for prospective designers and first-year design students because it examines both professional and student work.

Graphic Design Visionaries

With 75 of the world’s most prominent designers, this book tells the story of graphic design via compelling personal stories and notable works that have changed the field.

The History of Graphic Design

Volume 1: Jens Mueller’s outstanding first volume covers seven decades of graphic design, designers, and inventions from the late nineteenth century to the postwar economic boom, including designs that would spark further revolutions. In-depth reports on hundreds of major projects, industry leader profiles, and visual timelines for each decade are interspersed with year-by-year spreads.

Volume 2: This follow-up book provides the most comprehensive treatment of graphic design to date. Approximately 3,000 groundbreaking designs from around the world create a visual history map that takes us from the beginning of the International Style to the birth of the revolutionary digital age. 118 biographies of the most influential designers of the time, including Massimo Vignelli, Otl Aicher, Shin Matsunaga, Paula Scher, Neville Brody, and Stefan Sagmeister, are supplemented with in-depth analyses of around 80 key examples.

The Design of Dissent

Dissent is crucial to the health of democratic society; citizens’ right to express their opinions is not only a privilege, but also a responsibility. Without this dialogue, the foundation of what we’ve fought so hard for may simply shatter. Over the last few decades, the number of democratic societies has grown around the world, and there is a greater awareness of the growing conflicts and challenges that touch our daily lives. With the Middle East conflict, the war on terrorism, and financial and environmental issues, people’s sense of safety, authority, and representation has waned, in part because they believe they have no voice.

Designers, on the other hand, have utilized their skills to voice their dissent throughout history, and they are doing so even more now that the Web has been invented and the distribution of posters and other printed materials has become more convenient. A picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words, and designers throughout history have taken advantage of this adage by designing simple yet strong designs that swiftly express emotive sentiments to their viewers. The Design of Dissent highlights graphic work that addresses social and political issues from around the world. The timing is undoubtedly right for this study, as the United States and the rest of the world are polarized on a number of critical topics.

Art & Graphic Design: George Maciunas, Ed Ruscha, Sheila Levrant De Bretteville

This intriguing study of graphic design’s involvement in American art during the 1960s and 1970s concentrates on the work of George Maciunas, Ed Ruscha, and Sheila Levrant de Bretteville. Benoit Buquet examines how each of these artists used typography, materiality, and other graphic design aesthetics, revealing the importance of graphic design in creating a sense of coherence among the disparate international group of Fluxus artists, an elusiveness and resistance to categorization that defined much of Ruscha’s brand of Pop Art, and an open and participatory visual identity for a range of feminist art practices.

Extensive and captivating research, combined with an extensive illustration program that showcases perceptive object juxtapositions (some of which have never been discussed before), reveal new perspectives on a period of prolific creativity and cultural shift in American art, as well as the close but often overlooked relationship between graphic design and art.

Graphic Design Thinking: Beyond Brainstorming

The design process includes conducting research, developing ideas, and conveying them. Ideas can occur out of nowhere at times, but they are also commonly the result of deliberate efforts. Many designers start a project with brainstorming, which is simply an unstructured hunt for new ideas. However, brainstorming is merely the first stage in a designer’s quest for innovative and practical concepts. There are numerous ways and tools available for brainstorming, ranging from quick, impromptu methods to more formal research methods like as focus groups and co-design. This book’s key themes are strategies for unleashing creative potential and kindling unique thought to generate ideas that are both convincing and practicable.

Each method is shown through visual representations and case studies of actual design processes. There are also discussions with prominent experts such as Art Chantry, Ivan Chermayeff, Jessica Helfand, Steven Heller, Maira Kalman, Abbott Miller, Christoph Niemann, Paula Sher, and Martin Venezky on where they obtain their ideas and what they do when they run out.

Graphic Design Rules: 365 essential design dos & don’ts.

Four top industry specialists have created 365 daily design mantras, providing you with practical design dos and don’ts for every day of the year. This book is great for the growing number of non-designers looking for guidance on graphic design, as it is jam-packed with essential information given in a playful and pleasant style. Individual contributions from more experienced designers will elicit knowing nods of agreement or hoots of scorn, depending on whether the reader despises baseline grids, loves or dislikes hyphenation, or has a neurotic phobia of beige. A variety of experienced designers from many fields of graphic design contribute commentary with a specific guideline in each of the 365 entries, which are organized in the style of a traditional almanac. You can use the book as a daily resource for lessons on creating excellent graphic design, or you can peruse it at random. It covers themes including typography, color, layout, images, production, and creative thinking.

100 Ideas that Changed Graphic Design

This book explains how concepts molded and defined graphic design, as well as how those concepts manifested themselves in produced goods. This book aims to identify, classify, examine, and represent the major notions that created the critical mass required to produce the art and skill of modern graphic design. The 100 entries are approximately chronologically organized, ranging from technical (overprinting, rub-on designs, split fountain) to stylistic (swashes on caps, loud typography, and white space), products (dust jackets, design handbooks), and techniques (paper cut-outs, pixelation).

MIN: The New Simplicity in Graphic Design

“Min” looks at how minimalism is making a resurgence in graphic design. Creatives waved farewell to the ornate, decorative patterns that have dominated our visual culture for the past ten years, ushering in a new period of minimalism that is transforming modern design in unique and intriguing ways. This book features over 150 minimalist designers from various media and format sectors.

Visual Harmony: Proportion in Graphic Design

Effective visual communication is the result of a designer’s purposeful effort to balance all elements of the design, rather than an accident. This is typically accomplished by meticulously applying proportion in accordance with a couple well-established guiding principles: the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio, also known as divine proportion. These two mathematical structures resemble patterns found in anything from leaves and shells to pinecones and sunflowers. Designers and artists have used these concepts for decades to create timeless items, such as current logos and Renaissance paintings. Following a good introduction, Visual Harmony provides an overview of modern graphic design, all of which exemplifies the excellent use of proportion.

Please Make This Look Nice: The Graphic Design Process

“Please Make This Look Nice” provides an insider’s look at the operations of over fifty multinational studios, typographers, and graphic designers. Combining firsthand observations with hundreds of never-before-seen pictures from their archives results in a rich and diverse perspective on the nature of making. It broadens the most fundamental understanding of graphic design—how it is generated and how it influences the world today—and is an invaluable resource for students, hobbyists, and working designers. Renowned graphic designers such as Milton Glaser, Michael Bierut, Carin Goldberg, Ivan Chermayeff & Tom Geismar, Paul Sahre, Stefan Sagmeister, and Maira Kalman, as well as emerging talent, discuss their unique viewpoints and sources of inspiration.

Ed Fella encourages designers to experiment, invent, and develop a personal methodology tailored to their specific requirements, interests, and values. Kalman discusses the importance of journals and walking; Sagmeister muses on his desire to find, define, and create beauty in an efficiency-driven world; and Bierut discusses the existence of multiple possible solutions to a single design problem, as well as how his own process evolved in response to his mentor Massimo Vignelli. Students, design enthusiasts, and type and graphic design specialists will all enjoy “Please Make This Look Nice.”

Graphic Design in the Twentieth Century: A Concise History

Graphic design history is one of the most fascinating and important aspects of current visual culture. In his seminal work Graphic Design: A Concise History, famous lecturer and designer Richard Hollis looked at the history of the medium in the twentieth century, beginning with printing, and defined its goal as visual communication: to identify, enlighten, and promote. This authoritative cultural history, reissued with a new title, preface, and updated recommendations for further reading, begins with the poster that charts the evolution of graphics in print, advertising, corporate identity, and television before concluding with the impact of digital and electronic media on graphic design forms.

The book retains the author’s original layout, which is now regarded as a graphic design classic in its own right, and has over 800 images that are flawlessly integrated with the text. This important tale is a critical resource that is persuasive, comprehensive, and simple to understand.

Baseline Shift: Untold Stories of Women in Graphic Design History

Essays that look at the many unsung women that have made contributions to graphic design throughout history.

The Elements of Graphic Design: Space, Unity, Page Architecture & Type

This Third Edition provides designers, art directors, and students of all skill levels with a distinct strategy for meticulous, appealing design. It has been entirely rewritten and updated, featuring essays on design thinking from seven notable industry professionals and a plethora of new photographs. Completely colored, with tips on how to violate design standards to the reader’s favor. The essayists who contributed included Niklaus Troxler, Geray Gençer, Ashley Schofield, Brian D. Miller, Fons Hickman, Max Shangle, and Tad Crawford. The Elements of Graphic Design, Third Edition shows how to employ type to maximize reader value and comprehension, identify and disclose dominating words, images, and concepts, and use scale, location, and color to move readers through several degrees of importance. It also explores the value of employing white space in design.

The Graphic Design Idea Book: Inspiration from 50 Masters

This book introduces the basic elements of good design. Broken down into sections covering the essential components of design, major works by renowned designers help to explain technical points and motivate readers to experiment with new ideas. Form, narrative, color, type and image, decoration, simplicity, wit and humor are among the topics discussed. The end product is an immediately accessible and easy to comprehend introduction to graphic design utilizing expert approaches.