The 37 Best Design Books To Level Up Your Skills 2024

Table Of Content

• The Candy Store: Funk, Nut, And Other Art With A Kick
• City Of Dreams: Los Angeles Interiors - Signed By Tim Street-Porter And Annie Kelly
• People Who Voted On This List (
• Which of these books is better suited for more advanced graphic designers?
• Start Me Up!: New Branding for Businesses by Robert Klanten
• Copy this Book: An Artist’s Guide to Copyright

If it's something that goes in your house, chances are Beth knows about it and has the latest reviews and recommendations. The Elements of Typographic Style by renowned typographer Robert Bringhurst delves into typographic history, classifications, and aesthetic technique. Design academics Anne Chick and Paul Micklethwaite deliver research and resources to achieve sustainable design at scale. They offer tools to assess environmental and ethical impact across the production cycle.

The Candy Store: Funk, Nut, And Other Art With A Kick

Jens Müller’s book is even more fascinating, observing the history of logo design from 1870 to 1940 with a treasure trove of examples. Themes include symbols with people or landscapes and geometric shapes, and it's a fascinating overview of evolving trends and how logos have (generally) become more simplified. Designing Brand Identity is the most complete branding book on the market today. Despite its overwhelming size, this book has a huge amount of knowledge, including 40 case studies, and explanations of principles, theories and practicalities of branding.

The best graphic design books on branding, logos, type and more - Creative Bloq

The best graphic design books on branding, logos, type and more.

Posted: Mon, 16 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

City Of Dreams: Los Angeles Interiors - Signed By Tim Street-Porter And Annie Kelly

Web designers should stand on Responsive Web Design’s shoulders to build resilient online interfaces today. Brimming with visual inspiration, New Masters of Poster Design ignites ideas for your next print project. For an insider's perspective on professional branding design, Brand Atlas delivers. This unconventional marketing approach produces recognisable, relatable brands while attracting loyal supporters.

People Who Voted On This List (

It gives a lot of real-world advice and case studies to help you understand the brand identity process and how great collaborative work is created in practice. To survive in the creative industry, you need to keep generating great ideas. Award-winning graphic designer Michael Johnson draws on three decades-plus of experience to share his secret.

Designing Design by Kenya Hara

Copy This Book details the concepts of authorship and original creation that underlie our legal system, providing you with an essential guide for navigating the new Commons and the old laws of copyright control. Designer Anthony Burrill is probably best known for his poster based on the slogan "Work Hard & Be Nice to People". His book is full of similarly concise and down-to-earth advice on getting things done, success, creativity, difficult decisions, motivation, work, collaboration and happiness. This new version is a re-worked and re-packaged paperback edition for 2020.

If you work in editorial design, dip into this book every once in a while for inspiration on layouts and infographics. The book tells such interesting ideas, like why we depict the heart's symbol in one way or another, even though the real human heart looks completely different. One story told across three wordless books — Journey, Quest, and Return — all illustrated by Aaron Brecker. While these books technically belong in the children’s section, the enchanting visuals are a delight for all ages.

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Robin Williams’ Non-Designer’s Design Book is an approachable handbook covering all the essentials in plain English. Perfect for beginners, it introduces universally applicable design concepts like proximity, alignment, contrast, scale, visual hierarchy and more across four concise chapters. This introduction to visual communication zeroes in on graphic design's role in contemporary culture and society. Author and design educator Gavin Ambrose outlines graphic language, design thinking, and problem-solving processes in a simple, understandable way. Prospect Park Books is one of the imprints of Turner Publishing, named by Bookmarket.com as one of the top 101 independent publishing companies in the US.

Start Me Up!: New Branding for Businesses by Robert Klanten

You’ll come away with a sharper eye for details like kerning, leading, line lengths, typefaces, sizes, and how they impact the reading experience. It’s a must-have primer for print and web designers that’ll transform how you think about and use type. The Graphic Design Idea Book features a collection of design expert Steven Heller’s best tips and insights from the distinguished careers of 50 masters. Don Norman's seminal work explores how design communicates between object and user. He examines why some products confuse users while others feel intuitively easy to operate.

Copy this Book: An Artist’s Guide to Copyright

Ellen uses a mix of essays, real-world examples, theoretical concepts, and exercises to explain how typography affects visual communication. Start strong by adding these design books to the reference section of your personal library. Veteran designer and Pentagram New York partner Michael Bierut released this monograph, which also serves as a manual and manifesto, in 2015. Detailing 35 projects, Bierut – who’s a protégé of design legend Massimo Vignelli – illustrates the varied role that graphic design plays in the modern world. Topics include annual reports, budgeting, kerning, presenting, dealing with rejection, and more. Craig Oldham takes a frank, often irreverent, approach, tackling big questions around jobseeking and making money from graphic design through his own experiences.

In short, your best route is to make opportunities for yourself, and this book celebrates the various strategies students and graduates are taking to gain exposure and gainful employment. This revised and updated 2015 edition of Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips's 2008 classic, acts as an excellent introduction to graphic design for new entrants to the profession. Visual demonstrations and concise commentary explain the formal elements of design, from logos to letterhead to complex website design. In a rush to meet daily deadlines, though, it's often easy to get stuck in a rut.

Feel free to look through the whole list, but know that there are a lot of top design books here. If you want to find something specific to what type of design you practice, check out this filter here. From Ideo, America's Leading Design Firm, Change by Design takes readers behind the scenes to reveal the company’s strategies and practical thinking into creating its products. The book is full of helpful case studies, examples and problem-solving methods and techniques.

Dive deeper into designing specifically for screens with these web and app design book recommendations. Beyond visual identity, it’s creating powerful sensory experiences that form deep emotional connections with consumers. Branding guru Martin Lindstrom analyses psychology, marketing, pop culture, and cutting-edge scientific research to show how the world’s strongest brands engage all five senses. With 100+ brand case studies, this guide connects theory to real-world applications for comprehensive learning. Both agency and in-house designers can apply these branding fundamentals immediately. All touchpoints like stationery, packaging, branding guidelines and more need alignment for a holistic, cohesive brand image.

More than being a design guide, The Art of Looking Sideways is a testament to British designer Alan Fletcher's particular way of looking at the world. Across seventy-plus chapters, the book sheds light on Fletcher's daring approach to white space, typography, color, and image. In the book, Maeda invites designers to treat the digital sphere and the computer as a modern design medium in its own right, instead of as a tool.

Based on his wealth of experience working with clients, Airey outlines the entire logo design process from briefing to presentation, along with principles of versatile, effective logo design. With techniques for creating economical, balanced designs, it trains designers to wield white space for high-impact layouts where every element earns its place. Visually digestible and full of real-world examples, this handy book will convince you to let emptiness do some of the heavy visual liftings.

Designing Brand Identity is the classic practical guide to crafting an impactful brand identity program. For any designer, typography is arguably one of the most critical skills to master. Ellen Lupton’s Thinking with Type is the ultimate guide to understanding, practising, and experimenting with type.

It breaks down the basic theory around the pillars of design—proximity, alignment, repetition, contrast, and color—that anyone can understand and remember. Our UX designer, Jolanta Gil, opens this list with this seminal work by Swiss typeface pioneer Adrian Frutiger. The book delves deep into the relationship between symbols and psychology, providing fascinating theories on why certain shapes and patterns have endured in the human mind throughout history. As the design profession continues to evolve, new specialist roles and definitions are invented all the time. While it’s good to know the difference between UX and UI design, it’s equally important to remember that the best designers often don’t specialize in any one thing.