Graphic Design Books

From posters to cars, design is everywhere. While we often discuss the aesthetics of design, we don't always dig deeper to unearth the ways design can overtly, and covertly, convince us of a certain way of thinking. How Design Makes Us Think collects hundreds of examples across graphic design, product design, industrial design, and architecture to illustrate how design can inspire, provoke, amuse, anger, or reassure us.

Transform your ideas into powerful visuals to connect with your audience, define your brand, and take your project to the next level. This highly practical design book takes you through the building blocks of design type, photography, illustration, color and shows you how to combine these tools to create visuals that inform, influence, and enthral.

DON'T use comic sans (except ironically) but DO worship the classic typefaces like Helvetica and Garamond. Graphic Design Rules is a handy guide for professional graphic designers, students, and laymen who incorporate graphic design into their job or small business.

A book that teaches the basics of design. It is for anyone who wants a practical understanding of what graphic design is, its power and potential. A truly up to date and thoughtful approach to an introduction to graphic design. The design industry has evolved rapidly over the past decade.

Published to instant acclaim in 2005, our best selling How to Be a Graphic Designer without Losing Your Soul has become a trusted resource for graphic designers around the world, combining practical advice with philosophical guidance to help young professionals embark on their careers.

This vast collection of over 1,300 symbols and logotypes – clearly arranged across 75 different categories according to their basic visual form – includes the work of past masters, such as Paul Rand and Saul Bass, alongside some of the most exciting work from contemporary designers. This is a complete, taxonomical guide to the history, development, and style of identity design.

In The Art of Color and Design, Maitland Graves identifies and analyzes the core principles of visual design in one of the most important art reference books of the 20th century. In the author’s own words, this work is intended to be “an orderly, clear, and simple analysis of the elements and principles upon which all visual art is built”. A comprehensive analysis of all facets of design, this text is essential for all visual artists and designers.

The NASA Graphics Standards Manual, by Richard Danne and Bruce Blackburn, is a futuristic vision for an agency at the cutting edge of science and exploration. Housed in a special anti-static package, the book features a foreword by Richard Danne, an essay by Christopher Bonanos, scans of the original manual (from Danne’s personal copy), reproductions of the original NASA 35mm slide presentation, and scans of the Managers Guide, a follow-up booklet distributed by NASA.

100 Ideas That Changed Graphic Design by Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne. This accessible book demonstrates how ideas influenced and defined graphic design. Lavishly illustrated, it is both a great source of inspiration and a provocative record of some of the best examples of graphic design from the last hundred years.

Creating a Brand Identity goes behind the scenes to explore the creative processes involved in designing a successful brand identity, one of the most fascinating and complex challenges in graphic design. This bestselling book is a guide for designers, students, professionals, and agencies working in graphic design, branding, advertising, marketing, and communications.