100 Best Graphic Design Books of All Time
We've researched and ranked the best graphic design books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. Learn more
Marius Ciuchete PaunQuestion: What books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path? Answer: “Just My Type” by Simon Garfield “Thinking with Type” by Ellen Lupton “Don't Make Me Think” by Steve Krug “Geometry of Design” by Kimberly Elam “Grid Systems in Graphic Design” by Josef Müller-Brockmann “ReWork” by Jason Fried These titles should be a good start, I think. (Source)
Kimberly Gloria ChoiWhen asked what books she would recommend to youngsters interested in her professional path, Kimberly mentioned Thinking with Type. (Source)
In "Logo Design Love," David shows you how to develop an iconic brand identity from start to finish, using client case studies from renowned designers. In the process, he reveals how designers create effective briefs, generate ideas, charge for... more
Text reveals top designers' work in process and rationale. Projects with similar... more
Marius Ciuchete PaunQuestion: What books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path? Answer: “Just My Type” by Simon Garfield “Thinking with Type” by Ellen Lupton “Don't Make Me Think” by Steve Krug “Geometry of Design” by Kimberly Elam “Grid Systems in Graphic Design” by Josef Müller-Brockmann “ReWork” by Jason Fried These titles should be a good start, I think. (Source)
Marius Ciuchete Pauneval(ez_write_tag([[250,250],'theceolibrary_com-large-mobile-banner-2','ezslot_5',164,'0','1'])); Question: Was there a moment, specifically, when something you read in a book helped you? Answer: Yes there was. In fact, I can remember two separate sentences from two different books: The first one comes from “The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman. It says: “great design will help... (Source)
Grey BakerI mainly read to decompress and change my state of mind, so it’s hard to point to an insight I read that helped me. Reading fiction has pulled me out of a bad mood more times than I can count, though, and always reenergises me to attack problems that had stumped me again. That said, I read and loved Norman Norman’s “The Design of Everyday Things”, and it’s helped me think through design problems... (Source)
Kaci LambeThese three books are about how people actually use design in their lives. They helped me understand this very basic idea: There are no dumb users, only bad designers. Take the time to create based on how your design will be interacted with. Test it. Iterate. That's how you become a good designer. (Source)
In this 3rd edition, Steve returns with fresh perspective to reexamine the principles that made Don’t Make Me Think a classic-–with updated examples and a new chapter on mobile usability. And it’s still short, profusely illustrated…and best of all–fun to read.
If you’ve read it before, you’ll rediscover what made Don’t Make Me Think so essential to Web... more
Chris GowardHere are some of the books that have been very impactful for me, or taught me a new way of thinking: [...] Don't Make Me Think. (Source)
Nicolae AndronicI’m a technical guy. I studied the IT field and did software development for a long time until I discovered the business world. So the path for me is to slowly adapt from the clear, technical world, to the fuzzy, way more complex, business world. All the books that I recommend help this transition. “Don’t Make Me Think” - Steve Krug: for seeing software with the eyes of the user. (Source)
Nick GanjuAbout usability and making software and user interfaces that are friendly to people. (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Graphic Design books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Seth GodinBreezy and fun and yes, scary. Scary because it calls your bluff. (Source)
Ryan HolidayPart of ambition is modeling yourself after those you’d like to be like. Austin’s philosophy of ruthlessly stealing and remixing the greats might sound appalling at first but it is actually the essence of art. You learn by stealing, you become creative by stealing, you push yourself to be better by working with these materials. Austin is a fantastic artist, but most importantly he communicates... (Source)
Chase JarvisSuper small, fast read. (Source)
Marius Ciuchete PaunQuestion: What books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path? Answer: “Just My Type” by Simon Garfield “Thinking with Type” by Ellen Lupton “Don't Make Me Think” by Steve Krug “Geometry of Design” by Kimberly Elam “Grid Systems in Graphic Design” by Josef Müller-Brockmann “ReWork” by Jason Fried These titles should be a good start, I think. (Source)
Ryan HolidayPart of ambition is modeling yourself after those you’d like to be like. Austin’s philosophy of ruthlessly stealing and remixing the greats might sound appalling at first but it is actually the essence of art. You learn by stealing, you become creative by stealing, you push yourself to be better by working with these materials. Austin is a fantastic artist, but most importantly he communicates... (Source)
Chase Jarvis[Chase Jarvis recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show".] (Source)
Derek SiversBoth Chase and are big fans of the book Show Your Work by Austin Kleon. (Source)
Meggs... more
Benjamin HumphreyEssentially a reference book for product designers, the universal principles is a smartly curated and neatly presented guide to the key terms you'll come across as a designer, with examples and diagrams. A beautiful book. (Source)
Seth GodinThis book helped me see design differently. Good design costs just as much as bad design, but it breaks through all sorts of clutter. (Source)
Debbie MillmanThe great typographer Eric Spiekermann’s book. (Source)
Read this book and gain 25 years of experience in how to think like a creative, act like a businessman and design like a god.
This... more
Don't have time to read the top Graphic Design books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Cover your basics with the book that covers everything from typography and color to layout and business issues! Jim Krause, author of the popular Index series, guides you through the understanding and practice of the three elements every successful visual design must have:
Components: Learn how to get the most out of the photos, illustrations, icons, typography, linework, decoration, borders and backgrounds you use within your design.
Composition: Practice combining the components of a... more
Protégé of design legend Massimo Vignelli and partner in the New York office of the international design firm Pentagram, Michael... more
Kevin RoseThe master when it comes to taking complicated data and turning it into beautiful charts and graphs that are easy to understand. If you’re into graphic design, print design, web design, you name it, you’re going to get some really good information and how tos out of these books. He has a whole series of these books. (Source)
This is the... more
Michael OkudaEdward Tufte's classic book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is a fascinating, surprisingly readable treatise for anyone interested in infographics. When I hired artists for the Star Trek graphics dept, I sometimes asked them to read it.https://t.co/cK4GQqBDxp (Source)
Learn to increase the... more
Don't have time to read the top Graphic Design books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
This very popular design book has been wholly revised and expanded to feature a new dimension of inspiring and counterintuitive ideas to thinking about graphic design relationships.
The second edition includes a new section on web design and new discussions of modularity, framing, motion and time, rules of randomness, and numerous quotes supported by images and... more
Within these pages, you'll find 80 creative challenges that will help you achieve a breadth of stronger design solutions, in various media, within any set time period. Exercises range from creating a typeface in an hour to designing a paper robot in an afternoon to designing web pages and other interactive experiences. Each exercise includes compelling visual solutions from other designers and background... more
Pretty Much Everything is a mid-career survey of work, case studies, inspiration, road stories, lists, maps, how-tos, and advice. It includes examples of his work—posters,... more
With the support of his clients, Sagmeister transformed these sentences into typographic works, from billboards in France to... more
Graphic Design which fulfills aesthetic needs, complies with the laws of form and exigencies of two-dimensional space; which speaks in semiotics, sans-serifs, and geometrics; which abstracts, transforms, translates, rotates, dilates, repeats, mirrors, groups, and regroups is not good design if it is irrelevant.
Graphic design which evokes the symmetria of Vituvius, the dynamic symmetry of Hambidge, the asymmetry of Mondrian; which is a good gestalt, generated by intuition or by computer, by invention or by a system of coordinates is not good design if it does not...
Kimberly Gloria ChoiWhen asked what books she would recommend to youngsters interested in her professional path, Kimberly mentioned A Designer's Art. (Source)
John Berger's Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and the most influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the (London) Sunday Times critic commented: "This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings . . . he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures." By now he has.
"Berger has the ability to cut right through the mystification of the professional art critics . . .... more
Robert JonesHe’s a Marxist and says that the role of publicity or branding is to make people marginally dissatisfied with their current way of life. (Source)
David McCammonWays of Seeing goes beyond photography and will continue to develop your language around images. (Source)
John Harrison (Eton College)You have to understand the Marxist interpretation of art; it is absolutely fundamental to the way that art history departments now study the material. Then you have to critique it, because we’ve moved on from the 1970s and the collapse of Marxism in most of the world shows—amongst other things—that the model was flawed. But it’s still a very good book to read, for a teenager especially. (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Graphic Design books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
'The designer of today re-establishes the long-lost contact between art and the public, between living people and art as a living thing'
Bruno Munari was among the most inspirational designers of all time, described by Picasso as 'the new Leonardo'. Munari insisted that design be beautiful,... more
"You must read this book." — Neil Gaiman
Praised throughout the cartoon industry by such luminaries as Art Spiegelman, Matt Groening, and Will Eisner, Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics is a seminal examination of comics art: its rich history, surprising technical components, and major cultural significance. Explore the secret world between the panels, through the lines, and within the hidden symbols of a powerful but misunderstood... more
Austin KleonUnsolicited, but here’s my advice for visual thinkers (and others) who want to be better writers: [...] Cartoonists, because their work demands work from two disciplines (writing/art, poetry/design, words/pictures), are highly instructive when it comes to visual people learning to write, writers learning to make art, etc. (Check out Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics for more.) (Source)
Will BrookerUnderstanding Comics is a book about how comics work, told in comic form. It’s very accessible, it’s for the general reader and is about comics in general, not just superhero comics. It explores areas like pacing and editing – how motion can be created through static panels on a page, and how arranging those panels in different ways, or drawing in different styles, or combining text and image,... (Source)
In her best-selling Geometry of Design, Elam shows how proportion, symmetry, and other geometrical systems underlie many of the visual relationships that make for good design. Now, Elam brings the same keen eye and clear explanations to... more
- the new definition of brand
- the five essential disciplines of brand-building
- how branding is changing the dynamics of competition
- the three most powerful questions to ask about any brand
- why... more
Robert JonesIt’s got a nice, informal definition of what a brand is…It’s very readable. (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Graphic Design books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
The world’s top advertising guru, Paul Arden, offers up his wisdom on issues as diverse as problem solving, responding to a brief, communicating, playing your cards right, making mistakes, and creativity – all endeavors that can be applied to aspects of modern life.
This uplifting and humorous little book provides a unique insight into the... more
Casey NeistatThe reason why I gift [this book] is because you can read it in 40 minutes. (Source)
It contains all you need to know to survive and prosper in the complex, ever-shifting world of graphic design. Set out in A-Z style and written in a realistic, conversational, and insightful way, the book provides advice on the fundamental topics and issues that face designers in their daily lives. It looks at everything from kerning to presenting, from budgeting to dealing with rejection, from annual reports... more
Originally published by Yale University Press in 1963 as a limited silkscreen edition with 150 color plates, Interaction of Color first appeared in paperback in 1971, featuring ten representative color studies chosen by Albers. The paperback has remained... more
In "Vector Basic Training," acclaimed illustrative designer Von Glitschka takes... more
Typographic design has been a field in constant motion since Gutenberg first invented movable type. Staying abreast of recent developments in the field is imperative for both design professionals and students. Thoroughly updated to maintain its relevancy in today's digital world, Typographic Design: Form and Communication, Fourth Edition continues to provide a compre-hensive overview of every aspect of designing with type, now in full color.
This Fourth Edition of the bestselling... more
Grids are the basis for all design projects, and learning how to work with them is fundamental for all graphic designers. From working with multi-column formats to using type, color, images, and more, Layout Essentials not only demonstrates, using real world examples, how to use grids effectively, but shows you how to... more
The book's legendary renown is certain to increase with the long-overdue appearance of this... more
• Introduces HTML and CSS in a way that makes them accessible to everyone—hobbyists, students, and professionals—and it’s... more
Whereas many other books on type are either very technical or showcase oriented, this book offers ideas... more
Don't have time to read the top Graphic Design books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
· Features the latest information on pricing graphic design work
Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines, is
the industry bible, containing information all graphic artists and their clients need to buy and sell work in a professional manner. The twelfth edition of this classic reference has been revised and updated to provide all the information creative professionals need to keep up with current trends and compete in an ever-changing industry. less
Design is at a turning point. Our infatuation with—and the backlash against—technology is over. Today's best designers have learned to embrace its advantages and think beyond its limitations by combining the power of the computer with the tactile qualities of handmade elements.
Inside you'll find examples of work that showcase a variety of design methods, including mixed media, illustration, letterpress, screenprinting and collage. You'll find inspiration in examples from outstanding designers and see how traditional elements can make a more... more
More than a collection of great examples of layout, this book is an invaluable resource for students, designers, and creative professionals who seek design understanding and inspiration. The book illuminates the broad category of... more
Don't have time to read the top Graphic Design books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Every symbol is captioned with information on who it was designed for, who designed it, when, and what... more
Logotype mini is truly international, and features the world's outstanding identity designers. Examples are drawn not just from Western Europe and North America but also Australia, South Africa, the Far East, Israel, Iran, South America... more
This interactive activity book takes you on a ramble through a secret garden created in beautifully detailed pen-and-ink illustrations – all waiting to be brought to life through colouring, but each also sheltering all kinds of tiny creatures just waiting to be found. And there are also bits of the garden that still need to be completed by you. Appealing to all ages, the intricately-realized world of the Secret Garden is both beautiful and inspirational. less
The 100 typefaces featured in the book are hand-picked by the author... more
Don't have time to read the top Graphic Design books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Good design, like good storytelling, brings ideas to life. The latest book from award-winning writer Ellen Lupton is a playbook for creative thinking, showing designers how to use storytelling techniques to create satisfying graphics, products, services and experiences. Whether crafting a digital app or a data-rich publication, designers invite people to enter a scene and explore what’s there. An intriguing logo, page layout or retail space uses line,... more
Why be a designer who must rely upon preexisting typefaces and clip art when you can become the kind of designer who creates logos, fonts and lettering of your own? Leslie Cabarga, author of the bestselling "Designer's Guide to Color Combinations," has created a textbook of type for the experienced graphics professional as well as the beginning student of design.
You'll learn how to: Create innovative logo design traditionally and on the computerDevelop a discerning eye for quality lettering and logo designDesign... more
The Paint by Sticker series is now purrfect for cat lovers! Create gorgeous illustrations of felines in low-poly (geometric polygon shapes) style, one sticker at a time. There’s a playful ginger tabby hanging from her paws and an elegant, blue-eyed Siamese angling for a head scratch. Images are divided into dozens of spaces, each with a number that corresponds to a particular... more
· Features proven color principles designers need to create effective designs
· Employs Pantone's universal color system to make color selections easy
This authoritative guide presents hundreds of color combinations and color principles needed to create effective designs. Every lesson is demonstrated by example, enabling designers of all specialties and levels of experience to make the best color choices for every type of design. less
Don't have time to read the top Graphic Design books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
The Business Skills Every Creative Needs!
Remaining relevant as a creative professional takes more than creativity--you need to understand the language of business. The problem is that design school doesn't teach the strategic language that is now essential to getting your job done. Creative Strategy and the Business of Design fills that void and... more
The book explores five central themes—the suit, the camellia, jewelry, makeup and perfume, the little black dress—and follows... more
Broken into sections covering the fundamental elements of design, key works by acclaimed designers serve to illustrate technical points and encourage readers to try out new ideas. Themes covered include form, narrative, color, type and image, ornament, simplicity, and wit and humour.
The result is an instantly accessible and easy to understand guide to graphic design using professional techniques. less
Jacket design: Dmitry Krasny.
Other artwork by Bonnie Scranton, Dmitry... more
Don't have time to read the top Graphic Design books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.