Not to worry: This book is the one place you can turn to find quick, non-intimidating, excellent design help. In The Non-Designer's Design Book, 2nd Edition, best-selling author Robin Williams turns her attention to the basic principles of good design and typography. All you have to do is follow her clearly explained concepts, and you'll begin producing more sophisticated, professional, and interesting pages immediately. Humor-infused, jargon-free prose interspersed with design exercises, quizzes, illustrations, and dozens of examples make learning a snap—which is just what audiences have come to expect from this best-selling author.

    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 to interface design. Adrian Shaughnessy, author of the best-selling How to be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul, is himself a successful designer, and brings a wealth of experience to this very useful and entertaining book.

    With more than 2,000 design projects illustrating more than 400 entries, it provides an intense overview of the varied elements that make up the graphic design profession through a unique set of chapters: “principles" defines the very basic foundation of what constitutes graphic design to establish the language, terms, and concepts that govern what we do and how we do it, covering layout, typography, and printing terms; “knowledge" explores the most influential sources through which we learn about graphic design from the educational institutions we attend to the magazines and books we read; “representatives" gathers the designers who over the years have proven the most prominent or have steered the course of graphic design in one way or another; and “practice" highlights some of the most iconic work produced that not only serve as examples of best practices, but also illustrate its potential lasting legacy. Graphic Design, Referenced serves as a comprehensive source of information and inspiration by documenting and chronicling the scope of contemporary graphic design, stemming from the middle of the twentieth century to today.

    This essential book explains the processes behind creating and designing type. Author Karen Cheng discusses issues of structure, optical compensation, and legibility, with special emphasis given to the often overlooked relationships between letters and shapes in font design.  The book is illustrated with numerous diagrams that demonstrate visual principles and letter construction, ranging from informal progress sketches to final type designs and diagrams. A wide range of classic and modern typefaces is analyzed, including those from many premier contemporary type foundries. Introductory essays and diagrams emphasize the history of type, the primary systems of typeface classification, the two main proportional systems for type, the parts of a letter, the effects of new technology on design methodology, the optical illusions that affect density and balance in letterforms, and the differences in form between basic serif typestyles. The book provides detailed guidelines for creating serif and sans serif letters, numbers, punctuation, and accents.  As design clients increasingly call for original and custom typefaces, Designing Type is a superb reference for both students and professional graphic designers.

    The Anatomy of Type (The Geometry of Type in the UK) is all about looking more closely at letters. Through visual diagrams and practical descriptions, you’ll learn how to distinguish between related typefaces and see how the attributes of letterforms (such as contrast, detail, and proportion) affect the mood, readability, and use of each typeface. Nutritional value aside, the spreads full of big type are nice eye candy, too.The 100 typefaces featured in the book are hand-picked by the author for their functionality and stylistic relevance in today’s design landscape. Along with several familiar faces (Garamond, Bodoni, Gill Sans, Helvetica), you’ll also discover contemporary fonts that are less common — and often more useful — than the overused classics.

    Hochuli begins with a consideration of how human beings read, moving on incrementally to considerations of letter, word, and line as well as word-space and line-space. Hochuli concludes by examining whole paragraphs and how they carry meaning. Produced in Switzerland to the highest standards, Detail in Typography embodies critical thinking and articulate design in its own physical form.

    Witty thinking is playfulness with ideas, words playing against images, and unexpected connections prompting new insights. It is clever thinking, not funny drawing.A Smile in the Mind analyses the intricate thought processes behind the apparently forward images. It shows how to make the case for witty solutions and, through a series of in-depth interviews with the world's top designers, suggests how to get inspiration. Gathering together the best examples of graphic wit over the past three decades, this book includes work from over 300 designers in the USA, Britain, Europe and Japan. Written with insight and a subtle lightness of touch, it offers designers a friendly read, a helpful sourcebook and a dynamic trigger for ideas.

    An outspoken voice in the world of graphic design for more than twenty years, Paul Scher has developed a worldwide reputation for her bold, modern graphics and her incisive critiques of the design profession.

    "Grid Systems in Graphic Design - Raster Systeme für die Visuelle Gestaltung" By Josef Müller-Brockmann. English version by D. Q. Stephenson. English and German text. This is the 5th Edition, published by Verlag Niggli AG, 2007. Full title: "Grid Systems in Graphic Design. A Visual Communication Manual for Graphic Designers, Typographers and Three Dimensional Designers - Raster Systeme für die Visuelle Gestaltung. Ein Handbuch für Grafiker, Typografen und Ausstellungsgestalter". A comprehensive handbook on modern typography and using the Grid System, illustrated with drawings, diagrams, black & white photographs & numerous examples of graphic design. Subjects include: Grid and Design Philosophy; The Typographic Grid and its purpose; Sizes of Paper; Typeface Alphabets; Margin Proportions; Construction of the Grid and Type Area; Type & Picture Area with 8, 20 and 32 Grid Fields; Photograph & Illustration in the Grid System; the Grid in Corporate Identity and Three-Dimensional Design & 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 communicate. - Paul Rand For the design student, teacher, professional designer, and, indeed, for anyone interested in the creative communication of ideas, Paul Rand: A Designer's Art is certain to be a book that is both provocative and enlightening.

    But David Airey’s “Logo Design Love” is something different: it’s a guide for designers (and clients) who want to understand what this mysterious business is all about. Written in reader-friendly, concise language, with a minimum of designer jargon, Airey gives a surprisingly clear explanation of the process, using a wide assortment of real-life examples to support his points. Anyone involved in creating visual identities, or wanting to learn how to go about it, will find this book invaluable. - Tom Geismar, Chermayeff & GeismarIn Logo Design Love, Irish graphic designer David Airey brings the best parts of his wildly popular blog of the same name to the printed page. Just as in the blog, David fills each page of this simple, modern-looking book with gorgeous logos and real world anecdotes that illustrate best practices for designing brand identity systems that last. David not only shares his experiences working with clients, including sketches and final results of his successful designs, but uses the work of many well-known designers to explain why well-crafted brand identity systems are important, how to create iconic logos, and how to best work with clients to achieve success as a designer. Contributors include Gerard Huerta, who designed the logos for Time magazine and Waldenbooks; Lindon Leader, who created the current FedEx brand identity system as well as the CIGNA logo; and many more. Readers will learn:• Why one logo is more effective than another• How to create their own iconic designs• What sets some designers above the rest• Best practices for working with clients• 25 practical design tips for creating logos that last

    From researching the competition to translating the vision of the CEO, to designing and implementing an integrated brand identity programme, the meticulous development process of designing a brand identity is presented through a highly visible step-by-step approach in five phases.

    These fundamentals of design, once the exclusive domain of professional typographers, have become an essential starting point for anyone looking for a fresh way to communicate. Practical information about creating letters and type often amounts to a series of guidelines for executing a particular process, font program, or style. But what makes lettering and type endlessly fascinating is the flexibility to interpret and sometimes even break these rules. Lettering & Type is a smart-but- not-dense guide to creating and bending letters to one's will. More than just another pretty survey, it is a powerful how-to book full of relevant theory, history, explanatory diagrams, and exercises. While other type design books get hung up on the technical and technological issues of type design and lettering, Lettering & Type features the context and creativity that shape letters and make them interesting. Authors and designers Bruce Willen and Nolen Strals examine classic design examples as well as exciting contemporary lettering of all stripes—from editorial illustrations to concert posters to radical conceptual alphabets. Lettering & Type is ideal for anyone looking to move beyond existing typography and fonts to create, explore, and use original or customized letterforms. This latest addition to our best-selling Design Briefs seriesfeatures a foreword by Ellen Lupton and hundreds of images and examples of work by historical and contemporary designers, artists, and illustrators, including Marian Bantjes, Stefan Sagmeister, Matthew Carter, Christoph Niemann, Steve Powers (ESPO), House Industries, Christian Schwartz, Margaret Kilgallen, James Victore, Abbott Miller, Sibylle Hagmann, Ed Fella, and many more. Throughout the book interviews with type designers, artists, and graphic designers provide real-world perspective from contemporary practitioners.

    This comprehensive guide is intended to advance the progress of designers seeking to deepen their typographic expertise. Typography Essentials is a practical, hands-on resource to distill, organize, and compartmentalize—but not to oversimplify—the many complex issues surrounding the effective use of typography. It is for designers of every medium in which type plays a major role, and is organized and designed to make the process enjoyable and entertaining, as well as instructional.This book is divided into four easy-to-use sections: The Letter, The Word, The Paragraph, and The Page. Each of the 100 principles has an explanation and examples representing the principle in action.

    Being able to craft type well and thoughtfully takes a deep understanding of the inherent complexities and a keen eye for the minute and subtle details. This book contains a collection of 1,000 instances of thoughtful type usage along with credits that note what fonts were used in the design. Like its predecessor, 1,000 Graphic Elements, the photography in this book focuses in on the typography so readers can get an up-close look at the work. 1,000 Type Treatments showcases an array of fonts in a catalog-like format, making it easy for the working designer to practically shop for ideas. The book is organized by style so if a designer has a traditional, elegant, or edgy piece, they can go directly to that section of the book, where they will find a wide collection of fresh ideas in the style they are seeking.Also included is a directory of font foundries and suppliers, providing busy designers with a quick reference guide to where they can find the fonts that pique their interest.