Best book design according to redditors
We found 183 Reddit comments discussing the best book design. We ranked the 37 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 183 Reddit comments discussing the best book design. We ranked the 37 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Every designer should read Robert Bringhurst’s The elements of typographic style at least once a year.
The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst is probably the most thorough and well put together book on typography and its history. It's really cheap and I suggest anyone wanting to learn more about typefaces or a general interest in the history and evolution of type to check it out.
http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Robert-Bringhurst/dp/0881792055/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292256276&sr=8-1
Easily one of the most engaging and educating books about type.
Start with Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition
Then read GUI Bloopers 2.0, Second Edition: Common User Interface Design Don'ts and Dos
Then possibly The Design of Everyday Things
And follow up with The Non-Designer's Design Book
Not sure about websites, but these books are absolute must-reads for learning typography.
Thinking With Type
Designing With Type
The Elements of Typographic Style
Books books books!
Some essential reading:
You have probably heard of the documentary Helvetica. This movie inspired me to become a type nerd. The follow-up movie, Objectified, is also very good and focuses on consumer design.
Web sites / blogs:
If you are at college or have a college campus nearby, check our their art library. There are bound to be awesome resources there. Explore graphic design periodicals and get lost in giant bound books of type samples.
Edit: Disclaimer: I'm merely a design hobbyist.
Here's a few I like:
As a person with no education beyond high school, take all that I say with a grain of salt. I'm a pretty successful web designer and front-end developer, having working with four startups and done a year of freelancing.
It is not uncommon to hear industry peers criticize the education system as it pertains to web design because often the practices you learn are no longer the standard or relevant. I've heard of many stories where designers exit college (with no working experience, obviously) and have an incredibly difficult time finding work for the reasons I listed above.
Education has never been brought up at any of the companies I've worked or those that I've consulted with. I believe the reason for this is that I have a body of work to show along with whatever reputation I've garnered on Dribbble, say.
All this being said, it is entirely possible for you to develop your skills on your own, such as I did, and find work. I'm happy to list all the reading materials that I own that helped me get where I am now. I'll list what I remember but I'll have to go check when I can get a second:
Hardboiled Web Design
HTML5 for Web Designers
CSS3 for Web Designers
The Elements of Content Strategy
Responsive Web Design
Designing for Emotion
Design is a Job
Mobile First
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
The Elements of Typographic Style
Thinking with Type
The Icon Handbook
Don't Make Me Think
If you invest your money in those and actually read them, you will be well on your way. Feel free to ping me. Good luck!
A few of my favorites in no particular order
The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
The definitive source for classic typography, a must read for anyone seriously interested in type.
[Reading Letters by Sofie Beier] (https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Letters-Legibility-Sofie-Beier/dp/9063692714)
A great intro to text legibility with lots of imagery.
Shaping Text by Jan Middendorp
Nice intro to typography and the importance of context.
Shady Characters by Keith Houston
Part novel, part history, part art. All about the origins of typographic symbols, characters, and alphabets. If that sort of thing interests you check this book out.
The Elements of Typographic Style
The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst.
Required reading for designers, typographers and anyone in the industry. It's slightly lost its status in the internet age with a lot of designers doing web work now, but it still remains one of the most influential and important texts on the subject. Herman Zapf was quoted as saying "I wish to see this book become the Typographer's Bible". Doesn't come much better endorsed than that.
Even though it's somewhat hard to get hold of, it's still a course text for a lot of design schools.
The Elements of Typographic Style
It may be a bit dense for a beginner, however it's been referenced as the bible of typography multiple times to me, by unrelated sources! (And it's cheap!)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0881792063/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=1535523722&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0881791326&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=191BS5CQJSX6RBDKACAE
I can't give suggestions on hand-lettering books yet as the few I have read weren't good...so I'm trying to find better ones. But check out Louise Fili and Jessica Hische for inspiration and of course Paula Scher and Sagmeister.
There are many other books so I welcome others to chime in and add their suggestions.
You 100% want to grab yourself a copy of Grady Hendrix's Paperbacks From Hell, which will provide you with more delightfully awful 70s/80s horror than you can poke a sharp stick at. (And to sweeten the deal, some of those books have been reissued - with introductions by Hendrix - under the aegis of Valancourt Press, who, truly, are doing the Lord's work.)
For my part, I'll recommend Cathy Cash Spellman's Bless The Child. This book has everything: New Age bookstore owners who double as axe-wielding warrior princesses, a lead character who is way too young and beautiful to be a grandmother (which you'll know because literally every damn character spends about three pages marveling at how young and beautiful she is and how they can't believe she's a grandmother), Satanic nannies who keep severed goat heads in their closets, astral-plane sex, a theology that seems to draw from just about every religion that's ever existed up to and including the ones that involve Atlantis, an evil cult leader who uses Gmail, sweary demons, and the deathless line "STAND BACK! THIS HOST IS CONSECRATED!!!"
Paperbacks from Hell I have heard just awesome things and its won awards. I haven’t read it myself but it’s on my to read list for sure.
The Elements of Typographic Style, By Robert Bringhurst is an excellent resource for setting type.
EDIT: Of course, I would recommend purchasing a copy if this sort of thing interests you. It's a great book to keep near your desk for quick reference.
You should definitely read up on typography.
http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Version-Anniversary/dp/0881792128
Here are some general rules:
Note: These are not absolute rules to live by. While they will generally work for many scenarios, it's better to understand the "rules" of typography and adjust based on your design's specific needs.
Overall, think more about your spacing. Give things room to breathe, as right now some pieces feel a little tight. I'm not going to tell you specifics on what to fix (I think that's a bad brand of critique that happens here), because we should all be able to look and think critically about our own work. Look over your design, see where you can help something breathe, and adjust to your own discretion.
Novels with a strong male protagonist? I don't mean to be rude, but nearly every novel written, ever.
That said, if you like Palahniuk, you'll probably like The Contortionist's Handbook. I also like the relatively weak male leads from The Cheese Monekys and The Learners
This book will take years off your learning curve.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0881792063?ie=UTF8&tag=alldietslowca-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0881792063
If you want to be a web designer and not just a code monkey, there's no way of getting around learning (at least the basics) of graphic design. Composition, grid systems, colour theory, typography. Did I mention typography? Really, visual trends come and go, but good typography is timeless and arguably the #1 factor that decides whether a site's content (the most important part of a site) is consumable.
Then, learn HTML and CSS. Write code by hand, i.e. no WYSIWYG editors. Also, ignore server-side languages (PHP, Python, Java, Ruby, C#, etc.) and even JavaScript at this point. Once you're familiar with the elements of HTML and how to style them via CSS, learn JavaScript, because now you'll have a good mental model of what you're manipulating with JS.
This alone will keep you busy for a substantial period of time, but it's the meat of front-end engineering. Simultaneously, keep refining your design knowledge and skills. Practice on personal projects. Get feedback from peers, it's a very generous community.
An Essential Reading List For Designers
Source: www.tomfaulkner.co.uk
All books have been linked to Amazon for review and possible purchase. Remember to support the authors by purchasing their books. If there are any issues with this listing let me know via comments or pm.
Architecture
Communication Design
Fashion Design
Angela ButtolphEditors of Phaidon ?Furniture Design
Game Design
Graphic Design
Information Design
Industrial Design
(cont'd)
I don't actually know why sorry. If I could find my copy of this I could maybe say:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0881792128
Best guess it has something to do with the arrangement of our eyes, but that's entirely my guess, and not a very educated one.
Good/quality design is making sure that as many aspects of a design as possible at least look intentional. In Modern/Swiss design (what most design today is based off of) this means keeping spacing/line-weights consistent, either the same, or from some sort of set/sequence. Keeping all of your horizontal lines, in the figure and the implied lines between, the same is very pleasing to the eye, and generally "looks better".
At the moment the thin slash through the middle is different enough from all the other white-spaces that it should maybe be a bit wider, though the designer should take care of that after dealing the the cross-bar on the A, just in case it's just that comparison that looks off.
Does that help?
1: Without knowing what your "45-page nonfiction book" is about, I'm just going to give you the general advice that a good cover moves units. Unless someone is specifically searching for your book, the cover is going to be the first thing he sees and what catches his interest. This may be considerably less true in the non-fiction section.
How you go about getting one is up to you, but I'd personally recommend not skimping on your cover.
2: In regards to turning documents into e-books, this is actually a fairly simple process. Amazon released an e-book of instructions, and there's also a printable PDF you can look at without having to have a kindle handy. The main parts are mostly about letting your word processor handle white space instead of manually inserting spaces, tabs, and extra carriage returns (do so with indented paragraphs, page breaks, and double spaced lines). If your work has tables, charts, or pictures in it, then that might be something else to worry about.
3: Amazon's program is called KDP Select. The biggest drawback is that you can't sell your digital book through anyone else, but you can still sell physical copies elsewhere (unless it's changed since the last time I looked into it). Their website will answer your questions better than I can, but I would say that in general, no, I didn't find that Amazon did much of anything to make it worth it. You're still on your own for marketing and such, they just allow you to do some promotional work like offering your book for free for several days to hopefully snag some reviews.
>I know they will not allow me to price it $0.00 and have a minimum price of $0.99, so that is what I will charge on Amazon.
The common method to get around this is to put your work on other sites like Smashwords that DO allow you to set the price to free, and then report the book to Amazon as cheaper elsewhere. Eventually, they'll either automatically price match it or, in some occasions, pull your book down off their site. I've never heard of this second one actually happening to anyone, but I'm sure it could.
Kerning is the individual spacing between letter pairs.
Tracking is the spacing between a range of characters.
So finding a medium between not squashing the letters is Tracking. Slightly different, definitely worth knowing the difference asap (I learnt this way too late on!)
Type Matters is a great little book on typography that is definitely worth a read
Amazon has an ebook that walks you through formatting for Kindle. I used this when putting my boyfriend's book up as a Kindle ebook, and it helped tremendously.
Thinking with Type is a great book, but I'm more of a Bringhurst fan - The Elements of Typographic Style is my recommendation.
I have compiled a reading list to be read in order just for this question.
I strongly believe that these books will make you better than 90% of designers out there.
Level One
Start with Thinking with Type it is a really good introduction to all things graphic design. It focuses a lot on typography and it is really basic. I
Next is Grid Systems: Principles of Organizing Type This book takes what you learned in Thinking with Type and allows you to develope it further in a grid based system. Its good, basic, and has exercises for you to do to play with composition.
Third on the list is Graphic Design: The New Basics It will take what you learned in Thinking with Type and Grid Systems and open them up a little. You learn about design elements other than just type like scale, rhythm and contrast. It really good, and has some projects to do.
Level 2
Now You can get into more "advanced" stuff. There are a lot of books that can go here, but Ill recommend some of my favorites. Its not as important to do this section in order.
Grid Systems in Graphic Design is the bible when it comes to grids. Its german and dry as fuck, but it is basically awesome. Its expensive, but worth every single penny.
Elements of Typographic Style Not alot about grids in here, but it tells you every insane crazy thing that typographers do when they massage text.
You can look at other designers work too. Heres a list of designers I like a lot:
Stefan Sagmeister
Paul Rand
Massimo Vignelli
James Victore
Paul Sahre
Wolfgang Weinhart
Paula Scher
Tibor Kalman
Most of these designers also have books out about their life and work.
Get a sketchbook and play around in it. Draw, collage, glue bubblegum wrappers in there. Just make it a diary of your visual life.
You could also get into Visual Theory here:
Norman Bryson has a book on still lifes that awesome
JWT Mitchell's What do pictures want is great
After this, its just a matter of making a lot of really bad shit and eventually its just a little less worse and maybe one day it might be good.
Ive got more, but that should keep you busy for a year or two.
The elements of typographic style
http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Robert-Bringhurst/dp/0881792063/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250821514&sr=8-1
learned more about fonts and font design than i ever wanted to. great book. lots of why, lots of theory, not as many examples.
Use this book (it's free). It helped me out a lot.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007URVZJ6
The best thing to do is get a copy of Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographical Style and read it. Then read it again. Then reference it regularly.
There is no better resource for learning to set type well.
I recommend reading this book like it's the Bible. It has everything you need, and it's very up to date. It's not the usual fluff/philosophy, but real, step by step practical advice and real world examples. I found it invaluable.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Smashing-Design-Foundations-Designing-Experiences/dp/0470666854
The former is widely considered somewhat of a 'type bible,' and was referenced often in college. It's a fantastic resource, however it can be seen as less accessible for total beginners.
That's where the latter comes in. If you're going the self-taught route, you'd probably love Stealing Sheep. However, unfortunately it seems to be out of stock everywhere, with only used or insanely marked up resellers. I wonder if it's going out of print, which would be a shame.
Get The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. After you've read it you can check out webtypography.net a site which is going through chapter by chapter and adapting the lessons of The Elements of Typographic Style to the web providing helpful css snippets and explanations of how print and web typography differ by convention and necessity. In my opinion design without typography is nothing. A thoughtfully typeset page with no adornment caries far more weight than a poorly typeset page filled with the fluff techniques demonstrated on the multitude of tutorial websites out there. Understand typography and you are well on your way to understanding design.
If you're looking for something he will learn from, not just a gimmicky "lolol I hate papyrus" gift, I'd strongly recommend The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst.
This book was recommended to me by one of my lecturers while I was in university. I didn't purchase it until I had graduated (mainly because I was broke at the time), but I really wish I had purchased it earlier. It is the pinnacle book for learning about typographic history and best practices. I cannot stress enough how much of an amazing resource this is for a young typographer. Even if you don't end up getting it for him, just let him know that it exists so he can pick it up at some point.
ti consiglio The Elements of Typographic Style, di Robert Bringhurst. Libro leggero e chiarissimo che copre molte basi di tipografia.
Timothy Samara books are good for beginners - Making and Breaking the Grid was the book that finally helped me understand grid systems, while Design Elements: A Graphic Style Manual was my Freshman year design textbook. The Story of Graphic Design by Patrick Cramsie is also a great GD History book.
In terms of things that are less textbook and more actual books about graphic design, I enjoyed Just My Type a lot. Design Is A Job gives some great advice on the business side of being a designer - pitching to clients, dealing with contracts, etc. How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer has some really interesting interviews with some of the best designers in our field.
And I would be terribly remiss if I didn't mention two of my absolute favorite novels, which happen to be about graphic design. The Cheese Monkeys and its sequel The Learners are fantastic stories about a design student and his experiences both in school and in his first job. Plus, they're written by Chip Kidd, who is an absolutely amazing designer (imho).
But, in case that wasn't enough, I'll also leave you with this link to a previous thread on this subreddit about great GD books.
Good luck and happy reading!
I've been on a total typography book binge recently!
Finally, I strongly don't recommend Type Matters! If you see it in the store you may be tempted - it's a very attractive leather-bound book with sexy black and red illustrations - but I found it to be overly simplistic. It also looks like there's quite a lot of reading to be had, but the vast majority of the text in there is all repeated sample copypasta. (And if I wasn't disappointed enough in the book, the elastic came loose on my copy!)
The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Brinhurst is what you're looking for.
Hermann Zapf said “I wish to see this book become the Typographers’ Bible,” and Hoefler & Frere-Jones consider it "the finest book ever written about typography".
In addition to the questions I just want to point out that 2500 words is too short for Amazon. I'd recommend going back and boosting it to over 3000 words at the very least (likely up over 5000 words would be better) before posting it to Amazon. Amazon doesn't like content that is too short and you could get in trouble for 'poor user experience.'
As a final note I'd really recommend reading the FAQ and sidebar on this subreddit and then doing searches to get a lay of the land. This subreddit has a wealth of information on it and spending a couple hours here getting yourself familiar with everything before publishing is really going to help you out a lot.
Oh and congratulations on your first story!
These are mostly directed at classical book design, so they probably tend more conservative than you should do for a magazine, but these books actual spell out rules for what you should do (I'm a big believer in handcuffing yourself to rules for the purpose of understanding them, and then breaking them later), which is I think what you're asking for.
My sorta summary/advice based heavily on what I read in the above books:
Don't decorate; be confident. There's definitely an urge to add little horizontal rules above things or boxes around page elements. Tischichold especially points out how young designers can't help but put a thin box around the inside title page of books. He says it shows a lack of confidence. The solution is to have a justification for where you put things.
Basically, if you have a baseline grid for the page, then you can place page elements on it and know that they will be harmonic with the overall page.
Page numbers can honestly go anywhere as long as it's not the inside edge. Putting them there means the publication has to be completely open in order to use the page numbers, which is annoying.
Don't put repeating information on pages. It's annoying to have the author's name or the book title at the top of every single page. Again, this is a demonstration of a lack of confidence. I believe the thinking is that if the pages are photocopied and distributed, then people will know where it came from. DRM annoys.
Usually the font size for notes will be smaller than the main text, so keep aware of the leading difference between the two, especially if you put notes along the side. The leading shouldn't necessarily be equal, but it should be a multiple of the main content, so that every three or four lines the text aligns again.
I hope none of that was totally irrelevant to your project :) Good luck!
The Bringhurst Bible
James Victore's book is amazing. It's a quick read but is packed with inspiration.
Envisioning Information is great for info design.
Megg's History of Graphic Design
The rest of these I haven't read yet, but here is a list of things I currently have on my amazon wish list:
Some People Can't Surf by Art Chantry
Saul Bass: A Life in Film and Design by Jennifer Bass
Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design by Michael Bierut
Damn Good Advice by George Lois
How To Be A Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul by Adrian Shaughnessy
How To Think Like A Great Graphic Designer by Debbie Millman
The Design of Dissent by Milton Glaser and Mirko Ilic
Iron Fists: Branding the 20th Century Totalitarian State by Steven Heller
Elements of Typographic Style
Highsmith's Inside Paragraphs is a great introduction. It's 100 pages and it reads like a comic book. It is very short and incredibly specific: it is only about paragraphs. I make all my typography students read it, working from the idea that good typography starts with good text typography. In other words, if you can master text type, display type is easy.
Lupton's Thinking with Type is a good general beginning text. She has a lot of the info on her website.
I also find Speikermann's Stop Stealing Sheep quite good for an intro text.
Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style is the classic text that is worth having in your library. Mine is fairly well-thumbed with plenty of post-it flags and lots of favorite passages underlined. It is a bit much for the beginner, but definitely worth having as a reference. You'll grow into this one, and likely never outgrow it. It is a reference book that reads like poetry.
Download the free guide from Amazon on how to format your Word document for Kindle.
https://www.amazon.com/Building-Your-Kindle-Direct-Publishing-ebook/dp/B007URVZJ6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483308983&sr=8-1&keywords=kindle+formatting
BTW if you're serious about this business get Scrivener as an investment. It'll make life so much easier for you. Vellum is for advanced publishers. You don't need it yet.
On typography:
On grids:
On colour:
On usability:
On information design:
On inspiration:
On theory:
On history:
Monographs:
this might help:
Building Your Book for Kindle [Kindle Edition]
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007URVZJ6
I first started by using this blog by Guido Henkel. I came up with some pretty decent ebooks while I learned a lot about how to use the tools needed for building ebooks.
When I found that there were some things that I wanted to do with my books that Guido didn't explain, I got this book which explains all the bits and pieces behind ebook files and formatting on a more granular level. I do it this way all the times now.
It really depends on your level of technical skills more than how much money you have. Unless you want someone to do the formatting for you, all the tools you need to do it are free. At the very least (which requires the most technical knowledge) it only takes Notepad (I use Notepad++, which is free), a Zip program, and the Kindlegen program.
If you have little to no technical knowledge, you can plug your text into a conversion program like Calibre (also free) or even just send the file to Amazon. These don't produce very good results, though, unless you know exactly how to format your text.
The Cheese Monkeys by Chipp Kidd. A weird one but very good - our typography teacher had us read it and write a short opinion piece. http://www.amazon.com/The-Cheese-Monkeys-Novel-Semesters/dp/0061452483
Graphic design is everywhere and at all levels, expect to be paid accordingly. Understand too that $1000 for a logo is completely relative and doesn't by any means reflect the work that goes into it. You may have a someone who whips something together in a few minutes or have a team of designers slaving away iterating on an identity for weeks to make sure it's perfect, to make sure it becomes a household/highly recognizable piece of branding.
Now on the typography I can make a few suggestions, some of these are pretty dry and not so flashy but have very solid fundamentals in them. If you go to art school (and I highly suggest you do if you can afford it, it can be a phenomenal experience) then these are the kind of books you will be reading in the first year or two.
Typographic Systems of Design ~Kim Elam
Grid Systems: Principles of Organizing Type ~Kim Elam
Thinking with Type ~Ellen Lupton
Elements of Typography ~Robert Bringhurst
Hope that was helpful and I'm sure lots of other people have had very different experiences and will share their stories and opinions. It's a very diverse field.
I'm a type designer, so feel to ask me questions.
To keep the look and feel consistent across the entire font largely depends on understanding the fundamentals of visual communication design, typography, and the relationship between characters.
The process starts with a design with specific parameters, a "skeleton" of a typeface. You need to decide if it's going to be a serif, sans serif, slab serif, display, etc., then move on to the qualities of the typeface. What characters would it have (cold, friendly, fat, loud, etc.)? What purpose would it serve?
Once the design is settled, the work in creating a typeface from scratch involves lots and lots of tweaking to maintain a relationship with each glyph. Drawing glyphs is a lot of work, and yes, a lot of the work is done by eye. Each character could be "generated" and be mathematically accurate as a foundation, but it will be largely optically incorrect and loses an important quality, a human touch.
Extrapolation with fonts can be done with Superpolator and interpolation with RoboFab, but it doesn't make the typeface design better if it is not drawn correctly in the first place.
The best fonts out there, upon close inspection of their glyphs, show that their forms are derived from the written hand. See Gerrit Noordzij's The Stroke for more.
Karen Cheng's Designing Type is another good read. Another book that's coming soon is Fred Smeijers' Counterpunch 2nd Ed..
As glasspenguin mentioned, Typophile.com is a great message forum on type design. You will find a lot of information there.
If you're looking for fiction, even though you didn't mention it, i'd suggest Chip Kidd's "The Cheese Monkeys" it has a lot of good insight wrapped in a strange little story.
@OP I second the typography being…default as sitniz said. I would suggest checking out resources like ilovetypography, thinkingwithtype, and the fundamental "Elements of Typographic Style" by Binghurst
I'm a type nerd :)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0881792128/ref=aw_ls_5_3?colid=3RG1SRKEB21KE&coliid=I3JBV4YELX1GPP
First I think you need to learn how to set type. This is a personal favourite book of mine that helped reinforce some of the basics I learned. It's laid out in a very simple and easy to digest manner. https://www.amazon.ca/Type-Matters-Jim-Williams/dp/1858945674
Here is a great tool for learning kerning and tracking. http://type.method.ac/
Below are a couple sites I found that have some decent tips for beginner designers. I think you could learn a fair bit from them, and after doing so go back to your work and really compare what they're saying to what you've done.
https://speckyboy.com/the-10-golden-rules-of-simple-clean-design/
https://designschool.canva.com/blog/graphic-design-tips-non-designers/
As for the work itself I'd say you need to really grasp the fundamentals before you can make anything that's going to look good, and it really shows here. Simplify your logo, and you might think it's simple enough as it is but it isn't. Remember that every single aspect of design must be thought through. Is there a reason you use such harsh sharp lines? Why the thin outline to suggest where the Huskies face is? Can you do without it? Should it be thicker? Also, especially when thinking about a logo, always make sure it is scalable. How would it look on a billboard, how would it look on a button? A good logo works in both, and yours right now does not. The colours you have chosen do not speak to a football team. Pink? Cyan? Why? To me pink, especially the one you've chosen, is wishy washy. It's feminine and soft, not something I want to think of when I think of a bunch of hardened warriors smashing into each other with intent to hurt. Not something I want other people to think of my team. I know why you did it, because they're ears, but you don't need to have that pink there to show they are ears. Just the shape alone can accomplish that.
Most of your images really clutter the design and don't seem to serve a clear concise message. Your choice of typefaces are really poor for what you're trying to achieve. Both of these things can be fixed but have to do more with a personal sense of design, and that is something you develop over time.
For instance the "Synergy driven ad". The typeface does not emit strength. It's a very poorly designed typeface that has weak attributes about it. It's thin, curvy, and round but not robust. Take a look at this Houston Texans logo you'll see something that exemplifies great design choices for both the logo and a great typeface that has the attributes you're talking about.
http://www.sports-logos-screensavers.com/user/Houston_Texans.jpg
As far as the text goes, it is laid right overtop the image in black. This makes it extremely hard to read. Remember that the function of type is to transfer information in an easy to digest manner. Your type should always be legible. In this particular case you could have made the typeface white, larger, and picked a more robust typeface, so perhaps a bold sans serif or perhaps a slab serif.
Here is a wonderful little website that has a bunch of unique typefaces that are all free. Start there and look all around the web and you'll find out just how many better typefaces there are.
http://www.losttype.com/browse/
As far as the wolves go, really ask yourself if they fit. Why that picture? Why not huskies since we're the huskies? Why not wolves hunting in a pack? How about no wolves and just the type speaking for itself? etc. I'm sure you asked yourself some of these, maybe even all of them, but the questioning shouldn't stop anywhere close to there. I think you could've accomplished just as much and then some by instead having the logo with those words. If this is about the huskies then let people associate it with the huskies and not a pack of wolves. In fact, there is no logo on the page to begin with.
This is a documentary every graphic designer should watch and you're no exception to the rule!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feZ3Mr42Ki4
I hope you don't get offended by anything I've said. I hope all of this stuff is helpful. Good luck!
I really like "Shaping text" by Jan Middendorp which gives a good and entertaining overview of typography with many beautiful examples.
I like these books as a starting off point.
Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton
The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
The Language of Graphic Design by Richard Poulin
Megg's History of Graphic Design
the Cheese monkeys by Chip kidd. Its fiction but some of the lessons and stories are very true to how art school is.
Bookmarks (there are several styles to choose from)
A very bright flashlight. I use this thing all the time.
Microfiber cloth. These are low quality, but they've come in handy for various cleaning jobs.
Color changing lightbulb.
Keychain flashlight
Just because something is regularly used does not mean that it is good or appropriate. Besides, free fonts are seldom used in newspapers, television, movies, and music videos (and almost never used by reputable organizations). Free fonts are almost always terrible because of: kerning, x-height, letterforms, glyphs, ligatures, leading, etc. A good typeface has a family, not just a single font. Here's a primer, but I would recommend this book and this one.
My critique remains the same as my initial comments: far too many typefaces, and avoid using free fonts. Buy them if you can, steal them if you have to, or be much more diligent in finding well designed free typefaces. Start here.
a few things:
-read about design history. It's probably the most important and commonly overlooked aspect of learning design. Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide was a good one.
-subscribe to Design magazines. The quality of articles in print magazines is always way better than most blogs you'll find. Also, it just feels good to flip through a magazine once in awhile. Communication Arts. Applied Arts. Computer Arts. They're all worth looking at.
-color theory books are pretty easy to come by and most of them seem to be the same. So any color theory book is good.
-for type I really liked thinking with type. And the elements of typographic style is amazing but a lot harder of a read.
-also, process is everything. If you can think of design as more than 'making things look good', that helps. Ultimately design is making this work better. Every choice affects how a person will feel/react when they see your design. Color, type, layout, everything, will have a psychological affect on people, even if they don't realize it.
Yeah man. It sounds like you're well on your way to getting to learn the ropes.
A great book is http://www.amazon.com/Smashing-Design-Foundations-Designing-Experiences/dp/0470666854 (found on google play for less than half the price).
It's from the makers of http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/ which is also a great site to keep up to date with things.
A couple of my things.
I built a system that would take your name and site name and automatically deploy a WP site for you. It's better than WordPress.org because you can install plugins and such, more like self hosted. Super easy to do, I imagine that could still sell well if I had some marketing chops. Site is gone, but I still have the software on my server.
I've done a lot of other stuff too, but after the domains expire and I haven't had any sales, I usually let the domains go and I try something else.
It was featured in Paperbacks from Hell, which I highly recommend if you're...me.
This book is pretty cool. I haven’t actually finished any of the projects yet because my day job is in design so it’s kinda not what I like to do with my free time, but I thought it would help me learn other realms of design. I just do news layout and print ads.
A list of some of my favorites so far..
Interactions of Color by Josef Albers
[The Elements of Typographic Style] (https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Version-Anniversary/dp/0881792128/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485894924&sr=1-3&keywords=typography+book) by Robert Bringhurst
[Don't Make Me Think] (https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Think-Revisited-Usability-ebook/dp/B00HJUBRPG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485895055&sr=1-1&keywords=dont+make+me+think) by Steve Krug (More of web design, but I loved the book. It can apply to all design.)
Logo Design Love by David Airey
Designing Brand Identity by Alina Wheeler
The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
These are just a few that I have really enjoyed.
https://www.amazon.com/Typographie-Manual-Design-Emil-Ruder/dp/3721200438/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491666411&sr=8-1&keywords=emil+ruder+typographie
https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Version-Anniversary/dp/0881792128/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1491666331&sr=8-5&keywords=typography+book
https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Systems-Graphic-Design-Communication/dp/3721201450/ref=sr_1_27?ie=UTF8&qid=1491666365&sr=8-27&keywords=typography+book
https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Type-2nd-revised-expanded/dp/1568989695/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491666463&sr=8-1&keywords=typography+book
First start with a very basic digital logic design course or book.
This is the one I used. Its ok but there are better books out there.
"Type Matters"
Great book for it, made by a former student of my university & now is used as a teaching aid.
In almost every GD class I took at the California College of the Arts this book was required reading. its a great reference for beginners and really reasonable in price compared to my tuition.
Well, the most important books that I read when learning design were:
All of those would be a good start.
Thanks. If you're curious how to format a Kindle book, you can read up on it here: http://www.amazon.com/Building-Your-Book-Kindle-ebook/dp/B007URVZJ6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377352299&sr=8-1&keywords=building+your+book+for+kindle
It would actually be helpful to browse through it before you start writing. That way, you know how to format your text and chapters ahead of time.
I'd be glad to. To start, here are some terms to look for:
"The Crystal Goblet" explains the aim of print design, which is a good precurser to reading about interactive design media.
As far as books go, I strongly recommend About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design. It's a fairly long book, but it's worth reading to build a strong foundation of understanding in IxD.
A lot of IxD is about effectively using visual design to achieve goals. If you want to understand the visual tools of IxD after finding the theory interesting, you might read the mistitled Layout Workbook (or any other overview book; it's not actually a book about layouts — nor a workbook), followed by Bringhurst for advanced traditional typography.
Rocket Surgery Made Easy and other Steve Krug books are commonly suggested for more IxD topics, but I haven't gotten around to reading them. It's likely they're lighter reading than About Face 3.
> What are some good fonts?
Very hard to answer unless some context ist given.
If you wish to make a qualified decision yourself,
I recommend the Bringhurst for an introduction:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0881792128
I think it might be helpful to start from the beginning and learn the principles and hierarchies behind the bells and whistles of Adobe CC.
Each of these I was instructed to read cover to cover when I first began designing and here I am three years later with an extremely successful design career, large in part due to these readings.
Take the time to do it the right way, and the rest will follow naturally.
The Elements of Typographic Style is a classic, one of the best typography books around.
I can only choose one?!
User-experience design. I'm a web developer/designer, so much my work is to make websites intuitive and easy to use. As it turns out, doing this is quite difficult; UX design is almost a science in itself.
If you'd like to read a superb book on the subject, check out a book titled The Design of Everyday Things.
If you're still thinking "how complicated could it be?", check out this new edition to my bookshelf: The Elements of Typographic Style: a ~400 page treatment on typography alone. Very few notice the good/bad about the typography of a website or publication, if it looks nice, and less do anything more than just notice. Yet if it doesn't look so great, everyone will notice.
The mark of a good UX designer is that the user barely notices his design at all.
Or maybe number theory. If you let me, I'll lecture you about things like information theory, Euler's works, or my favorite math problems all day. :)
Try your hand making layouts using box model.
Learn how to import fonts from Google fonts or Typekit if you can afford $50/yr
Read The Non-Designers Design Book
If you're serious about typography.
The Elements of Typographic Style
Way too many typefaces, lack of hierarchy, and no attention to typographic style. Try to keep to no more than 2 different typefaces per design, but create hierarchy and variation through size, color, and occasionally by including variations of weight or font style in the same font family.
There are many things I could list that are incorrect or need improvement about the brochure, but until you get the basics of typography down, none of them will really matter. Type treatment is arguably the single most important part of a good design. It defines the design. Good type treatment applied to the ugliest images can be completely transformational - however, no mater how beautiful the images are, bad type will destroy the design.
Read some books on typography to get an understanding of the basics, and then start to apply the new knowledge.
This book is single-handedly the best book you can read to get you headed in the right direction. I would highly recommend starting there.
Then, apply what you have learned to a new design of this brochure and come back for a second round of critique.
I would also recommend this book , Elements of Typographic Style
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0881792128/ref=mp_s_a_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1494081534&sr=8-9&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=typography
But the bible of typography is definitely this.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0881792063?ie=UTF8&tag=desi05d-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0881792063
Here's some links of books I put on my wish list. Its a lot of stuff about grids, which is something you should learn.
Grid Systems in Graphic Design
Universal Principles of Design
The Grid: A Modular System for the Design and Production of Newpapers, Magazines, and Books
The Elements of Typographic Style (A dry read, but very valuable knowledge)
Thinking with Type
I learned most of my composition skills from Drawing and Painting classes. I've heard photography is a great way to learn composition too.
Aside from that use Lynda.com and learn your color theory. You should also learn stuff like using CMYK vs RGB. Common sizes for print material in your country.
If you go Freelance, use this book: Graphic Artist's Guild Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines
If you haven't discovered this site and you're feeling frustrated, just remember it could be worse: Clients From Hell
And just for fun: How a Web Design Goes Straight To Hell, Why You Don't Like Changes to Your Design
If you're having trouble with text and typography, I recommend Elements of Typographic Style. From letters and glyphs to pages and columns, it's a great read (actually funny in places) and will help you know what you want to do with your type. Then it's usually a pretty simple matter of googling how to do that in InDesign.
This isn't directly skills-related, but if you're going to be working as a designer you should read Design is a Job. A lot of really great practical info on working as a designer and the industry you don't usually hear people talk about.
Realistically, I think this would be a total waste of money. Amazon have an entire free ebook devoted to this, and you can find it here. There are a few simple rules, but the biggest one is don't use the tab button. There you have it.
or here if you are in the US.
Actually, I do have one for you. One of my favorites, The Cheese Monkeys, by Chip Kidd. If you're not familiar with Chip Kidd, he's known for designing book covers. This was his first novel (there's a sequel that came out a few years later), and I love it. There's a character in this book, Himillsy Dodd, who very much reminds me of you.
The Elements of Typographic Style, very good book about the fundamentals.
Read this book. It will explain typography and basic design principles like contrast, repetition, symmetry, etc. etc.
If you're interested in logos and marks, I thought "Marks of Excellence" was a fantastic book. It's one that you need to read, though, not just flip through. For typography, I think "Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works" is a good read for an easy introduction to typography. For a little more serious dig, hit up "The Elements of Typographic Style".
typography has some good rules for this.
see the book The Elements of Typographic Style
or http://webtypography.net/intro/ which is based on the instructions of this book.
Basics Design: Layout
Basics Design: Typography
Basics Design: Design Thinking
Basics Design: Image
Basics Design: Colour
Basics Design: Grids
Thinking With Type
Making and Breaking the Grid
Grid Systems Principles
The next few aren't so much technique books but are good reads.
Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design
Damn Good Advice: For People With Talent
The Vignelli Canon
It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be
Layout + Color
Picture This by Molly Bang
Typography
Second vote for Elements of Typographic Style, excellent book.
Drawing, honestly at the start the biggest key to growth is going to be drawing as much as you can. You're going to suck for a while so start getting those bad drawings out of you. There's a ton of great people to watch on YouTube (Sycra Yasin, Glenn Vilppu, Stan Prokopenko, Steve Huston). I've seen Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain recommended by many. I'm not crazy about it myself but I didn't read as a beginner artist so I probably didn't get as much out of it as I could have.
The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel In Two Semesters by Chip Kidd
More on the book and what's printed on its fore-edge here :-)
Some of my favorites. Some are good to skim through for ideas, some of them are more "sit down and read" books. Definitely not a comprehensive list, but all books that I enjoyed reading.
Graphic Style by Seymour Chwast and Steven Heller
Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton
100 ideas that Changed Graphic Design by Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne
The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
A Short History of the Printed Word by Warren Chappell and Robert Bringhurst
The Posters: 1,000 Posters from Toulouse-Lautrec to Sagmeister
Hatch Show Print: The History of a Great American Poster Shop by Jim Sherraden
This is my favorite, mostly because it brings in concepts that surround design, and explains things like gestalt. Pardon the Amazon link, but it's not an affiliate link.
http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Principles-Design-William-Lidwell/dp/1592530079/ref=sr_1_56?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418235901&sr=1-56&keywords=graphic+design+concepts
Edit: forgot my favorite type book, which is dry as hell, but full of great info: http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Robert-Bringhurst/dp/0881792063/ref=pd_sim_b_6?ie=UTF8&refRID=1RD40NPJ75KD5V99KXAB
And the version for online type: http://webtypography.net/
"Just doing it" is fair enough and is valuable, but also can only take one so far without understanding fundamentals as well.
What you don't want to be is someone with just a high software proficiency but relatively little understanding of what they're doing, or why. They essentially end up becoming an expert at mimicry. They can build whatever you want, but don't understand why what they're building works.
I've seen enough examples where it can simply delay advancement, such that someone self-taught with 5-10 years experience ends up with skills comparable to a graduate with 0-3 years of experience.
If the goal is to circumvent school, especially if the motivation is to save money, then the goal should also be to replicate the benefits of design education as much as possible without the expense.
> Books are nice but they aren't nearly the invaluable tool that "Just Doing It" is.
I assume you're just talking about instructional books, which relates to what I was saying above. To discredit the reading of a book such as The Elements of Typographic Style would be a shame. I imagine a book like that is required reading in any graphic design program.
Yep, the 555 timer is only producing a square wave input, the transistors are handling all of the logic!
The internet is a great resource for learning this, but unfortunately there's not too much available for beginners. Ben Eater is a great start, here's a video he did showing you RTL here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTu3LwpF6XI
There are also lectures on youtube, and tons of textbooks. I use 'Digital Design Principles and Practices' by John Wakerly, here:
https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Design-Principles-Practices-Book/dp/0131863894
You can pick that up used for under $20, and it will explain pretty much anything you need to know about digital design.
You're going to want the AASHTO "Green Book." I think that might be what you're looking for:
http://www.amazon.com/Policy-Geometric-Highways-Streets-Edition/dp/B006FY1ZCC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373738753&sr=8-1&keywords=aashto+green+book
If you have it in Word, I use this book. It's a little out of date but I used it for making a Kindle book last week. Building Your Book For Kindle (PS it's free)
The artbook is called FLCL Design Works! (ISBN: 4-04-853208-1)
There's a few for sale on Amazon
Well, as an ex-designer that now pretty much exclusively codes, I'd say your time would be best spent around typography. Here's a book that I would highly recommend. :)
Digital Design and Computer Architecture
http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Design-Computer-Architecture-Harris/dp/0123704979
Digital Design Principles and Practices Wakerly
http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Design-Principles-Practices-Edition/dp/0131863894/ <==You can get the 2nd/3rd editions on the cheap
Schaum's Outline
www.amazon.com/dp/0070650500/
http://www.amazon.com/Schaums-Outline-Introduction-Digital-Systems/dp/0070484392/
(I'd also suggest getting a discrete math book.)
If she doesn't have it already, The Elements of Typographic Style is probably a must-have.
I agree with Mr. Hamburger that the documentary Helvetica is a good choice, too. They have some other assorted Helvetica merch in their store.
If she's got a bit of a sense of humor, I think a keming shirt would work as a less-scholarly gift.
Perhaps a bit frivolous, but this is a neat little pop-up book called ABC3D.
Awesome, I just both this two:
http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Robert-Bringhurst/dp/0881792055/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1292256276&amp;sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Type-Designers-Critical-Students/dp/1568984480
cant wait until they here! Thanx a lot for the nice suggestions.
La design nu pot sa zic ca ma pricep prea tare, dar domeniul ma preocupa din ce in ce mai mult. Thinking with type si The Elements of Typographic Style, The Design of Everyday Things, Grid Systems in Graphic Design, Making and Breaking the Grid: A Graphic Design Layout Workshop si Don't Make Me Think sunt cartile care mi-au placut/din care am invatat cel mai mult, dar sunt clasice asa ca banuiesc ca stii de ele.
the first decent book i got a long time ago was Type and Image. A very good book on typography is The Elements of Typographic Style, for a wider perspective go for Typographic Design: Form and Communication. To get a perspective on the 'communication' part of graphical communication i'd got for Information Architects
I guess this list dates me a bit :)
Personally this book was a god send -
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Basics-Design-07-Gavin-Ambrose/dp/2940373779
(I think you can find pdfs online)
I also found these interesting when learning
http://retinart.net/typography/typographicscale/
http://alistapart.com/article/settingtypeontheweb
There are these really really basic resources too -
http://typophile.com/node/47265
http://www.creativebloq.com/typography/what-is-typography-123652?page=1
Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:
amazon.co.uk
amazon.ca
amazon.com.au
amazon.in
amazon.com.mx
amazon.de
amazon.it
amazon.es
amazon.com.br
amazon.nl
amazon.co.jp
amazon.fr
Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
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Others have covered the serious books but for a bit of entertainment and the look at the somewhat eccentric side, I recommend The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd.
Chip has been a long time book cover designer and this story covers his experience in design school and some of the lessons he learned along the way. It's one of my favorite reads and I recommend it to any designer that has been through or will be going through college soon.
Lovely book marks for all my reading!
Books, more often than not when it comes to holidays I ask for books. I'm not particularly picky either. Usually I'll suggest something from my favorite author or the newest best seller. I'm rarely disappointed :P. Other than that I ask for gift cards and cash.
My aunt always asks for a Christmas list (a LIST, can you imagine?) I usually just jot down a few suggestions because I cannot fathom coming up with a list. Regardless of my suggestions she almost always gets me some sort of butt ugly boutique jewelry that's in line with the latest fad. I don't know who told her that I liked zebra print and funky colored peace signs but they lied.
That one is OK but I definitely prefer this one as it has all the little things for all sites and readers. It teaches you how to develop to the open standard ePub. It costs $6.99 but it saved me days of aggravation. The author has many free templates inside and is more than willing to answer your emails.
For quick reading, I suggest Sitepoint's
The Principles of Beautiful Web Design Fairly adequate for beginners and specifically for web design.
If you want a more generalized book about the fundamentals of design The Non-Designer's Design Book
holy shit is that comic sans in publishing i think i just shat myself
...
Well, it's pretty creative though. Not a bad job in that sense. Here's a free tip if you're actually interested in publishing.
Ahhh these type exercises bring back fond memories! Typography can be a difficult thing to learn and teach because there is never one answer to a problem. Just learn the few things you shouldn't do and rock out with the rest. It is a skill that has a feel to it and the only way to develop an eye for it is to just practice and observe. I will dig out some of my work of similar projects and share.
Here are some of my favorite reads from back in day.
The Elements of Typographic Style
The Fundamentals of Typography
U&lc : Influencing Design & Typography
Thanks! One of my friends told me I need to read up on typography as well. He recommended me reading THIS and also THIS before I even start college to get a better understanding of it all. Regarding HTML and CSS, hopefully we'll learn that during the Web design I, II and III during the course. Otherwise I know a college in town where you can get a Web Design diploma (2 evening classes per week) in just two months and that is basically ONLY html, css and dreamweaver. It's dirt cheap to do as well so I might do that if I dont get enough html/css experience from college.
Even if it's just a passing interest, I highly recommend 'The Elements of Typographic Style 4.0' by Robert Bringhurst: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0881792128/ref=aw_2nd_sims_1?pi=SL500_SY115
Do you have a good understanding of typography in general? If you have that, you could try searching for specific things you want to learn like adjusting kerning or using ligatures.
If you need to familiarize yourself more with the elements of typography, this book is commonly considered THE go-to book for typography: http://amzn.com/0881792128
Since you're even tagging Aidan_King:
I'm really extremely surprised by all the positive comments you get for your posters in the different threads. I guess that's the Bernie hype. Sure, it's nice that you do them and it's better than not doing it at all, but they are anything but well designed and would never be officially used.
If you are serious and think about doing more design work I recommend getting a book about typography (for example this one) and start from there.
Edit: Okay, that "would never be used" was wrong. One was already posted on Instagram.