Top 10 Best Books for Graphic Designers
– There's absolutely nothing wrong with being a little book smart.
Hey, everybody, this is RobertoBlake of robertoblake.
Com, helping you createsomething awesome today.
So today, we've got anothergraphic design video, and today I'm going to talk to you about my top 10 booksfor graphic designers.
So I kind of want to start the first one with one of my favorite graphic designers, and this book is all about inspiration.
It's one of the biggest challenges when you're a graphicdesigner or a creative is to find great sources of inspiration, and sometimes, you needa really good example of someone who's been therebefore and done the work.
As a designer and an overall art director, I take a lot of inspirationfrom Radim Malinic, and I highly recommend Book of Ideas.
This book is amazing because it's just a lot of great inspiration, and a lot of different creative projects.
It's very well thoughtout and put together, and I really dig this because Radim Malinic is an art director that I've been following for years, and whenever I need an example of something that's truly well executed, I immediately think of him.
So he's definitely oneof my favorite designers, and I super appreciate this book.
Numbers two and threeare Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work, both by Austin Kleon.
These books are notdesign-centric or focused.
They're overall more about creativity and the way that wethink about creativity.
And I think that if youread both of these books, it'll really open you up and change your mindabout some of your ideas, about how you work and think and interpret your creativity, your ideas, and how you're positioningand marketing yourself.
I think that these two books by themselves could be the cure forStarving Artist Syndrome.
It's a real epidemic thatwe've gotta deal with.
For all of you font snobs out there, I definitely recommend Just My Type.
This book is more of, alittle bit of the history, of the evolution oftypography and type design.
And I really think thatthis book is a must read for anybody who is a designer, because you really haveto have an appreciation and a sense of how parts of the craft have evolved over time, and what the backstorybehind a lot of this is, and it's gonna really affect and inform some of your design choices and decisions.
And it also will giveyou a healthy respect for people who areveterans in the industry.
So I definitely recommend it.
The forward is by Chip Kidd, he's actually a really famous and well-known graphic designer, and he actually did a great presentation HOW Design Live in 2016.
So if you're not familiar with Chip Kidd, I highly recommend you look into him.
He's not the author of this book, but he did write the forward, and I did want to mention that.
Numbers five and six are really special.
We have Logo and we have Symbol.
And these two books areactually really cool.
They'll just look fantastic, but if you really want an understanding of logo design and youwant some great examples, this book is just chock full of them, and if you're doing conceptwork and development, and you really are feeling stumped, I highly recommend that youtake a look at these books, and this will help toput you back in touch with some of the fundamentals, and give you some examples to work off of, and give you a little bit of context to some of the famous logos and symbols that you might be familiar with.
And so, definitely amrecommending both of these.
By the way, links to all the books that I'm talking abouthere and a few more, will be in the description below as Amazon affiliate links.
They help out the channel, they cost you nothing extra.
Next we have a book that's gonna help you with pricing your graphic design if you're a freelancer and give you a better sense of pricing and marketing yourself effectively.
These are things that I know a lot of designers struggle with.
I talk about these thingsa lot on the channel.
And someone who actually is very competent to help you understand this is the author of this book Ilise Benun.
A lot of you might actually know her from the HOW Design podcast and also The Creative Entrepreneur's Track at HOW Design Live.
She's a great publicspeaker in her own right, and she's actually a good friend of mine.
So I definitely recommendyou check out this book if you're somebody who's struggling with marketing themselves, pricing and positioning as a designer.
This book will definitely give you some more insight into that.
And she has a lot of other books that I think would be helpful for you, so I'll link those down below as well.
For graphic design students, this book says it all:Graphic Design School.
This book is a comprehensive on the principles of graphic design.
I really think that thisis a fantastic primer for anyone just gettinginto graphic design.
It could be a refresher for you if you've already beendoing this for a while.
And I think that this is a solid book.
It is a little bit older.
I think I have one ofthe earlier editions.
I think I have the third edition.
I'll try and link to thenewest one down below.
Not every graphic designeris gonna be a Photoshop user, but the far majority are, and thus I have to recommend Layers.
Again, I'm using an older edition of this.
I've had this for years.
It is a fantastic guide to understanding one of those powerfulaspects of Photoshop, which is the Layers tool and panel.
And so I would highly recommend this.
This book is probably oneof the best overall books that I could recommend to anyone who wants to get into photo manipulation and photo retouching and compositing.
This book is gonna haveexactly what you need to understand about that if you are trying to gothat route in your career, or if you're a digital artist, then definitely make sureyou're getting this book.
Matt Kloskowski is definitely one of the veterans of the industry and a Photoshop power user, so with this book, you're in good hands.
And finally, one of my absolutefavorites on this list is Art Direction Explained at Last.
This book is a little thicker, it is a little heavier, but it is a great book.
It's got a lot of history into it.
What you'll learn is you'll learn about the old-school creative and art directors, and what their role in the industry was, and how they got started.
And I think it's really fascinating.
I think if you read it, you'll actually get some insight into how you can evolve in your career.
A lot of people, when theytalk about their stories and share their experiences in this book and how they got started as designers and as creatives, you'll find out how much grit and hustle and just old-school doing their own work and building their own opportunities really made a difference in where they ended up, because this industry wasn't established in the way that it is today, in the way that we recognize it.
And even the parts of it thatwere becoming established were extraordinarily elitist, and it was very hard to break in.
And so a lot of these people, they made their own opportunities, and I think in readingthis particular book you'll get a better understanding and appreciation for that.
Maybe it'll inspire youto do your own thing.
There are people in there that were doing reallyold-school newsletters, laying them out themselves and circulating them and printing them, and running their ownunderground magazines.
I mean, it's amazing to think of how they did these things.
So I think if you read this, it'll not only finally help you understand what an art director is and what art direction's about, but it'll help you understand really, what it takes tobe a successful creative on any level, and how much self-discipline and hustle and initiative play a role beyond just talent and being in the rightplace at the right time.
So yeah, these are mytop 10 favorite books for graphic designers.
These, in my opinion,are the best of the best, but as nice of a stack as this is, I will have links to some additional books that I didn't mention here that definitely deserve a look if you're a graphic designer or any type of creative in the description below.
So make sure you're checking that out.
And I'm gonna set these down.
Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy this video.
I know a lot of you have asked me about books for graphic designers and for artist before, and so now, you got a wholepile of 'em to check out.
One of the other things I want to do more often on this channel, is I love doing these graphicdesign Mondays for you guys, but I want to talk about creativity in a much broader sense.
So I'm actually thinking of starting a little bit of a vlog.
This little bit differentthan my Sunday vlogs which are more about life and motivation and things that are going on with me and old war stories.
This will be a vlog thatI call Creative Thoughts.
I'm going to daily vloging.
I have no real interest in doing that, but I really do want to have more conservations with you guys.
I wanna be able to answer your questions, and I wanna be able to talk about my thoughts and experienceson what's happening in our industry in a new way.
In addition to anotherproject that I've been teasing is a YouTube show.
So those two things arecoming down the pipeline.
I'd love ideas from you guysin the description below.
What do you guys want to talk about? Do you guys want to talk moreabout creative education? Do you guys want to talk about things revolving around young people, creative mind set, industry trends that are happening right now? Are those things that interest you guys, and would you want to havea conversation about them? Let me know in the comments section.
Like this video if you like it.
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As always you guys, thanksso very much for watching, and don't forget, createsomething awesome today.
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