Graphic Design Books

Selection of publications ranging from sourcebooks to biographies related to graphic design.

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Red and white color-blocked book cover with large title text and a sketched line drawing of a figure inside a triangle inside a circle inside a square.

Symbol Sourcebook: An Authoritative Guide to International Graphic Symbols

Cream colored book cover with black trim. Center of cover dominated by spiraling infographic with red, yellow, pink and purple lines. Above the spiral, three alternating lines of centered text in black, red, and black contain the title and subtitle ”the color line at the turn of the century,” which is in all caps. Editors names appear in black below the spiral.

W. E. B. Du Bois's Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America

Book cover with poster detail showing arching brown and yellow fields leading to a black and white image of a figure on wheeled contraption partially obscured in the bottom right. Title above in red and light blue bold sans serif letters

E. McKnight Kauffer: The Artist in Advertising

Book cover with white black and gray computer icon-like illustrations of the books design themes inside a cross hatched black and white border all surrounding the title in cross hatched comic-like speech bubble

Design Is Storytelling

Pink book cover with white borders. "Making Design" in white san serif font on thick spine and "210,000" and "1145" on front cover

Making Design Limited Edition

Beige book cover with a red square bisected with a yellow triangle surrounded by a blue circle

The ABC's of Triangle, Square, Circle: The Bauhaus and Design Theory

Chartreuse book cover featuring large, white, sans-serif title text, with stacked CMYK offset text layers.

How to Be a Design Student (and How to Teach Them)

Book cover featuring solid black background and six rows of seven small button pins (from top to bottom). Each button pin is different, also, they are set up in a rainbow color assortment , with red, yellow, pink, purple, green, blue, grey, and black pins.

Button Power: 125 Years of Saying It with Buttons

Graphic book cover with red, pink, and yellow blocks of color emphasizing the title text..

Extra Bold : A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers

Cover is bold red with with a grid of white icons

Orange book cover with large white title text cropped off at the right edge. Small, black subtitle text below.

A Handbook of California Design, 1930-1965: Craftspeople, Designers, Manufacturers

White book cover with tall 'M A G' in red on top and 'M E N' in black on bottom with subtitle and author information between above and below

Mag Men: Fifty Years of Making Magazines

Book cover featuring a flat coral colored background layered with a "Regular Republican Ticket", centered, and the title to the left, rotated vertically at 90 degrees in a navy colored font.

This Is What Democracy Looked Like: A Visual History of the Printed Ballot

Designing Motion: Automotive Designers 1890 to 1990

Red book cover with central illustration showing black arrows circling a golden globe

The Moderns: Midcentury American Graphic Design

Purple book cover, stylized in color halftone, featuring an illustration of a suited man with a pipe in his mouth, head turned backward, with binoculars. Large white title text at top.

Poster Man: 50 Years of Iconic Graphic Design

Book cover features three rectangles in red and black colors over a yellow background. A rounded fold of black mesh material is visible on the top. The title and subtitle in white bold font are placed at the center closer to the left.

Italian Types: Graphic Designers from Italy in America

Shepard Fairey Inc. book cover featuring three layers of black and red graffiti. The title text in a gothic font at the center of the page.

Shepard Fairey Inc.: Artist/Professional/Vandal

Black book cover with white layered burst or hole in the middle with the title in black sans serif font

Alexander Girard: Let the Sun In – Signed Copy

Alexander Girard: Let the Sun In – Signed Copy

Bright orange horizontal book cover with the words "Los Logos" diagonally placed in an intertwined font colored in orange blue and white

Official Symbol of the American Revolution Bicentennial: Official Graphics Standards Manual

Book cover featuring fragments of various wood chips scattered with 2 rows of 2 large green letters emerging from the center: C A (first row) M O (second row).

Camo Mania: New Disruptive Patterns in Design

Bright pink book cover with a colorful bird in a collage of textures behind a thinly printed white title

Printing Colors in Graphic Design: CMYK & PMS

White book cover for a book about bookcovers featuring a photograph of a bookcover with the word "Cover" in black sans serif font overlaid in the center

Book cover in navy blue with title in various ornamental types in yellow/orange with white outlines.

New Ornamental Type: Decorative Lettering in the Digital Age

Book cover with illustration in collapsed perspective of a colorful artwork propped on two white plastic buckets over a veiny wooden floor in front of a gray wall. the word "McGinness" in tall white letters covers part of the artwork

Ryan McGinness: #metadata