Favourite Books For Graphic Designers
Investing in your education and honing your skills is crucial for any business owner. As a brand and web designer, here are my fave picks for must-read graphic design books. These are all a part of my private collection and have been super valuable to me and my business over the years. So whether you are looking to improve your design skills, learn about brand strategy, get inspired or want a bit of help in running your business, scroll down and have a look at my virtual bookshelf.
BRAND IDENTITY BOOKS
Creating a Brand Identity: A Guide for Designers
A good read for beginners in branding as it offers plenty of case studies with detailed explanations of the most important terms in design and branding.
Logo Design Love: A Guide to Creating Iconic Brand Identities
Another great and inspiring read that covers the brand identity design process, without being overly complicated as well as offering great professional guidance for working with clients.
Branding: In Five and a Half Steps
My favourite branding resource. It's very in-depth with a lot of practical examples and illustrations, including different tactics that can be applied to the unique problems you're trying to solve.
COLOR + TYPOGRAPHY BOOKS
Thinking with Type
The perfect book that guides you to understand how type can be used in communication. It contains a lot of information about type and its history.
The Secret Lives of Color
Its one of those books that you can read through, or just open a page randomly at. After an interesting introduction talking about what colour is and how we see it, you then are taken through the entire rainbow, shade by shade, learning the history of the colour through it meanings, uses or pigments.
The Designer's Dictionary of Color
A practical and inspirational resource for designers. Chapters detail each color’s creative history and cultural associations
BRAND STRATEGYBOOKS
Building a StoryBrand
Such an insightful book for anyone looking to gain clarity and hone in their messaging. It offers easy to follow strategies that I implement throughout all of my designs.
The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes
A fascinating exploration into the brand archetypes. It goes over 12 key personalities used in marketing, and how to utilize them for your business.
The Brand Gap: How to Bridge the Distance Between Business Strategy and Design
Brand Gap shows how to help "Bridge The Gap" between a brand's mission/strategy and the needs and desires of the customer. Super interesting read.
DESIGN INSPIRATION BOOKS
The Package Design Book
This is a great book for every any designer looking to find some packaging inspiration. You can see some of the best packaging application in terms of design and functionality.
Logo Design
If you ever need logo design inspiration, this book offers so many examples to spark your creativity.
Logo Modernism
Another great book full of logo design inspiration.
DESIGNER PRICING BOOKS
Graphic Artists Guild Handbook
The ultimate freelancer's pricing bible.
I have the older 15th edition, but it has been instrumental resource especially when I was starting out, but I still refer to it. It helps you price competitively and contains lots of contracts and letters in the back of the book that you can use as templates.
*Full disclosure: some of the links in this post are affiliate links, which means I'll earn a small commission at no extra cost to you if you choose to make a purchase.
