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6 best graphic design books for one penny

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Here are 6 books for one penny each (US dollars) that are a steal! They are used of course but their information is timeless and you can’t beat the price:

  1. Graphic Artists Guild Handbook (Graphic Artists Guild Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines)
    This book contains priceless discussion about and examples of contracts for graphic designer to use. New or used, every designer should have this on their shelf.
  2. Color Harmony: A Guide to Creative Color Combinations
    Sometimes you simply need to turn away from the computer and pick up a printed swatch book or some other tactile form of inspiration. This is a classic!
  3. Quick Solutions for Great Type Combinations
    A great book for seeing on paper how to combine classic fonts. Sometimes you just need to see up close examples done by skilled typographer to see what classic fonts are capable of, and how they work in combinations you might not have thought of.
  4. Inspirability: 40 Top Designers Speak Out About What Inspires
    It’s hard to find 40 designers in one place speaking about the timeless issue of how to get inspiration. For 1 cent, you just saved 5 hours of surfing the web looking for this info!
  5. 2005 Artist’s & Graphic Designer’s Market
    Why include such an old book? Surely the information is dated. Not exactly, not at all! Most of the information in the book reveals how you should approach all kinds of people, timeless marketing tips, and a ready list of companies that year after year are in the book. So, for 1 cent, you can nab the book. If you really want an updated list, you can then turn around and buy the new version. But for 1 cent, you get to see what all the fuss about this great book is year after year.
  6. Designer’s Guide to Color 3 (Bk. 3)
    I included this classic book which has been sold for years unchanged. It’s just another book you can turn to and hold and flip through when you need to take a coffee break and your eyes are tired of the glowing screen. It’s timeless and a book I pick up with some frequency nearly 10 years after I bought my new copy.

NOTE: When I checked these out there were limited numbers of copies from various booksellers for the 1 cent price. If the 1 cent copies are gone by the time you read this, there will be some under a dollar. And if you wait long enough (why you’d wait I’m not sure) you might see them again for 1 cent.

Happy reading!

Further reading:

Comments

  1. Welcome visitors! Please remember that you can do this search for something under a dollar or some other amount. There are INCREDIBLE bargains out there for about $5 with shipping from Amazon or your other favorite used book source. Old does not mean irrelevant.

    NOTE: If you happen to find a real deal on a great book and there multiple copies, please post back here for us all to have a grab at it.

    To get you started, I performed the basic search:

    http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=1254336528/ref=sr_pg_2?ie=UTF8&rs=1&sort=price&keywords=%26%2334%3Blogo%20design%26%2334%3B%20-flash&bbn=1&rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Cn%3A%211000%2Ck%3A%26%2334%3Blogo%20design%26%2334%3B%20-flash%2Cn%3A1&page=2

    I don’t have an Amazon reseller account thing, so don’t think the link is some cheesy way of making .0005 cents :). It’s a straight link to an Amazon search.

    You have to define and refine the search by a few criteria. Get your terms, then your sub-department, then sort by price lowest to highest. For instance, I just ordered – just this second – a book on 200 logo redesigns for .01 plus shipping. That just saved me 5 hours of surfing the web 🙂

  2. Hey Doug, it’s the seller who sets the price for second hand books, isn’t it? Why a copy would go for $0.01 is beyond me, unless the shipping is ten times what you’d expect.

  3. The key is that it’s USED. The book could be 25 years old, like the 1985 Typography awards book I just got in the mail yesterday. Some GREAT stuff in there. Enough for a dozen great posts. The handlers make a few bucks off of shipping, so lowering the price to a penny to get rid of it makes economic sense.

    I have a feeling you might find yourself a dozen books in the span of an hour if you venture forth with some curiosity…

    Shipping across the board, here in the US that is, is pretty much $3.98 or $3.99. And if a few books happen to be from the same seller (who likely has a bunch of design books) the deal is automatically combined and you get the second book shipped cheaper in some cases.

    I love opening the mailbox to get my padded manilla envelopes wondering what book arrived. Fun stuff. It’s like searching Flickr, only slower and with tactile feedback :).

  5. It’s a good tip, Doug. Never gave it much thought, really. As for the title, it screams cheap, but specifics are always good for grabbing attention. 😉

  6. The psuedo-title was a bit of a play on the “Can you design me a logo for $50” question many designers have come across. Sure, and I can redesign 200 of them for 37 cents while I’m at it.