Want a reason to create some great new portfolio pieces, get some exposure for your freelance graphic design business and maybe win an award or get published? Now is your chance to work! In lieu of pro-bono work, which is actually surprisingly tricky to give way while also getting a decent portfolio-worthy piece at the same time, responding to these calls to graphic designers for new work is a fantastic way to offload those unused logo design concepts or rejected brochure comps with a little touch up and make-ready. Like the land of misfit toys, you can make your old design work happy and proud to be yours once again by giving them a useful existence – and maybe some glory! … [Read More]

A quick way to give customers fast complete access to a printable version of your business or products is to get a PDF version of your brochure on your website. Smart move! But you don’t want to put just any PDF brochure design on the web. If you want to communicate your services or products effectively using a PDF, it must be designed and optimized correctly. Here are some points to consider: … [Read More]

Just a quick note: We have gotten round one of our new graphic and logo design portfolio up and running. Please stop by and take a look! More to come but that is enough for now. Getting a blog-based portfolio turned out to be quite a challenge. The days of 100% pure hand-coded HTML seem so quaint by contrast…

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:

• What’s your favourite graphic design book? – David Airey

Here are 100 of the most popular books on graphic design. Some are old and some are really old. The great thing about the fundamentals of graphic design is that they never change. How many of these books are in your personal libray? Enjoy!

100 of the most popular books on graphic design

1. Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students (Design Briefs)
2. The Non-Designer’s Design Book: Design and Typographic Principles for the Visual Novice
3. Meggs’ History of Graphic Design
4. Graphic Design Solutions, Third Edition
5. Graphic Design: The New Basics
6. The Elements of Color: A Treatise on the Color System of Johannes Itten Based on His Book the Art of Color (A Basic color library)
7. Envisioning Information
8. Universal Principles of Design
9. Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines (Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines)
10. Designing with Type: A Basic Course in Typography
11. Design Elements: A Graphic Style Manual
12. Making and Breaking the Grid: A Graphic Design Layout Workshop
13. An Illustrated Life: Drawing Inspiration from the Private Sketchbooks of Artists, Illustrators and Designers
14. Typography Workbook: A Real-World Guide to Using Type in Graphic Design
15. Designing Brand Identity: An Essential Guide for the Whole Branding Team
16. Layout Workbook: A Real-World Guide to Building Pages in Graphic Design
17. Designing Brand Identity: A Complete Guide to Creating, Building, and Maintaining Strong Brands
18. Graphic Design: A New History
19. Interaction of Color
20. Grid Systems: Principles of Organizing Type (Design Briefs)
21. Geometry of Design: Studies in Proportion and Composition
22. Picture This: How Pictures Work
23. Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works (2nd Edition)
24. The Elements of Graphic Design: Space, Unity, Page Architecture, and Type
25. Design Basics Index (Index Series)
26. How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul
27. The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)
28. Forms, Folds and Sizes, Second Edition: All the Details Graphic Designers Need to Know but Can Never Find
29. Designer’s Color Manual: The Complete Guide to Color Theory and Application
30. Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide
31. Fingerprint: The Art of Using Hand-Made Elements in Graphic Design
32. Pantone Guide to Communicating with Color
33. Logo Design Workbook: A Hands-On Guide to Creating Logos
34. Design Language
35. Graphic Design Basics
36. Getting It Printed: How to Work With Printers and Graphic Imaging Services to Assure Quality, Stay on Schedule and Control Costs
37. Understanding Color: An Introduction for Designers (Design & Graphic Design)
38. Exploring the Elements of Design (Design Exploration Series)
39. Elements of Design: Rowena Reed Kostellow and the Structure of Visual Relationships
40. Exploring Typography (Design Exploration Series)
41. Caffeine for the Creative Mind: 250 Exercises to Wake Up Your Brain
42. Graphic Design School, Third Edition
43. Graphic Communications Today, 4E
44. Basics of Design
45. Building Design Portfolios: Innovative Concepts for Presenting Your Work (Design Field Guide)
46. The Designer’s Guide To Marketing And Pricing: How To Win Clients And What To Charge Them
47. Color Index: Over 1100 Color Combinations, CMYK and RGB Formulas, for Print and Web Media
48. Type: A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles, Vol. 1
49. Becoming a Graphic Designer: A Guide to Careers in Design
50. Introduction to Design (2nd Edition)
51. Publication Design Workbook
52. 1,000 Type Treatments: From Script to Serif, Letterforms Used to Perfection
53. Data Flow: Visualising Information in Graphic Design
54. A Guide to Graphic Print Production
55. Layout Essentials: 100 Design Principles for Using Grids
56. Layout Index: Brochure, Web Design, Poster, Flyer, Advertising, Page Layout, Newsletter, Stationery Index
57. Picturing Texts
58. Marks of Excellence
59. Principles of Form and Design
60. The Information Design Handbook
61. Business and Legal Forms for Graphic Designers (3rd Edition)
62. What is Graphic Design? (Essential Design Handbooks)
63. The Designers Complete Index (Boxed Set)
64. D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself (Design Handbooks)
65. A Designer’s Research Manual: Succeed in Design by Knowing Your Clients and What They Really Need (Design Field Guide)
66. Logo, Font & Lettering Bible
67. Typographic Systems of Design
68. The Wayfinding Handbook: Information Design for Public Places
69. Visual Literacy: A Conceptual Approach to Graphic Problem Solving
70. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Graphic Design
71. The Business Side of Creativity: The Complete Guide to Running a Small Graphics Design or Communications Business (Third UpdatedEdition)
72. How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer
73. The Designer’s Desktop Manual
74. Graphic Design: A Concise History, Second Edition (World of Art)
75. Package Design Workbook: The Art and Science of Successful Packaging
76. Starting Your Career as a Freelance Illustrator or Graphic Designer
77. Letterhead and Logo Design 9 (Letterhead & LOGO Design (Quality)) (v. 9)
78. Type Idea Index: The Designer’s Ultimate Tool for Choosing and Using Fonts Creatively
79. The Design of Dissent: Socially and Politically Driven Graphics
80. 1,000 Graphic Elements: Details for Distinctive Designs
81. Decoding Design: Understanding and Using Symbols in Visual Communication
82. Looking Good in Print
83. The Graphic Designer’s Guide to Portfolio Design
84. Idea Index: Graphic Effects and Typographic Treatments
85. Creativity for Graphic Designers
86. Designing Type
87. Type Rules!
88. The Creative Business Guide to Running a Graphic Design Business (Revised)
89. Make It Bigger
90. Design Matters: Logos 01: An Essential Primer for Today’s Competitive Market (v. 1)
91. New Vintage Type: Classic Fonts for the Digital Age
92. Design for Communication: Conceptual Graphic Design Basics
93. Green Graphic Design
94. Creative Sparks: An Index of 150+ Concepts, Images and Exercises to Ignite Your Design Ingenuity
95. Process Color Manual: 24,000 CMYK combinations for design, prepress, and printing
96. The Designer’s Guide to Color Combinations
97. AIGA Professional Practices in Graphic Design, Second Edition
98. Designing Brand Experience: Creating Powerful Integrated Brand Solutions
99. Information Design Workbook: Graphic approaches, solutions, and inspiration plus 30 case studies
100. Vector Graphics and Illustration: A Master Class in Digital Image-making

Further reading:

• What’s your favourite graphic design book? – David Airey