Graphic Design Books to Give as Gifts

From Chronicle Books. Artists around the world have lately been turning to their bookshelves for more than just a good read, opting to cut, paint, carve, stitch or otherwise transform the printed page into whole new beautiful, thought-provoking works of art. From Su Blackwell’s whimsical pop-up landscapes to the stacked-book sculptures of Kylie Stillman, each portfolio celebrates the incredible creative diversity of the medium. A preface by pioneering artist Brian Dettmer and an introduction by design critic Alyson Kuhn round out the collection. Presented in an unusual, tactile package with an exposed spine, this is an essential addition to the libraries of book lovers and art aficionados.

From Workman Publishing. Go, by the award-winning graphic designer Chip Kidd, is a stunning introduction to the ways in which a designer communicates his or her ideas to the world. It’s written and designed just for those curious kids, not to mention their savvy parents, who want to learn the secret of how to make things dynamic and interesting.

Chip Kidd is “the closest thing to a rock star” in the design world (USA Today), and in Go he explains not just the elements of design, including form, line, color, scale, typography, and more, but most important, how to use those elements in creative ways. Like putting the word “go” on a stop sign, Go is all about shaking things up—and kids will love its playful spirit and belief that the world looks better when you look at it differently. He writes about scale: When a picture looks good small, don’t stop there—see how it looks when it’s really small. Or really big. He explains the difference between vertical lines and horizontal lines. The effect of cropping a picture to make it beautiful—or, cropping it even more to make it mysterious and compelling. How different colors signify different moods. The art of typography, including serifs and sans serifs, kerning and leading.

Read the Notable Book of 2013 review.

Also see our interview with Chip Kidd on Go.

From Peachpit Press. Who are history’s most influential graphic designers? In this fun, fast-paced introduction to the most iconic designers of our time, author John Clifford takes you on a visual history tour that’s packed with the posters, ads, logos, typefaces, covers, and multimedia work that have made these designers great. You’ll find examples of landmark work by such industry luminaries as El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko, A.M. Cassandre, Alvin Lustig, Cipe Pineles, Paul Rand, Saul Bass, Milton Glaser, Wim Crouwel, Stefan Sagmeister, John Maeda, Paula Scher, and more.

Who coined the term graphic design? Who turned film titles into an art? Who pioneered information design? Who was the first female art director of a mass-market American magazine? In Graphic Icons: Visionaries Who Shaped Modern Graphic Design, you start with the who and quickly learn the what, when, and why behind graphic design's most important breakthroughs and the impact their creators had, and continue to have, on the world we live in.

Read the Notable Book of 2013 review.

From Unit Editions. Following the phenomenal success of the deluxe version of Herb Lubalin: American Graphic Designer (1918—81) Unit is delighted to announce the publication of the “compact edition.” The new version has the same high production values as the deluxe edition—only smaller.

This meticulously researched book offers a complete career overview of Herb Lubalin, beginning with his early days as one of the original Mad Men in the New York advertising world of the 1950s and ‘60s, and continuing into the years of his greatest achievements as one of the world’s most influential typographers and graphic designers.

From Laurence King Publishing. This book offers a rare chance to read what graphic designers feel about their education and profession. Fifty influential designers give the low-down about their student days and their professional lives. A piece of their college work is shown alongside an example of current work. Each designer also offers a key piece of advice and a warning, making this a must-read for anyone embarking on a career in design.

AMMO Books. Iconoclastic British artist Ralph Steadman has been creating editorial and political illustrations for more than five decades. Steadman is revered for his ink-splattered, anarchic, and often shocking drawings. His well-known illustrations alongside the work of literary legend Hunter S. Thompson have long been celebrated and have achieved a cult-like following. Together, Steadman and Thompson’s iconic work has come to be known as Gonzo journalism.

Ralph and Hunter first met in 1970 on an assignment from Scanlan’s Monthly magazine to cover the Kentucky Derby. Their 40-year friendship included collaborations on seminal books such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Curse of Lono, as well as numerous articles for Jann Wenner’s Rolling Stone, including the George Foreman vs. Muhammad Ali fight and coverage of the Watergate scandal.

Proud Too Be Weirrd is the ultimate monograph of this creative genius. Steadman’s first-person narrative takes us on a literary and visual journey of his well-known, provocative work and is accompanied by his acerbic wit, heartfelt political views, and unique sense of humor.

From Princeton Architectural Press. Designers often look to the past for ways to enliven their projects. Letters with relief and shadow have long been an effective way to add spectacle or intrigue to otherwise mundane words. Introduced in metal type as early as 1815, shadow typefaces were a form of early experimentation among type founders. In the late 19th century, the form was adopted in wood type for use in posters and has been embraced ever since by designers looking for ways to communicate a sense of monumentality, a feeling of confidence, or a simple impression of optimism. Shadow Type presents a broad spectrum of examples—advertising, shop signs, billboards, posters, type-specimen books—featuring the most popular, rare, and (nearly) forgotten dimensional letters from Europe and the United States. Compiled by the leading historian of graphic design Steven Heller and renowned graphic designer Louise Fili, this invaluable collection, packed full of typographic ideas, will inspire anyone aiming to give more depth to their design.

From Prestel Publishing. This full-scale survey of Corita Kent’s work includes prints and ephemera from all phases of her life, revealing her importance as an activist printmaker and a sylistic innovator in graphic design. Artist, activist, teacher, and devout Catholic Corita Kent (1918–1986) eloquently combined her passions for faith and politics during her rich and varied career. As a teacher at LA's Immaculate Heart College, she fostered a creative and collaborative arts community and developed an interest in printmaking. Her posters, murals, and signature serigraphs combined messages of love and faith with images from popular culture and inventive use of type and color. For Kent, printmaking was a populist medium to communicate with the world around her. This activist spirit came most alive in the 1960s, when her posters and murals addressed subjects like racism and poverty, U.S. military brutalities in Vietnam, and conflicts between radical and conservative positions in the Catholic Church. Even after the war, and after she had left the church, she continued to be active in Boston's urban issues, producing prints and commissioned works until her death in 1986. Full of the lively, colorful work that was so iconically hers, this volume presents four decades of a life dedicated to serving others through and with the language of art.

From Pointed Leaf Press. Accompanying the revolutionary spirit taking hold of American culture in the mid-1960s and 1970s, American graphic designer Alan Peckolick heralded a movement in graphic design, known as expressive typography. Along with his mentor and icon Herb Lubalin, Peckolick called for a new caliber of design: Dreaming up and hand-drawing letterforms that had never existed before, with type, which once exclusively played a supporting role to the graphic image, now taking center stage. Calling for conceptual typography over a standardized format, Peckolick gave letterforms a presence on the page, and also an attitude: His designs will talk back, and always speak up. Teaching Type to Talk is the first-ever compendium to span the typographer’s career. Peckolick’s work is equal parts witty, shrewd, and impeccable, and is accompanied by original anecdotes as insightful and tongue-in-cheek as his designs.

— Written by graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister.

Among the book’s “maxims” is: “Honesty can solve any problem.”