The best graphic design books aren’t just for students. Every stage of your career is an opportunity to learn and expand your skills and understanding of this discipline. So we’ve gathered together the books that everyone should put on their must-read list, from timeless classics to modern masterpieces.
We’ve organised these books into categories. So if there’s something you’re specifically looking for, just scroll through the sections above and jump straight to the one you’re interested in.
For further reading inspiration, see our best branding books and best art books. Or if you’re looking to update your graphic design arsenal, see our pick of the best graphic design tools around. Finally, if you’re a student, also check out our selection of back to school deals to make the best savings.
The 32 best graphic design books
Logo and branding books
Students of branding and designing alike will find plenty of information in Alina Wheeler’s best-selling guide to branding. Now updated for the fifth time, it includes expanded coverage of social media cross channel synergy, crowdsourcing, SEO, experience branding, mobile devices, wayfinding and placemaking. Split into three sections – brand fundamentals, process basics and case studies – Designing Brand Identity provides in-depth guidance for both designers and entire branding teams, walking through a universal five-stage process for brand development and implementation.
Pentagram partner Paula Scher says: “Alina Wheeler explains better than anyone else what identity design is and how it functions. There’s a reason this is the fifth edition of this classic.” And with a foreword from Design Matters podcast host Debbie Millman, you know you’re in good hands.
For anyone studying branding, this is an essential title. Leading graphic designer Michael Johnson demystifies the branding process in his book, Branding: In Five and a Half Steps. Dividing the process into five key steps – investigation, strategy and narrative, design, implementation and engagement – Johnson also acknowledges the non-linear nature of branding with a crucial half step, which marks the fluid relationship between strategy and design.
A no-nonsense, six-question model structures the first half of the book; the second part analyses the design process, using over 1,000 contemporary brand identities from around the world. It’s the ultimate step-by-step visual guide to creating a successful brand identity. An essential read for anyone in the branding industry, including students and new designers.
Bringing together approximately 6,000 trademarks, registered between 1940-80, Jens Müller examines the distillation of modernism in graphic design and how these attitudes and imperatives gave birth to corporate identity.
Müller includes a variety of logos, organised into three chapters – geometric, effect and typographic – to both educate and provide a comprehensive index of inspirational logo designs to inform your own work.
It’s always useful to look back to get inspiration for your work. In this inspiring book, a panel of leading branding and identity design experts come together to bring you the definitive list of the 50 best logos ever. The book offers insight into the creative processes behind the most recognisable identity design work in the world. Find out if your favourite logo makes the cut.
Typography books
First published in 1992, this history and guide to typography from the Canadian typographer, poet and translator Robert Bringhurst is a major typographic resource. Leading typographers Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones call it “the finest book ever written about typography”, and we can see why.
The Elements of Typographic Style is a beautifully written manual combining practical, theoretical and historical information, while also sharing a deeper philosophy and understanding of the topic. If you’re looking for a book covering the finer points of type and typography, you’ll save a lot of money by starting with this one. The appendix of the Latin alphabet and its characters is a great piece of eye-candy that all designers will love.
The title says it all, and there’s firm justification behind this book’s choices of the best typefaces. FontShop AG, the renowned type foundry, conducted a survey based on historical relevance, sales at FontShop.com and aesthetic quality. With a few additions from the experts at Computer Arts magazine, the best fonts ever were selected for this book. In addition to defining the list, it offers some insightful background on each font.
If there’s any doubt on the importance of choosing the right front, graphic designer and typographer Sarah Hyndman’s Why Fonts Matter shows just what impact fonts have on what we read and the choices we make. The book dives into the science behind font design, and uncovers why different styles provoke different reactions. It’s a vital read for anyone wanting to understand how to use type design to influence their audience. Hyndman even promises to explain how fonts have the power to alter the taste of your food.
Graphic designers are trained to look at typefaces, but Simon Garfield’s book Just My Type will encourage you to look even closer, taking in the rich history of fonts, as well as looking at their powers. A well-chosen font communicates to the reader on an almost subliminal level and it can make (or break) a design. This fantastic book will teach you things about the history of typography you didn’t know that you didn’t know.
How to be a graphic designer
Inspired by his world-famous typographical prints, Anthony Burrill’s Work Hard & Be Nice to People is short and sharp in its . Cutting all the fat from the message, his short, aphoristic advice can make a big impact thanks to its total lack of pretension, and its full heart.
The book is a re-worked, paperback version of Anthony’s previous book Make it Now, with all-new material. It’s an inspiring, personal account of what this feted designer values in creatives. And it will help you get the best out of yourself without selling your soul, or indeed, being horrible to people along the way.
Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work! 10 Things Nobody Told You About Getting Discovered has inspired many a freelance career. It’s all well and good having talent, but even the very best designers won’t get anywhere if no one sees their work. This design book will show you how to reach your audience and build a name for yourself.
Motion designer and 3D illustrator Hashmukh Kerai says. “I feel most creative people are too precious with their work, leaving you feeling vulnerable when it’s finally ready to be shared. This book helped me start posting work on social media, allowing for feedback, and moving on to the next project.” Kleon is also the author of the hugely popular New York Times bestseller Steal Like an Artist and Keep Going (at 30 in this list) – also well worth a look.
Paul Woods’ How to Do Great Work Without Being an Asshole is both amusing and practical. Its infographics and flow diagrams help readers identify what’s going on in common conundrums in the creative industries, including pitching and giving feedback, and its short, sharp chapters help them navigate agency life.
If you’re after frank advice on how to make it in graphic design, this book is for you. There’s even a foreword by the king of straight talking, Erik Spiekermann. You can read an extract from the book here.
How to Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul is insightful, intelligent, accessible and simply full of great advice, with the author calling on such luminaries as Neville Brody, Natalie Hunter, John Warwicker and Andy Cruz to help pull together his ideas. Shaughnessy gives sound advice on gaining employment, setting yourself up as a freelancer, forming a company, dealing with clients, pitching and loads more.
Veteran designer and Pentagram New York partner Michael Bierut released this inspiring, highly readable monograph, manual and manifesto in 2015. Featuring 35 projects, Bierut – who’s a protégé of design legend Massimo Vignelli – illustrates the varied role that graphic design plays in the modern world.
Rough sketches and rejected ideas sit alongside finished work in this inspiring book, whose full title is “How to Use Graphic Design to Sell Things, Explain Things, Make Things Look Better, Make People Laugh, Make People Cry, and (Every Once in a While) Change the World)”. Updated for 2021, it’s packed with insights into the creative process, making it a valuable resource to new and established designers alike.
Andy Cooke’s Graphic Design for Art, Fashion, Film… compiles branding campaigns from some of the world’s best design studios, along with illuminating interviews with many of the creatives involved, to provide a comprehensive, indispensable guide to modern commercial design.
As a designer himself, Cooke knows all the right questions to ask. The stunning work discussed – including Studio Makgill (for G. F. Smith), Freytag Anderson (for Fraher Architects) and Ico Design (for David Rowland) – is beautifully collated and presented. With the emphasis very much on creative collaboration and developing designs to work on multiple touchpoints, this book is a great informative guide to modern design.
Inspired by the many questions that David Airey – author of Logo Design Love – receives on a daily basis, Work for Money, Design for Love is a refreshing, straightforward guide that tackles the essentials of starting your own design business. Touching on everything from the mindset needed to be a designer to how to take that first step into being your own boss, this is a must-have read for anyone thinking about going it alone.
Alan Fletcher, the legendary co-founder of Pentagram, penned various thought-provoking tomes during his illustrious graphic design career, but The Art of Looking Sideways is perhaps the best known. It questions the way designers think about everything from colour to composition.
Once you’ve digested his seminal text, you might also want to give Picturing and Poeting a go. That title explores the link between imagery and meaning through a series of visual mind-teasers, games and visual puns, assembled from his personal notebooks and diaries. Another great work by Fletcher, Beware Wet Paint, is a more conventional monograph, looking back over 35 years of inspiring work and putting it all in the context of Fletcher’s remarkable thought process. All of these can provide revealing insights for design students.
Heralded by many as one of the fathers of modern branding, Paul Rand has several inspiring books to his name. Design, Form and Chaos is fantastic to immerse yourself in his talent for simplicity, and to explore the thinking behind some of his best-known identities. A Designer’s Art, meanwhile, probes more deeply into the process of graphic design in general: why it’s important; the impact it can have on society; what works, what doesn’t, and most importantly, why. This is a book to be read thoroughly rather than flipped through.
Another insightful resource from designer and industry commentator Adrian Shaughnessy, Graphic Design: A User’s Manual runs through everything you need to know to survive and prosper in the complex, ever-shifting world of graphic design. Organised as an A-Z, topics include annual reports, budgeting, kerning, presenting, dealing with rejection and more. This is an entertaining and invaluable resource that’s packed with pro advice on the things you won’t have been taught at design school.
Don’t judge The Little Know-It-All: Common Sense for Designers by its cover or size – it’s possibly the most useful book you can own as a designer. Everything from light, colour and perspective to law and marketing are covered in succinct, beautifully formed chapters. It’s the kind of book that you never stop reading once you start; the kind you’ll always refer back to, making it a winner on pretty much every level.
Design theory and history
Graphic Design: A History (third edition) is an informative and engaging history of graphic design that’s been updated for the latest edition. It includes over 500 new images, a new chapter on current trends in digital design and an expanded introduction. This chunky textbook is the sort of thing that should be on every student’s bookshelf, and every agency’s coffee table.
Grid Systems in Graphic Design remains the definitive word on using grid systems in graphic design. Written by legendary Swiss graphic designer Josef Mülller-Brockmann, this visual communication manual for graphic designers, typographers and 3D designers is packed with examples on how to work correctly at a conceptual level. It’s a must-read resource for any student or practising designer – regardless of whether you prefer the David Carson approach.
As a designer, you deal mainly in creating visual material, and to create successful work that’s designed to be seen, you need to understand how people see things. That’s where Ways of Seeing comes in. Written by art critic and painter John Burger and based on a BBC TV series, this bestseller explores the way we view art.
Designer Greg Bunbury says the book was responsible for a “pivotal shift” in his design studies. “I began to understand composition and context in every ad I saw,” he says. “I recognised the inherent tension that advertising creates, and how to replicate it. But most importantly, it made me want to create meaningful communications: images worth seeing.”
Conceived as a handbook and teaching aid for artists, instructors and students, Interaction of Color is an influential book that presents Josef Albers’s singular explanation of complex colour theory principles. It’s been over 50 years since this tome was first published, but it remains an essential resource on colour, demonstrating principles such as colour relativity, intensity and temperature; vibrating and vanishing boundaries; and the illusion of transparency and reversed grounds.
You’ll find this book on the must-read list on every self-respecting graphic design course, and with good reason. Neville Brody may have been president of D&AD and head of Research Studios’ global studio network, but it was arguably his 1980s heyday that had the biggest impact on contemporary graphic design. First published in 1988, The Graphic Language of Neville Brody explores the thought process behind some of his best-known work, including his genre-defining art direction of The Face magazine.
Visual communication rests on the power of semiotics, a concept that David Crow examines in expert detail in this seminal book. Dealing with the principles of written communication and its relationship to imagery, and rounded off with an examination of audience understanding, Left to Right is a valuable assessment of academic yet essential design theory.
Designer monographs
Paul Sahre is one of the most influential graphic designers of his generation, and he lectures about graphic design all over the world. Operating his own design consultancy since 1997 from his office in New York City, his clients have included The New York Times, Google and Marvel Comics.
His book, Two-Dimensional Man, is part monograph, part autobiography, part art book and part reflection on creativity. Combining personal essays that discuss the realities of his 30-year career, he proves that throughout highs and lows, humour can be a saving grace.
Austria-born, New York-based designer Stefan Sagmeister has hit the headlines a couple of times with his nude promotional shenanigans, but his two monographs, published in 2008 and 2009, are all about his creative approach and output. Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far revolves around 21 thought-provoking phrases, transformed into typographic works for various clients around the world and has been since updated. His second text, Made You Look, is fully illustrated with a red PVC slipcase and spans 20 years of his graphic design in depth. The two complement each other excellently.
French illustrator Malika Favre’s work features simple shapes and bold colours in smart combinations that provide visual double entendres, brought to life beautifully in her new eponymous monograph. This large-format book showcases work from across Favre’s career. Divided into some of her most oft-used themes, such as women, it features some stunning New Yorker covers and erotica, including her brilliant 2013 Kama Sutra-based alphabet.
Favre is very much a graphic designer’s illustrator. The meaning is the visual message and her work is underpinned by “grids and geometric structures as a backbone for each composition,” as she puts it herself. The book’s cover is a perfect distillation of what makes her illustration so arresting: a small hole for a beauty spot and cut-out pouting lips open to reveal another image that references that face-like cover: a woman’s face in profile, lips parted as if blowing a little kiss to the reader. This is a great book for illustrators, but also one of the best graphic design books.
Ideas and inspiration
The second volume of graphic designer Radim Malinic’s inspirational journal Book of Ideas is packed with advice on how to make it in the fast-paced creative industries. The designer, who works under the name Brand Nu, teamed up with Adobe Stock to make the oil painting-inspired cover illustration. “I want these books to look a bit odd on the shelves,” he says.
Book of Ideas 2 shares Malinic’s musings on creativity and working in design, along with his key career learnings. “I wanted to challenge the traditional design book model, releasing my own titles that discuss things others don’t,” he explains. “Seeing the first copy never gets old. Having it printed and bound is quite something.” You can read our full review here.
This short and sweet book by Austin Kleon is a great pick-me-up for fresh inspiration if you’re ever stuck in a creative rut. Keep Going: 10 ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad provides practical advice for feeding your creativity, and may help you look at your situation or creative problem in a different light. It contains fun diagrams and drawings and provides a lighthearted yet considerate look at how to be creative. This is one to keep handy in case of creative emergencies.
The Graphic Design Idea Book: Inspiration from 50 Masters covers all the key elements of great design. Featuring seminal works from acclaimed designers such as Paul Brand, Neville Brody and Stefan Sagmeister, it’s sure to spark inspiration and keep those creative juices flowing. Authors Steven Hiller and Gail Anderson hone in on professional techniques and provide a refresher on colour, narrative, illusion, humour, simplicity, ornaments and more.
A lot of graphic design is now digital, but this book makes a refreshing change. Illustration Play has one of the most beautiful, special and intriguing covers you’ll see, each one being individually stickered by hand, and this is representative of the explorative approach taken by the illustrators featured in the book. It’s a beautiful object in itself and it provides new ideas and ways to realise concepts within contemporary illustration.
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